On 24 July 1967, during a state visit to Expo '67, General Charles de Gaulle, president of France and a hero of the 20th century, proclaimed from the balcony of Montréal's City Hall a sentence that would change the history of Canada: “Vive le Québec libre”…
The old and the new in one picture. You can really see the direction warfare was going; only they didn't know it yet. For the first few months in the war, the French Cuirassiers still wore breastplates and plumed helmets. Soldiers being stuck in the old wa…
A death mask is a mold taken from a person's face after they have died. Death masks may be mementos of the dead or be used for the creation of portraits. Wounded in France three months before his death, Rommel’s death mask shows evidence of the injuries, p…
This picture might look like marketing material based on the way she's holding the gun, but that’s a common shotgun technique. In the 1970s this was considered the proper way to shoot a shotgun at close range. As we can see in the picture, the stock goe…
Rockefeller, then vice-president of the United States, was on a campaign swing through upstate New York on Sept. 16, 1976, with Sen. Bob Dole, who had been selected to be President Gerald Ford's running mate for the 1976 election. When someone in a grou…
The Russian word used in the original title, "физкультурники", is now usually translated as "gym teachers", but at the moment of the parades meant "sportsmen/bodybuilders or athletes". This is a legacy of Stalin era propaganda parades to promote physica…
After four years of blackout, all the lights in Times Square went on as Mayor LaGuardia announced the Japanese surrender. In a celebration mirrored around the world, the New Yorkers took to the Square to celebrate a new era of peace, and hope, the image…
On April 27, 1926, the Cañon City Daily Record ran a surprising bulletin on its front page. Right under a notice that the local junior high school was putting together a variety show, the local newspaper of the small central Colorado town printed the headl…
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian peasant, mystical faith healer, and trusted friend of the family of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. He became an influential figure in Saint Petersburg, especially after August 1915, when Nicholas took comman…
An Australian soldier, George "Dick" Whittington, is aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, at the Battle of Buna-Gona. Whittington died in February 1943 from the effects of bush typhus, this little-known killer of many Allied and Japanese soldiers in th…
On 8 March 1979, more than 100,000 women gathered on the streets of the Iranian capital to protest against the new Islamic government’s compulsory hijab ruling, which meant that women would henceforth be required to wear a headscarf when away from home. …
This photograph was taken by George Rodger of No. 1 Section Army Film & Photographic Unit; the soldier posing was most likely his driver. Many times this picture is labeled as a photo of a British grave and the wreckage of a British plane. At first …
Open air schools were purpose-built educational institutions for children, that were designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis that occurred in the period leading up to the Second World War. The schools were built on the concept…
The photo depicts a South Vietnamese mother fleeing through a river. She and her four children were forced to leave their village, Qui Nhon, near Quinbonso. The U.S. Air Force had asked all inhabitants to evacuate the village because the Vietcong had been …
Helga was the oldest of Goebbels' six children and notably his favorite. Goebbels was proud of his eldest daughter and would go straight to her cot as soon as he returned from his office, to take her on his lap. Helga was a "daddy's girl" who preferred …
The B-17s (Boeing Flying Fortress) are members of the 384th Bombardment Group ("Triangle P"). Considering the date, on missions like this, the B-17s would normally be assisted by an aircraft with a nose-mounted version of the British H2S or H2X radar, capa…
Built as the birthday present to Stalin on his seventieth birthday (December 21st, 1949), the Stalin Monument in Budapest has become the iconic scene of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956. The monument was erected on the edge of Városliget, the city park of…
By the end of his brilliant and tortured life, the famous physicist, engineer, and inventor Nikola Tesla was penniless and living in a small New York City hotel room. He had become a vegetarian at that point in his life and lived on only milk, bread, ho…
Those who witnessed the scene were awe-struck: a politician actually displayed his emotions by confessing to guilt and begging for forgiveness. With his head bowed low, he froze in this position for twenty or thirty seconds. "I have been often asked what t…
A British splatter mask worn by a French tank gunner. It was designed to help protect the crewmember's face from shrapnel when looking through the view ports. The eye covers were metal, the mask was leather and there was a chainmail skirt to cover the m…