The Italian Campaign of World War II was the name of the Allied operations in and around Italy from 1943 to the end of the war. Following victory in the North African Campaign, there was disagreement among the Allies on the next step they should take. The …
On March 27, 1964, at 5:36 PM, a megathrust earthquake occurred in the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. The epicenter was about 10 km east of the mouth of College Fiord, approximately 90 km west of Valdez and 120 km east of Anchorage. Lasting four mi…
Edwardian fashion refers to the clothing that was in style between the late 1890s and 1914 or the beginning of the Great War. Also called La Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Era), and the Gilded Age, this was a time when women's fashions took on a new opulence …
The World Health Organization has had an official and recommended method of hand-washing since 2009. It’s an 11-step process that, all done properly, takes 42.5 seconds. The WHO is following in an age-old practice — it was a doctor from Hungary, Ignaz Semm…
Decades after her death, Eva Braun, the long-time mistress of Adolf Hitler, remains a mysterious and notorious figure. This is the photographic life story of a woman who met Hitler as a teenager and, in the last days of the war, became the Führer’s wife—on…
In 1986, charity organization United Way of Cleveland thought they had the perfect idea to generate a little publicity and create a beautiful spectacle in the process: an attempt to set a new world record for simultaneously released balloons. With a huge c…
In 1969, more than 400,000 people descended on Bethel, New York, headed to a dairy farm owned by Max and Miriam Yasgur, where the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was being held. The epic event became synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 1960s.…
In 1941, LIFE magazine decided to document the lives of one of the biggest single demographics in the U.S.: the 30 million housewives who did most of the washing, made beds, cooked meals and nursed almost all the babies of the nation, with little help, no …
Adolf Eichmann inspired Hannah Arendt's famous phrase ‘the banality of evil’. A career civil servant in Nazi Germany, he was put in charge of administering the ‘Final Solution’ and organised the seizure of Jews from all over Europe and their transportation…
Following World War II, pressures to recognize, challenge, and change inequalities for minorities grew. One of the most notable challenges to the status quo was the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas which questi…
The Panama Canal idea goes back to the 16th century. After understanding the riches of Peru, Ecuador, and Asia, and evaluating the time it took the gold to reach the ports of Spain, it was suggested in 1524 to Charles V, that by cutting out a piece of land…
By the 1970s teenage pregnancies were recognized as a problem worldwide. The continuing apprehension about teenage pregnancy was based on the profound impact that teenage pregnancy could have on the lives of the girls and their children. Demographic studie…
The history of proto mobile phones goes back to 1908 when a US Patent was issued in Kentucky for a wireless telephone. Mobile phones were invented as early as the 1940s when engineers working at AT&T developed cells for mobile phone base stations. The …
The Soviet sniper girl Kyra PetrovskayaKyra was born in 1918 on the coast of the Black Sea in the Crimea. Some sources say that her original name was "Cyrus." Her father was a decorated pilot in the Imperial Russian air force, receiving the Order (Cross) o…
The largest wooden airplane ever constructed, and flown only one time, the H-4 Hercules (nicknamed Spruce Goose) represents one of humanity's greatest attempts to conquer the skies. It was born out of a need to move troops and material across the Atlantic …
Stalin didn’t have Photoshop, but that didn’t keep him from wiping the traces of his enemies from the history books. Using tools that now seem impossibly primitive, Soviet proto-Photoshoppers made "once-famous personalities vanish" and crafted photographs …
In 1964, the Beatles achieved an unprecedented level of success both in their home country of Britain and in the United States. They amassed crowds of adoring fans that followed them wherever they went, a phenomenon often referred to as “Beatlemania.” On F…
Elvis Presley, the “undisputed King of Rock and Roll”, began his career in 1954 and became a national sensation in 1956 with the release of “Heartbreak Hotel.” He went on to captivate audiences with his unique musical style, provocative hip gyrations and e…
There was nothing more terrifying in the trenches than the call of a gas attack — “Gas! Gas!”. This warning cry sent men scrambling for their masks as the poisonous fog enveloped them. Soldiers succumbed to the strangling effects of chlorine, phosgene and …
As a sequel to the successful 1939 New York World’s Fair, the second World’s Fair opened on April 22, 1964, and its theme was “Peace Through Understanding”. 650 acres (210 ha) of pavilions, public spaces and displays from exhibitors around the world. Count…