Before the they walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, the Apollo program astronauts trained in Flagstaff, a small city nestled in a forest of ponderosa pines at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, Arizona’s tallest mountains. In fact, all 24 astronauts who…
Originally the idea for a flight expedition over Mount Everest was proposed in 1918 by a British mountaineering physiologist, Alexander Kellas in his journal “The Possibility of Aerial Reconnaissance in the Himalaya.” As a skilled mountaineer and expert…
When the Germans and their allies invaded Southeastern Europe, a large number of civilians (over 40,000) escaped from their homelands. Many fled all the way across the Mediterranean, hopping from island to island in search of shelter and safety. The British…
In the 1950s, the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) – that part of Germany which had been the Soviet Occupation Zone in the post World War Two division of Germany – was threatening to bleed dry, as one in six people fled, usually in search of work und…
A Spanish engineer and aeronautical pioneer, Juan de la Cierva, developed the original “autogiro”. Its name was derived from the self stabilization accomplished by a four-bladed horizontal screw turned by wind produced in the sky. In addition to the nam…
By the time the sun rose in New York City on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first and second waves of American troops had come ashore under heavy German fire on the beaches of Normandy. Working under the command of General Eisenhower, an armada of 5,0…
The 1889 World Fair in Paris was symbolically important, since the year 1889 marked the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, and the Fair was announced as a celebration of the event. It attracted more than thirty-two million visitors. The most f…
After centuries of isolation and several unsuccessful attempts by the Western nations at opening Japan to international relations and trade, the United States Navy sent Commodore C. Perry in 1853 with a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the Emperor…
The Natick Soldier Systems Center (NSSC) is responsible for the technology, research, development, engineering, fielding, and sustainment of U.S. military's food, clothing, shelters, airdrop systems, and Soldier support items. Construction on the resear…
This card was used by police in the Soviet Union to identify different nationalities by facial phenotypes. Originally it was developed by a group of Soviet criminologists based on various mugshot collections. The exact date is unknown, however, based on fe…
In 1942, shortly after the US entry into the war, the Navy established a special group called the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit to document and publicize its aviation activities. The main purpose of this photographic unit was to promote the recruitme…
Many Americans first encountered the phrase “the American Way” on huge billboards that by 1938 had sprouted in hundreds of U.S. cities and towns. Shopping for groceries, heading to work, or entering an empty stretch of highway, they were suddenly confro…
These are rarely seen color pictures from the Second World War featured in the book “The Second World War in Colour” by the Imperial War Museum. Many are being published for the first time and shed light behind the scenes of the conflict. Color film was…
We can only imagine the horrors seen and shared between the four of these men. They all have the stare and you can see it gradually getting worse in their eyes as they get older. Approximately 80 years of wars in one picture, all of them went to war but ex…
There are only two known photos in existence taken inside the US Supreme Court while in session. The Supreme Court of the United States does not allow cameras in the courtroom when the court is in session, a policy which is the subject of much debate. Alth…
James Gillingham lived in Chard, England, where he had a small shoe-making business called “Golden Boot”. His career in prosthetics began in 1865 when he produced an artificial arm for a local cannoneer who had been injured in an accident but was given up …
The famous “whipped slave” photograph pictures the runaway slave Gordon exposing his severely whipped back to the camera of two itinerant photographers, William D. McPherson and his partner, Mr. Oliver. Gordon had received a severe whipping for undisclosed…
The thylacine, most commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger because of its striped lower back or the Tasmanian wolf because of its canid-like characteristics, was one of the largest carnivorous marsupials. The thylacine was relatively shy and nocturnal, w…
These amazing postcards depict the Princely County of Tyrol, an mountainous region of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The pictures were created using the Photochrom process, a revolutionary procedure that consists of producing ink-based images through the dir…
Observation was an incredibly important role for aerial warfare in World War I. All major combatants used observation balloons to observe their enemies’ trench lines and troop movements. These hovering mammoths were used for directing artillery, which r…