These are the offices of the Central Social Institution of Prague (Czechoslovakia back then) in 1937 and it contained the largest vertical letter file cabinets in the world. The office consists of cabinets arranged from floor to ceiling tiers covering over …
When Citroën Karin was first presented at the Paris Motor Show in 1980, it couldn’t help but attract the astonished gaze of visitors. It was quite unusual to see a futuristic sci-fi pyramid in a motor show, let alone a pyramid on four wheels. Its name begin…
These stunning color postcards of Tunisia show its vibrant streets, spectacular architecture, and the everyday life of Tunisian people. Produced in 1899, the postcards were printed using the popular Photochrom technique invented by a Swiss printer in th…
These stunning photographs of car wrecks in the 1930s were captured by Leslie Jones, a famous photographer who worked for the Boston Herald-Traveler from 1917 to 1956. Jones documented daily life in Boston and surrounding areas and some 40,000 of his negati…
A NASA tech briefing "Using Spider-Web Patterns To Determine Toxicity" was published in April 1995. The work was done by researchers at Marshall Space Flight Center to see how various substances — including caffeine — affect spider web patterns. Accordi…
In addition to developing the telephone, the Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell did extensive research in aerodynamics. This series of photographs depict Bell and his colleagues demonstrating and testing out a number of different kite designs,…
Ralph Madsen, known as the Tallest Texan Cowboy, was above 7 feet 6 inches (2.28 meters) tall and weighed 228 pounds (104 kg). He was born Ralph Earl Madsen on April 19, 1897, in Norfolk, Nebraska, and was not from Texas as his nicknames and stories sug…
These stunning photographs show how New York City looked like in the 1880s and 1890s. The images depict the streets of the city that never sleeps, the hustling crowds of Manhattan, swimmers at Coney Island, and people’s everyday life. The photographs, t…
During the 1870s, Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1839–1911) was the leading foreign photographer in Yokohama, a primary Japanese port for trade and tourism. The aristocrat Stillfried was born in Komotau, Austro-Hungary, and, like his father, embarked o…
These color pictures of the vibrant landscapes and towns of Switzerland were created using the Photochrom process, a technique that colorizes monochrome images with precision. While the prints may deceptively look like color photographs, but in fact, ar…
Stonehenge, on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire in southern England, is certainly one of the most well-known and well-studied prehistoric megalithic monuments. Scholars had determined that there was a very long process of construction and use of Stonehe…
Victorians were known for their conservative way of life, but these portraits show that many men of that era were unafraid of showing affection. The provocative black-and-white 19th-century images show men posing in surprisingly intimate embraces. They …
These vintage photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States show teams of horses being used to move entire houses to new locations. With the rapid railway and urban development boom, a lot of people found themselves looking to …
These late-19th and early-20th century photographs show some of the last Maori women to wear the traditional Tā moko face marking before it was outlawed by British colonialists. Ta moko is the name for the permanent body and face marking by Maori, the indi…
This collection of hand-tinted lantern slides depicts popular tourist destinations in Norway around the turn of the 19th century. The collection consists of slides produced by at least two British photographers – professional photographer Samuel J. Beck…
Hooverville was the popular name attributed to shanty towns that sprung up throughout the United States during the Great Depression. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and was …
The rapid rise of automobiles at the turn of the 20th century presented an immediate problem: where to park all these vehicles roaming the streets? The concept for vertical parking garages was and is driven by two factors: a need for parking spaces and …
The crinoline appeared on the fashion scene in the mid-1800s and took its name from the French word crin (“horsehair”), a stiff material made using horsehair — and "linen." A crinoline (hoop) is defined as a framework consisting of round/oval circles (s…
Manzanar, Spanish for “apple orchard,” began soon after 1900 in the dream of a fruit-growing empire and today is a national symbol of America’s decision at the onset of World War II to confine thousands of its citizens of Japanese ancestry behind barbed wi…
France became dominant in the high fashion (couture or haute couture) industry by the end of the 19th century through the establishment of the great couturier houses. The technology started to redefine Western society in many ways and this continued int…