In the early 1910s, photographer Harry Pollard traveled around Canada to take a series of photographs of the natives, who are one of the first people who settled in Western Canada and Alberta. These photographs capture, among others, people from Tsuu T’…
These rare historical photographs were taken from 1873 to 1877 and are part of Street Life in London, a book that was one of the first examples of social documentary photography. The authors, photographer John Thomson and journalist Adolphe Smith, aimed…
These mugshots of Edwardian Britain depict minors arrested for petty crimes and are part of a wide photographic collection of Tyne Wear Archives. The age of the subjects starts from 12 years old to 21 which was the legal age of adulthood. These minors w…
By the outbreak of the Second World War, Poland’s Military Aviation, quite commonly and incorrectly called the Polish Air Force, was inferior in every aspect. From having the world’s first all-metal built and fastest fighter plane in the mid-1930s to fl…
The story behind the famous picture of two Armenian women posing with their rifles is complicated and still mysterious. The picture was taken in 1895, during the Hamidians massacres where thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were assassinated. …
Sami, the chimpanzee of Belgrade Zoo, became a media sensation when he managed to escape twice in February 1988. He had a thoughtful walk around Central Belgrade before being captured after long “negotiations” with the zoo director, Vuk Bojović. Sami wa…
By the late eighteenth century, Egypt had been reduced to nothing more than an impoverished and neglected corner of the Ottoman Empire, crippled by endless power struggles among its Mamluk leadership. Then in 1798, Napoleon arrived at the head of a Fren…
In this article, we’ve collected a few rare photographs from the 1870s taken by Shinichi Suzuki (1835-1918) who photographed Japan for a foreign newsmagazine called The Far East. After his lumber family business was destroyed by a tsunami in 1854, Suzuk…
For thousands of years, warships were built of wood and powered by human muscles and the wind. Gunpowder carved the first niche for chemical energy and machine-made materials, but successfully mounting and using cannons aboard ships still required vast amo…
During the Second World War, the United States government encouraged the American people to participate in scrap drives, a way for everyone to contribute to the war effort. By recycling unused or unwanted metal for example, the government could build ships…
These amazing color photos of Belfast capture the shipyards, the lively streets, the everyday life, the fashion, and document a city worlds away from the one we know today. The pictures were taken by documentary and Press photographer, Bert Hardy, who's be…
Winter brings a unique set of risks and challenges for firefighters ranging from mild inconvenience to extreme danger. When temperatures reach below zero degrees, the battle is against the elements and the flames. Everything moves slower in extreme cold…
Pennsylvania’s rich coal mining history dates back centuries to the late 1700s and boomed between 1870 and 1930. The pictures collected in this article were taken by John Collier, an Office of War Information photographer, and capture the gritty life of min…
On a lazy Sunday afternoon in September 1942, photographer Marjory Collins wandered around New York City’s Central Park capturing a series of incredible images. The amazing and quasi-candid shots show families, friends, kids, lovers, and sailors enjoying a sun…
These mugshots of Auschwitz guards were published by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance and you can see the evils that run the deadliest concentration camp of the Second World War. The full database contains over 25,000 records that cover person…
These images of Greenland, taken by the Danish physician and photographer Krabbe, focus on the way of life and the inhabitants (Danish Greenlanders and indigenous Greenlandic Inuit people) of this isolated Arctic area. The homes and boats of the Greenlande…
Fidel Castro was an accomplished high-school athlete who was named Havana’s outstanding schoolboy sportsman in 1943–44. He excelled in track and field (in the high jump and middle-distance running), baseball, basketball (playing for the University of Havan…
The flight attendant occupation took permanent shape in the 1930s as “women’s work,” that is, work not only predominately performed by women but also defined as embodying white, middle-class ideals of femininity. As the nascent commercial aviation indus…
The history of Titanic, of the White Star Line, is one of the most tragically short stories ever. The world had waited expectantly for its launching and again for its sailing; had read accounts of its tremendous size and its unexampled completeness and …
In the mid 19 century, a variety of men had staged pictures of themselves taken at work, from artisans and clowns to engineers and preachers; they chose to have their lives represented by the day-to-day activities of their occupations. Subjects indicate…