The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1886 marked the beginning of the lumber trade in British Columbia, it made possible the exploitation of the interior forests, presented the trade with the Prairie market, which was to sustain it until 1913…
On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in what became known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war. Three days later, Hitler’…
As soon as the science of photography was perfected for use by the general public, artists and others began to manipulate the images. Photo manipulation was soon employed in numerous ways, as early photography had several limitations. Correct exposures in …
The knocker-upper profession started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution, when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable. A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time. They would be paid a few pence…
On January 15th, 1919, in what was probably the most bizarre disaster in United States' history, a storage tank burst on Boston's waterfront releasing two million gallons of molasses in a 15 ft-high, 160 ft-wide wave that raced through the city's north end…
Built more than 3,000 years ago, Abu Simbel contains two temples, carved into a mountainside. The larger of the two temples contains four colossal statues of a seated pharaoh Ramesses II (1303-1213 B.C.) at its entrance, each about 69 feet (21 meters) tall…
These shocking rare photographs show how so-called 'human zoos' around the world kept 'primitive natives' in enclosures so Westerners could gawp and jeer at them. The horrifying images, some of which were taken as recently as 1958, show how black and Asian…
Before the advent of AutoCAD and other drafting software, engineering drawings were made on sheets of large paper using drawing boards. Many types of equipment was required to complete a given drawing, such as drawing board, different grade pencils, Eraser…
In the grand scope of the history of medicine, the relationship between doctors and patients has changed quite a bit in recent decades. For a long time, physicians were the authority on health. Patients trusted in their doctors' education and expertise and…
In 1966 Mao Zedong, the Communist leader of China, started a political campaign that became known as the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Mao called on China's youth to help him purge capitalist influences and bourgeois thinking in government, teaching, th…
This is the story of how the famous boxer Muhammad Ali convinced a suicidal young man to come down off the ledge. On January 19, 1981, The Los Angeles Times photographer Boris Yaro heard reports of a suicidal jumper on the radio. His editor wasn’t interest…
The Berlin Wall’s story began in the early hours of August 13th 1961, when the government of East Germany ordered the closure of all borders between East and West Berlin. As the sun rose that morning, Berliners were awoken by the sound of trucks, jackhammers…
Few good things come out of war, and the image of this young couple’s lifeless bodies embracing on the street for days stirs emotions in even the toughest of observers from all sides of the conflict. Slain by snipers' bullets, the childhood sweethearts’ bo…
Prohibition was the attempt to outlaw the production and consumption of alcohol in the United States. The call for prohibition began primarily as a religious movement in the early 19th century – the state of Maine passed the first state prohibition law in …
Ever since the car was invented, man has dreamt of taking it to the skies. The idea of a flying machine that one can drive dates back further to the nineteenth century—the concept was first patented in 1910. Engineers returned to again and again to the con…
The Anglo-French Concorde was co-developed by BAC, a forerunner of BAE Systems, and Aerospatiale, now a part of Airbus, and has a storied history. New technology was required throughout the plane. A distinctive design innovation was the plane’s droop nose,…
TIME magazine decided to create a list of the 100 most influential pictures ever taken. They teamed up with curators, historians, photo editors, and famous photographers around the world for this task. "No formula makes for iconic photos," the editors said. "S…
Since the early 1900s Bell Telephone Laboratories, or Bell Labs, has been a major source of technological experimentation and change. Bell Labs has sponsored research far beyond the limits of its original focus, the telephone. From telephones to radar to c…
The first therapeutic uses of light (so called light therapy) date back to the end of the twentieth century, when a Danish researcher, Niels Ryberg Finsen, showed that light stimulates the immune defenses and enables the fight against infections. The treat…
Before video stores, movies were solely watched in theaters, leaving studios hesitant to embrace video technology and video stores because they feared for losses in revenues. The first VCRs hit the market in 1975, and shortly thereafter the video rental st…