Private Heath Matthews’ face is covered in blood as he awaits medical attention for his superficial lacerations. The blood, combined with the weary and astonished expression on the young soldier’s face, effectively portrays the terror of war. The pictur…
Stanley Forman was early for his shift at the Herald American on April 5th, 1976 and he decided to head out to an anti-busing demonstration at Boston City Hall that another journalist was already covering. It was already two years into a desegregated sc…
Although the photo was probably staged, it does show anthropologist Frances Densmore sitting with Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot Indian tribe, while he interprets a song in Plains Indian sign language. The photo was taken for the Bureau of American Ethnol…
During the Second World War, Balham underground station was one of many deep tube stations designated for use as a civilian air raid shelter. At 20:02 on 14 October 1940, a 1400 kg semi-armor piercing fragmentation bomb fell on the road above the northe…
Carl Akeley, considered the father of modern taxidermy, was not only a taxidermist but also a naturalist, sculptor, writer, and inventor. Best known for the Hall of African Mammals that bears his name at the American Museum of Natural History in New Yor…
A historical demonstration in 1887 showing the weight of the central span of a bridge being transmitted to the banks through diamond-shaped supports. The central "weight" is Kaichi Watanabe, one of the first Japanese engineers who came to study in the U…
Argentina's 2-1 victory over England in front of 115,000 fans on June 22, 1986, is remembered entirely for the two moments from Maradona which would ultimately settle a contest simmering with political overtones. Four years earlier, Britain and Argentin…
Dressed in what would look to us like very conservative swimwear today, the women were being arrested for defying a ban on wearing their ‘brief swimsuits’ in public. In the early 1900s, modesty laws were very strict and required most women to wear long …
World War I caused the death of millions of combatants and civilians, while countless soldiers suffered from injury and disfigurement. Perhaps the most disheartening were facial injuries, as soldiers had to not only deal with the physical loss, but also…
“Wait for Me, Daddy” is an iconic photo taken by Claude P. Dettloff on October 1, 1940, of The British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles) marching down Eighth Street at the Columbia Street intersection, New Westminster, Canada. Pictured …
John Bayard Britton was an American physician who was murdered in Pensacola, Florida, by anti-abortion extremist Paul Jennings Hill. Britton's death was the second assassination of a Pensacola abortion provider in under a year and a half; he had replaced D…
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…
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”…
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 com…
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…
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. …
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…
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…
The SS Morro Castle, named after a fortress that guards Havana Bay, was a luxury cruise ship of the 1930s that was built for the Ward Line for runs between New York City and Havana. On the morning of September 8, 1934, en route from Havana to New York, …