Mug shot photography revolutionized crime investigations and enabled the police to keep visual records of the arrested criminals. Beginning in the mid-1800s, police photographed the faces of known criminals. Called "mug shots" (after the British slang w…
The Sámi form an indigenous ethnic group that settled in wide areas of Norway, Sweden, northern Finland, and on the Kola peninsula in Russia. It is difficult to establish their number, because ethnic definitions may vary, and the choice of identifying o…
These vintage photographs come from an untitled album from the 1890s which records various self-defense hand-to-hand maneuvers. The two finely dressed gentlemen demonstrate a variety of defensive moves that involve chokeholds, body slams, kicks, chops, and …
Starting from the 1890s, the famous Dutch impressionist painter George Hendrik Breitner (1857 – 1923) used his camera to record the everyday life in the streets of Amsterdam. He found photographs to be a useful tool for capturing fleeting conditions of …
Photographer Nils Olsson Reppen was born in 1856 on the farm Reppen in Sogndal in western Norway. In 1882, he immigrated to America and worked as a photographer in Browns Valley and Morris in Minnesota. He returned to Norway in the late 1890s and contin…
During the first half of the twentieth century, the original Pennsylvania Station was one of New York City’s grandest landmarks, a palace in the middle of Manhattan. These photographs take readers back in time to the height of Penn Station’s glory. From con…
When the Irish talk about the “Land War,” they have in mind either three phases of anti-landlord agitation in the late nineteenth century, or, more narrowly, the first of these phases, which lasted from 1879 until 1882. The movement emerged during a sev…
These stunning photographs show how New York City looked like in the 1880s and 1890s. The images depict the streets of the city that never sleeps, the hustling crowds of Manhattan, swimmers at Coney Island, and people’s everyday life. The photographs, t…
These late-19th and early-20th century photographs show some of the last Maori women to wear the traditional Tā moko face marking before it was outlawed by British colonialists. Ta moko is the name for the permanent body and face marking by Maori, the indi…
There has always been great interest in domesticating and training zebras as riding and harnessing animals. In the 1760s, French naturalist Buffon believed that zebras could replace horses and there were rumors in Paris that the Dutch had already trained a…
Before anyone ever heard the word “cowgirl,” there were women who ventured west. Most traveled with their families on covered wagons, beginning in the 1840s. They moved from crowded eastern cities to settle in western states such as Kansas, Nebraska, Co…
The process that led up to the national park idea is complex. From arts and literature came the Romantic movement, which encouraged the experience of the mountains and wilderness. Authors like Henry Davia Thoreau and Washington Irving exhorted Americans…
These mugshots of Edwardian Britain depict minors arrested for petty crimes and are part of a wide photographic collection of Tyne Wear Archives. The age of the subjects starts from 12 years old to 21 which was the legal age of adulthood. These minors w…
The story behind the famous picture of two Armenian women posing with their rifles is complicated and still mysterious. The picture was taken in 1895, during the Hamidians massacres where thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were assassinated. …
These rare photographs from the National Library of Ireland capture gorgeous portraits of the people of old Ireland in magnificent detail. The last decades of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th were a period of colossal change that ended up…
These photographs of Belle Époque Venice were processed and colored using the Photochrom process. The Library of Congress' page on the photochrom process explains it: "Photochrom prints are ink-based images produced through 'the direct photographic transfe…
Early electric cars found a lucrative market for driving around cities. Rechargeable batteries that provided a viable means for storing electricity on board a vehicle did not come into being until 1859, with the invention of the lead–acid battery by French…
By the 1890s postcards were widely available throughout continental Europe. The postcards appealed to tourists looking for a souvenir of their travels abroad. Although travel was still largely limited to elites, it was becoming more accessible to the middl…
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 …
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 …