Shortly after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, he visited the United States for two weeks, invited by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The trip had all the features of a diplomatic tour— he met American officials, appeared on Meet the …
The name for the bikini design was coined in 1946 by French engineer Louis Réard, the designer of the bikini. He named the swimsuit after Bikini Atoll, where testing on the atomic bomb was taking place. Fashion designer Jacques Heim, also from France, r…
Chased by youth armed with clubs, this woman is fleeing from a "death dealer" whose left leg can be seen at the left-hand edge of the photograph. The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), per…
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…
The photograph was taken by Alice Seeley Harris, the man's name is Nsala. Here is part of her account (from the book “Don’t Call Me Lady: The Journey of Lady Alice Seeley Harris”): He hadn't made his rubber quota for the day so the Belgian-appointed o…
The assassination of Alexander, first King of Yugoslavians, by Vlado Chernozemski, an experienced marksman in the employ of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) would have been forgotten had it not been for the multitudes of still and …
In the wake of JFK’s assassination, people around the world mourned and tried to come to terms with John F. Kennedy’s death. Many found solace in the stoic Kennedy clan. Led by the dignified and unbreakable Jackie Kennedy following the family adage of “…
For six months in the summer and fall of 1969, Niagara’s American Falls were “de-watered”, as the Army Corps of Engineers conducted a geological survey of the falls’ rock face, concerned that it was becoming destabilized by erosion. These stark images r…
Before the war Argentina hosted a strong, very-well-organized pro-Nazi element that was controlled by the German ambassador. In the spring of 1938, some 20,000 Nazi supporters attended a "Day of Unity" rally held at the Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires…
The practice of reading aloud while others listen intently as they engage in manual labor has a long and distinguished tradition throughout the Caribbean in the practice of cigar manufacture. Because the job of rolling cigar after cigar could become mon…
Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania for 21 years, earning a reputation as a brutal dictator. During his reign, he developed the largest network of spies in Eastern Europe, silenced his opposition with a secret police force known as the Securitate, and eventual…
A picture of the fountain taken by Emmanuil Yevzerikhin on August 23, 1942, conveyed the devastation of the Battle of Stalingrad by juxtaposing a pastoral scene of children dancing around a playful crocodile and the city's bombed-out, burning buildings in …
This picture is taken in the early 1900s at the Wyndham prison. Wyndham is the oldest and northernmost town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It was established in 1886 as a result of a gold rush at Halls Creek. However, the circumstances an…
The Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings were one of the worst IRA atrocities on the British mainland, killing 11 soldiers and seven horses and leaving dozens injured. The bombs were detonated just a couple of hours apart on July 20, 1982, and timed to …
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to ever walk on the moon, starting a new era on the space exploration. We’re often subjected to the standard shots taken by Buzz Aldrin of the grey, rocky surface with a few faceless spacemen st…
While part of every candidate's retinue, security was simply not the pressing public concern in 1960 that it would suddenly and necessarily become within a few short years. Here, seemingly alone in a crowd in Logan County, West Virginia, JFK speechifies…
In the first decades of the 20th century, the Italian Cavalry School at Tor di Quinto near Rome was - along with the French Cavalry School at Saumur - the leading institution for horsemanship in the world. Tor di Quinto was probably the foremost academy fo…
The photo was taken by the Irish photographer Colman Doyle. The original caption: "A woman IRA volunteer on active service in West Belfast with an AR18 assault rifle”. The IRA regularly conducted “show of arms” displays, showing off their modern and numero…
The Trooper is black. Standing in front of him and touching his shield is a curious little boy dressed in a KKK hood and robe. In this picture, innocence is mixed with hate, the irony of a black man protecting the right of white people to assemble in pr…
The photo was taken at the launch of a German army vessel in 1936, during a ceremony that was attended by Adolf Hitler himself. Within the picture, a lone man stood with arms crossed as hundreds of men and women around him held up their arms in salute a…