In today's world, taking a photo of a fish you caught might seem like an ordinary occurrence, but it wasn't always that way. Looking back at the early 1900s, when cameras were just becoming more accessible, fishermen took pride in capturing their big catc…
While many people argue that home economics classes are outdated (and patriarchal), the whole point of them was to equip young people with the practical skills they needed to live life as independent adults. Historically, the purpose of these courses was to…
When settlers headed to the Pacific Northwest, they were forced to improvise dwellings and start their lives from scratch. Finding the stumps of gigantic trees that had been felled by logging companies still rooted in the ground, they saw a great opportunit…
Once upon a time, Schlitz beer was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous" and was advertised with the slogan "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer". Schlitz first became the largest beer producer in the US in 1902 and enjoyed that status a…
The 19th century saw a big shift for the butcher shops, with the population growing and many of those quickly populating the towns and cities, urban butcher shops were an important part of people’s daily life. Eating meat became popular across all sections …
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. Training for an engineering career, he attended …
From the early days of flight and the "golden age of travel", to modern-day airlines, air travel has changed a lot over the past century. Through this photo collection, we take a journey through time to show you what air travel looked like from the 1930s to…
By the early 1900s, household electricity and running water started to become a norm in the Western world. Industrialization brought the evolution of kitchen design to a new era. Factories mass-produced fixtures, ever-more modern appliances, cabinetry, li…
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…
Chariot racing was one of the most popular sports in the ancient Olympic Games and it was dangerous to both drivers and horses as they often suffered serious injury and even death. Two-wheeled carriages were drawn by horses and raced around a stadium ca…
Although the birth control pill and other hormonal contraceptive devices are modern inventions, birth control forms have been around for thousands of years. The earliest known recordings of birth control methods date back to ancient Mesopotamia, around …
In 1899, a group of French illustrators led by Jean-Marc Côté was tasked with imagining what France would look like in the year 2000. Their ideas weren’t always on the money but many have been realized albeit not exactly according to the original drawings.…
On May 23, 1914, the SS Komagata Maru, a steamship carrying 376 passengers of Punjabi passengers - largely Sikhs but also some Hindus and Muslims - arrived on the west coast of the Dominion of Canada. Based on laws implemented to limit the immigration o…
The Golden Gate Bridge is unquestionably an American icon whose symbolism power rivals that of the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty, in part through its representation of optimism, a distinctly American trait. Its visual linkage of form and n…
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 pretty ankle contest" appear in the early 1900s as special shows within women’s beauty competitions. Contestants would have to stand behind a curtain to conceal their bodies, so that all that could be seen was below the knee - legs clad in thick stocki…
In the early 1900s child labor was still extremely common in the United States. All across the nation children would spend their days slaving away in mines and cotton mills, far away from the school rooms that the National Child Labor Committee wanted them…
Ever since the car was invented, man has dreamt of taking it to the skies. The idea of a flying machine that one can drive dates back further to the nineteenth century—the concept was first patented in 1910. Engineers returned again and again to the concep…
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 co…
In the early 1900s, the age-old custom of pistol dueling was briefly resurrected as a non-lethal sport by using wax bullets. While it still involved men shooting firearms at one another, the difference here was that defeated parties could be “theoretically…