During the late 1970s and early 1980s, New York City’s subway system was one of the most dangerous places a person could be. Lucky for those of us who never had the chance to see it, Swiss photographer Willy Spiller was there, and the dark and atmospher…
In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, Heinz Meixner planned a daring escape from East to West Berlin, all in the name of love. While working in the communist east, he’d met Margarete Thurau and they’d fallen in love. But politics and concrete threaten…
The first "strongwomen" appeared in the 19th century but were almost unheard of until much later. The appearance of strong women became more prevalent in sporting events and was also a common attraction in circuses where they would showcase their superh…
The United States entered World War I in 1917 as an associated power on the allied side of Britain and France. By the time that World War I came around, the United States was a leader in the recently discovered art of movie making and the new profession of…
For centuries, Romani tribes had been subject to antiziganist persecution and humiliation in Europe. They were stigmatized as habitual criminals, social misfits, and vagabonds. After Hitler's rise to power, legislation against the Romani was increasingl…
From 1981 to 1984, the photographer Bud Glick worked for the New York Chinatown History Project (NYCHP) — today the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) — capturing the lives of the neighborhood’s denizens. From intimate portraits of people in their apar…
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, many Americans were distrusting and fearful of Japanese-Americans living in the U.S. The Federal government took the unprecedented step of ordering some 110,000 Japanese aliens and American citiz…
Starting with the Invasion of Sicily in July of 1943, and culminating in the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of Normandy, Allied forces took the fight to the Axis powers in many locations across Western Europe. The first Allied troops landed on the Italian…
Men’s hair in the seventies was a joy to behold. There was a little bit of variation throughout the decade, from long to short, blow-dried and bouffant to spiked and bleached, with “overgrown” being the look that most people associate with the decade. Hairs…
These interesting pictures, taken by photographer Harf Zimmermann, revolve around Hufelandstraße, a bustling neighborhood street in the heart of communist East Germany. The neighborhood was an anomaly in the increasingly drab Soviet-administered city. B…
Life was once simpler. There was only one class for passengers on airline flights. Initially, it was a very ‘adventurous’ class – open cockpits and high rates of fatalities. It then evolved to become comparatively luxurious and ridiculously expensive, e…
On September 1, 1939, the world was shocked as Nazi troops invaded Poland. Tensions soared in Europe, and world leaders recognized that this invasion could be the final straw that would lead to war. German military leaders had begun planning for war with P…
Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe had her fair share of lovers, none of them stuck around long. She was divorced three times before dying of an overdose at age 36 in 1962. Marilyn's first husband was James Dougherty, a Los Angeles police officer. They…
It began with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz as Nazi Germany attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. In January 1933, after a bitter ten-year political struggle, Adolf Hitler came to …
Built in 1874 on the site reserved for an opera house, the Old Cincinnati Library was a thing of wonder. With five levels of cast iron shelving, a fabulous foyer, checkerboard marble floors, and an atrium lit by a skylight ceiling, the place was breatht…
During World War One, large numbers of women were recruited into jobs vacated by men who had gone to fight in the war. New jobs were also created as part of the war effort, for example in munitions factories. The high demand for weapons resulted in the …
Situated halfway between the city of Medellin and Bogota, the Colombian capital, Hacienda Napoles was the vast ranch owned by the drug baron Pablo Escobar. In the early 1980s, after Escobar had become rich but before he had started the campaign of assas…
It’s 1942 and the Germans occupy and dominate the vast majority of Europe. They were there, on the scene, and the local men either were not (dead, in prison camps, in hiding) or were greatly diminished in status. Like soldiers of every army of every per…
In February 1942, in the midst of World War II, the Japanese fleet completely wrecked a combined Dutch-American-Australian-British fleet at the Battle of the Java Sea. This defeat led to the Japanese occupation of the entire Netherlands East Indies. Onl…
In the early 1900s, there wasn’t really such a thing as bodybuilding, there were people who had huge muscles, but they concentrated on traditional strongmen routines. Lifting large boulders, performing impressive feats of strength, and generally enterta…