The knocker-upper profession started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable. A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time. They would be paid a few pen…
TIME magazine decided to create a list of the 100 most influential pictures ever taken. They teamed up with curators, historians, photo editors, and famous photographers around the world for this task. "No formula makes for iconic photos," the editors said. …
Since the early 1900s Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs, has been a major source of technological experimentation and change. Bell Labs has sponsored research far beyond the limits of its original focus, the telephone. From telephones to radar to…
The first therapeutic uses of light (so-called light therapy) date back to the end of the twentieth century, when a Danish researcher, Niels Ryberg Finsen, showed that light stimulates the immune defenses and enables the fight against infections. The tr…
Helene Mayer, remains one of the Olympics’ great mysteries. She was, by definition of German law at the time, part-Jewish, which had cost her most of her citizenship rights. Her country’s press was forbidden to mention her name. Once she had been one of…
Born in 1907, Frida Kahlo lived for just 47 years. Andre Breton summed up Kahlo as “a ribbon around a bomb.” Here are some facts about the woman remembered as one of Mexico’s greatest artists. Kahlo lived most of her life in pain, the effect of contract…
During the Second World War, the Soviet Union used more women in combat than any other country. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet women sprang to join the war effort, enlisting as nurses, clerks, cooks, manufacturing etc. Among them were hundreds of remarkab…
Cuba's reputation as an exotic and permissive playground came to light in the 1920s, when the country became a favorite destination for robber barons and bohemians. Hotels, restaurants, night clubs, golf clubs and casinos sprung up in Havana catering to…
In the 1920s and 1930s, sheep were routinely introduced into London parks to keep the grass under control and reduce mowing costs. Shepherds competed for the privilege of grazing their flocks on Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Clapham Common, and other p…
In jails and prisons around the world, tattoos can become a significant part of an inmate's uniform, not only marking the crime they're in for but also serving as a way to communicate with others. Arkady Bronnikov, regarded as Russia's leading expert on…
At the beginning of the 20th century, the shipping route across the Atlantic was extremely popular, driven by waves of European emigrants from all parts of Europe to the United States. Travel on these liners was not a recreational cruise but merely a me…
A lone African-American boy, left foreground, stands in a sparse crowd that turned out to hear Dr. Lycurgus Spinks, imperial emperor of one of the several Ku Klux Klan groups active in the South, speak to 56 members of his Invisible Empire, Jackson, Miss. …
In 1908, the National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine, a New York sociologist, and photographer, to document the exploitative working conditions of child laborers in dozens of occupations, from mining and manufacturing to farming and newspaper selli…
Jean-Bédel Bokassa was a military officer and the head of state of the Central African Republic from his coup d'état on 1 January 1966. But being President wasn’t enough so in 1976 he proclaimed himself emperor of the nation, which was renamed the Central …
The bookmobile was a traveling library often used to provide books to villages and city suburbs that had no library buildings. It went from a simple horse-drawn cart in the 19th century to large customized vehicles that became part of American culture a…
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…
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…
In 1920, a group of revolutionary socialists attended a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel in London. The men and women were members of various political groups including the British Socialist Party (BSP), the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), Prohibition and …
The history of medicine is filled with wild stories of bizarre treatments methods and medical procedures that aimed to make people feel better. Some of the stranger treatments of old-time medicine would turn out to be useful; while cautery—heating an ir…
The history of airships begins, like the history of hot air balloons, in France. After the invention of the hot air balloon in 1783, a French officer named Meusnier envisioned an airship that utilized the design of the hot air balloon but was able to be…