These interesting candid photos were taken on the roof of the D. B. Loveman & Company department store in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. The photographer was Charles Gustavus Walline who himself worked at the department store. His subjects were his …
The Battle of Ciudad Juárez marked the end of the first phase of the Mexican Revolution. It was fought between federal forces loyal to President Porfirio Díaz and rebel forces of Francisco Madero. Diaz's 34-year dictatorial rule met with much opposition…
When the Germans and their allies invaded Southeastern Europe, a large number of civilians (over 40,000) escaped from their homelands. Many fled all the way across the Mediterranean, hopping from island to island in search of shelter and safety. The British…
In the 1950s, the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) – that part of Germany which had been the Soviet Occupation Zone in the post World War Two division of Germany – was threatening to bleed dry, as one in six people fled, usually in search of work und…
A Spanish engineer and aeronautical pioneer, Juan de la Cierva, developed the original “autogiro”. Its name was derived from the self stabilization accomplished by a four-bladed horizontal screw turned by wind produced in the sky. In addition to the nam…
By the time the sun rose in New York City on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first and second waves of American troops had come ashore under heavy German fire on the beaches of Normandy. Working under the command of General Eisenhower, an armada of 5,0…
After centuries of isolation and several unsuccessful attempts by the Western nations at opening Japan to international relations and trade, the United States Navy sent Commodore C. Perry in 1853 with a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the Emperor…
In 1942, shortly after the US entry into the war, the Navy established a special group called the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit to document and publicize its aviation activities. The main purpose of this photographic unit was to promote the recruitme…
These are rarely seen color pictures from the Second World War featured in the book “The Second World War in Colour” by the Imperial War Museum. Many are being published for the first time and shed light behind the scenes of the conflict. Color film was…
We can only imagine the horrors seen and shared between the four of these men. They all have the stare and you can see it gradually getting worse in their eyes as they get older. Approximately 80 years of wars in one picture, all of them went to war but…
James Gillingham lived in Chard, England, where he had a small shoe-making business called “Golden Boot”. His career in prosthetics began in 1865 when he produced an artificial arm for a local cannoneer who had been injured in an accident but was given …
The thylacine, most commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger because of its striped lower back or the Tasmanian wolf because of its canid-like characteristics, was one of the largest carnivorous marsupials. The thylacine was relatively shy and nocturnal, w…
These amazing postcards depict the Princely County of Tyrol, an mountainous region of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The pictures were created using the Photochrom process, a revolutionary procedure that consists of producing ink-based images through the …
Observation was an incredibly important role in aerial warfare in World War I. All major combatants used observation balloons to observe their enemies’ trench lines and troop movements. These hovering mammoths were used for directing artillery, which re…
It's not that uncommon to get snow in Jerusalem but the storm on February 25th, 1921 was quite severe. The city is characterized by a hot-summer Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry summers, and mild, wet winters. Snow flurries usually occur once or twic…
In the seventies and eighties, Venice Beach was considered a place of peace, love and roller skates. Venice, originally called "Venice of America", was founded by wealthy developer Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a beach resort town, 14 miles (23 km) west of Los An…
Shortly after the revolution, the new Cuban Castro visited the United States in 1959 at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Since taking power in January 1959, Castro had infuriated the American government with his policies of n…
Throughout the 1950s, dead rotting whales toured around Europe to promote the declining whaling industry after World War 2. The story began in Trondheim, Norway, in 1952. A mysterious and as yet unidentified organization harpooned three fin whales off t…
In 1902, a French manufacturer released a set of trading cards designed by artist Albert Bergeret that imagined the "women of the future" (original: Les Femmes de l’Avenir). These cards depict various, imagined occupations that would have seemed fantast…
In May 1915, Italy attacked Austria-Hungary along the Isonzo River and in the Trentino, hoping to conquer territory which it believed to be rightfully Italian. Unlike the larger-scale battles, this battle was dictated by the landscape of the sizable mounta…