In the spring of 1891, the 23-year-old Russian prince Nicholas went to Far Eastern Russia for ceremonies in Vladivostok marking the start of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. On his way (by sea) he made an official visit to Japan. The Rus…
Hoover Dam is as tall as a 60-story building. It was the highest dam in the world when it was completed in 1935. Its base is as thick as two football fields. Each spillway, designed to let floodwaters pass without harming the dam itself, can handle the …
A Japanese plane caught squarely by antiaircraft fire leaves a trail of smoke and flame as it falls toward the ocean. The pilot might have already been dead by the time the bomber was going down; getting knocked out would probably be a small mercy compared…
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. It was fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire and it took place between 1 July and 18 November 1…
Boris Yeltsin, who became president of Russia in 1991, was one of the most complex political leaders of his time. A longtime Communist Party leader, he was an important leader in the reform (social improvement) movements of the late 1980s and 1990s. Yel…
Women bootleggers enjoyed many advantages over men. Many states had laws specifically prohibiting women from being searched. Sometimes they would hide flasks, even cases, on their persons and taunt male police officers. “A painted-up doll was sitting in…
This photograph shows soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900, left-to-right: Britain, United States, Australia, British India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan. This was a British propaganda photo where the British requested the height…
On 2 October 1940, Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District in the occupied General Government of Poland, signed the order to officially create a Jewish district (ghetto) in Warsaw. It was to become the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. All…
The Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection features color photographic surveys of the vast Russian Empire made between ca. 1905 and 1915. In those years, photographer Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian E…
This photo was taken in July 1913 by French photographer Stéphane Passet who was hired by Albert Kahn. Albert Kahn was a millionaire banker who pioneered color photography using the process invented by the Lumière brothers. During his trip through exoti…
For those who have visited London and wondered how they know their double-decker buses won’t fall over, this is apparently how they find out. Per police regulation, employees of the London General Omnibus Company put their 60-person bus to a “tilt test”…
When the modern Olympics began in 1896, the initiators and organizers were looking for a great popularizing event, recalling the ancient glory of Greece. The idea of a marathon race was conceived by Michel Bréal based on the legend of Pheidippides. This…
On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (later known as Joseph Stalin) was born. The son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman, Joseph was a frail child. A…
On November 24, 1963, two days after Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press…
The soldiers in the picture were executed after a military trial found them in violation of the Hague convention concerning land warfare, article 23: "It's especially forbidden [...], to make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag or of the …
The Reichstag had not been in use since when it burned in February 1933 and its interior resembled a rubble heap more than a government building. During the 12 years of National Socialist rule, it was not used for parliamentary sessions. Instead, the fe…
Dorothea Lange took this photograph in 1936, while employed by the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) program, formed during the Great Depression to raise awareness of and provide aid to impoverished farmers. In Nipomo, California, Lan…
Manfred von Richthofen earned widespread fame as a World War I ace fighter pilot. Originally a cavalryman, Richthofen transferred to the Air Service in 1915, becoming one of the first members of Jasta 2 in 1916. He quickly distinguished himself as a fig…
After the Polish-Lithuanian insurrection of 1863, the Russian Imperial government intensified its efforts to Russify the Lithuanian population and alienate it from its historic roots, including the Roman Catholic faith, which had become widespread during t…
The 1989 Hillsborough disaster was an incident that occurred during the FA Cup semi-final match on 15 April 1989 at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England. The crush resulted in the deaths of 96 people and injuries to 766 others. The victims suf…