These posters were published in the Soviet anti-religious magazine, Bezbozhnik (“The Godless”) from 1922 to 1941. The main purpose of the magazine was to thwart any religious beliefs that were supposedly too distracting for the working class. The magazi…
These idyllic photographs, taken by William Morris Grundy, capture the rural life in England during the Victorian era. Born in Birmingham in 1806, Grundy took up photography in 1855 and made dozens of stereoscopic photos, primarily posed genre scenes of…
Spirit photography began in the late 19th century, around the time that the spiritualism movement was gaining traction across Europe and the United States. The photographers who practiced it claimed that they could capture images of portrait subjects and th…
As the consequences of the Great Depression, unemployment, poverty, and the effects of the Dust Bowl ravaged the country in the 1930s, government programs such as the Farm Security Administration (FSA) were established. American photographers were employed to …
During World War II, America’s railroads were an important part of the war effort and it’s estimated that from 1941 to 1945 trains transported close to 44 million American troops. Between the war years of 1942 and 1944, trains carried 98 percent of mili…
At the dawn of the 20th century, automobiles were an infant technology with none of the infrastructure we take for granted today: road maps, traffic signals, pavement, gas stations, fast food, parking lots, expressways, or motels. Most people in the wor…
These photographs, taken by the Lomen family, capture the indigenous Yupik Eskimo and the prospectors of the Gold Rush in Alaska during the early decades of the 20th century. The term "Eskimo" is used in Alaska to refer to arctic Alaskans including Inup…
Fitness, as we know it today, may seem to be a relatively modern invention, but physical exercise obviously goes back much further than that. Starting from the early 20th century, people used elaborate contraptions, painful machinery, bizarre devices, a…
Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States seemed to be just about the safest place in the world to live. The nation hadn’t been attacked on its own soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor six decades before. War seemed like something t…
The Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw (or Kwakiutl) are Pacific Northwest Coast Indigenous people. Most live in British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the adjoining mainland, and on islands around Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait. Originally made up…
A publicity stunt dreamed up by newspapermen, the first Tour de France saw a rag-tag bunch of cyclists waved off from outside a bar on the outskirts of Paris in 1903. Rapidly the Tour expanded into a race will legendary champions, a set of iconic leader…
In the early years of the 20th century, a number of circuses toured Northern Ireland providing entertainment, tricks, and a lot of excitement for the crowds. Though the dim lighting condition inside the circus’ tent prevented images from being made of t…
Antonio Gaudí started work designing a building in 1883 he originally termed the “church of the poor”. After disagreements between the founding association and the original architect, Gaudí was assigned to lead the project in 1884, and thus produced an ent…
Umbrella Rock on top of Lookout Mountain was one of the more iconic tourist spots from the 1880s through the 1940s. These images, assembled by Chattanooga’s local historical organization Picnooga, capture almost 60 years of photo opportunities on Umbrel…
Dorothy Counts made national news in September 1957, when at the age of 15, she became one of the first and, at the time, the only black student to enroll in the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (North Carolina). This came nearl…
Stunt shows featuring diving horses began in the 1880s and were a wildly popular attraction for decades, despite the obvious cruelty to the animals and the danger it posed, ironically, it would seem, more for the riders than the horses' theme. According…
When World War II ended in 1945, the industrial war machine did not stop overnight. Estimates of the value of the probable surpluses have ranged from a low of $25 billion to a high of $150 billion. The surpluses included almost every conceivable article…
On the last two days in April 1975, Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of Vietnam, ended a twenty-year agony for the United States. A trial for America was done. The last 45 days of her presence in South Vietnam may seem almost insignificant compared t…
The Victorian Era may not have been the start of the institutionalization of patients with mental health problems, but it was certainly a period when the number of asylums and patients treated within them, exploded. Whether this rise was mainly due to a…
Local historians routinely disagree on how many Cliff Houses have been built in the wind-beaten northwestern edge of San Francisco. Three is the most common answer, some argue that four is correct, and even fice has its partisans. But everyone does agre…