The subcultures in the Soviet Union, a country cut off from the West by the infamous Iron Curtain, were a form of open youth rebellion against ideological and cultural stagnation. Stilyagi, goths, hippies, bikers, punks, rockers, and metalheads formed c…
When Citroën Karin was first presented at the Paris Motor Show in 1980, it couldn’t help but attract the astonished gaze of visitors. It was quite unusual to see a futuristic sci-fi pyramid in a motor show, let alone a pyramid on four wheels. Its name begin…
These stunning photographs of car wrecks in the 1930s were captured by Leslie Jones, a famous photographer who worked for the Boston Herald-Traveler from 1917 to 1956. Jones documented daily life in Boston and surrounding areas and some 40,000 of his negati…
Stonehenge, on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire in southern England, is certainly one of the most well-known and well-studied prehistoric megalithic monuments. Scholars had determined that there was a very long process of construction and use of Stonehe…
Victorians were known for their conservative way of life, but these portraits show that many men of that era were unafraid of showing affection. The provocative black-and-white 19th-century images show men posing in surprisingly intimate embraces. They …
These vintage photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States show teams of horses being used to move entire houses to new locations. With the rapid railway and urban development boom, a lot of people found themselves looking to …
Hooverville was the popular name attributed to shanty towns that sprung up throughout the United States during the Great Depression. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and was …
The rapid rise of automobiles at the turn of the 20th century presented an immediate problem: where to park all these vehicles roaming the streets? The concept for vertical parking garages was and is driven by two factors: a need for parking spaces and …
France became dominant in the high fashion (couture or haute couture) industry by the end of the 19th century through the establishment of the great couturier houses. The technology started to redefine Western society in many ways and this continued int…
Amasunzu is a traditionally Rwandan hairstyle that was once worn by men, as well as by unmarried women in order to indicate to potential suitors that they were single and of marriageable age. The hair is styled into crests and is frequently described as cresce…
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, photographer Clifton R. Adams was commissioned by the National Geographic to document life in England. Adams’ beautiful autochromes—a process of producing color images by using potato starch—present images that capture…
New Yorkers have been taking the plunge in the Big Apple since the late 1800s, when the state legislature passed a law mandating free bathhouses in cities with populations over 50,000. The state believed it was necessary to provide bathing facilities fo…
The Spacelander bicycle was designed by Benjamin Bowden for the 1946 exhibition Britain Can Make It. Originally known as the Classic, the streamlined design was said to represent what the bicycle of the future was supposed to look like. Its curving line…
These color photos document life in the French army during World War One, and the destruction of towns and villages caused by German shelling. The pictures were taken by Paul Castelnau and Fernand Cuville using the photochrom technique and brought home …
Caroline Munro (born in 1949) is an English actress, model and singer known for her many appearances in horror, science fiction and action films of the 1970s and 1980s. Munro's career commenced in 1966 when her mother and a photographer friend entered some …
The Maya people have been called many names over the years, such as “the mysterious Maya” and “the magnificent Maya,” and many scholarly books have been written about this ancient Mesoamerican civilization. Many years before European explorers came to t…
Elizabeth Taylor, born in 1932, was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She then became the highest-paid movie star in the 1…
January 28, 1986, was an exceptionally cold day in Florida, where freezing weather is rare. The beaches near the Kennedy Space Center were crowded with people who had come to watch the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, which had been postponed on sev…
These vintage photos, taken by Sten-Åke Stenberg, depict the street scenes and everyday life in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The Soviet 1970s was long. Coinciding with the rule of Leonid Brezhnev from 1964 to 1982 in both scholarly and popular u…
These vivid color photographs of Ireland were produced as tourist mementos and postcards using a technique called Photochrom. The collection features the main cities of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and Waterford alongside the main tourist attractions of the day. …