George V (1865-1936), King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1910, went to India in 1911 to be crowned Emperor of India in a great durbar in Delhi on 12 December 1911. The site for the durbar was in northwest Delhi and a city of tents came up across 25 …
The skinhead subculture was born in England in the late 1960s as an offshoot of the mod culture. Skinheads were distinct from other British subcultures due to their uniform of boots, jeans, braces (suspenders), and the trademark shaved head. Their style …
Jayne Mansfield (born in 1933) was an American actress, singer, nightclub entertainer best known for her bombshell curves and film roles during the 1950s and 1960s. A sex symbol while under contract at 20th Century Fox, Mansfield was known for her well-publ…
Raquel Welch (born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940) is an American actress and sex symbol who took the worldwide media by storm after the 1966 release of a movie poster featuring her natural assets in a wild and woolly prehistoric bikini. She was the oldest of thr…
In the late nineteenth century, the photography of criminals became as standardized as anthropological photography, largely because of the work of Paris police official Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914). Son of Louis Adolphe Bertillon, a well-known anthrop…
The Capilano Suspension Bridge is a simple suspension bridge crossing the Capilano River in the District of North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The current bridge is 140 meters (460 ft) long and 70 meters (230 ft) above the river. The bridge was …
In 1938, photographer Ben Shahn of FSA traveled to the small town of London, Ohio, and captured the residents as they strolled through the town’s main streets. The town was struggling economically and the welfare of the residents had declined rapidly over t…
This extraordinary accident occurred on October 22, 1895 at Montparnasse, then known as Gare de l’Ouest. The drive of the express train from Granville to Paris, hoping to make up time for its 131 passengers, increased the train’s speed and the air brake fai…
Pam Grier is an American actress, who came to limelight after starring in numerous blaxploitation films, such as ‘The Big Bird Cage’, ‘Coffy’, ‘Foxy Brown’ and ‘Sheba Baby’. Criticized for her blaxploitation roles, she made a comeback with Quentin Tarantino…
The use of mechanical means for the application of exercise in therapeutics was first systematized and employed in a complete way by Dr, Gustav Zander, of Stockholm, about 1857. Zander’s vision of regular exertion using machines to honor health and well…
David Douglas Duncan was a renowned war photographer and photojournalist, who first encountered Picasso in 1956 when he infamously rang the doorbell of La Californie, the artist’s home in Cannes. At the time, Picasso was in the bathtub and allowed Duncan to…
The Messerschmitt KR200 microcar was, and remains, the most evocative example of the bubble car genre; a tiny, instantly recognizable, three-wheeled tandem-two-seater, bearing of the aviation’s most potent brand names. Targeting solid German citizens to…
Death masks are fascinating but slightly haunting relics from an age before photos. Until cameras rendered them redundant, it was common for notable people to have metal, wax or plaster applied to their face when they had died, creating a “death mask”. …
These vivid color images show the everyday life and the ancient landmarks of Rome in the 1890s. While transportation and engineering show the first sign of the modern world, the Eternal City still demonstrates its glorious past. The old photographs d…
The Hollywood sign may be unique among American icons. It is a landmark whose white letters are familiar around the world as the prime symbol of the movies. Day after day tourists with cameras wander into surrounding Griffith Park or troll up and down t…
Skylab was America’s first step toward making space something other than a nice place to visit. Developed in the shadow of the Apollo moon missions and using hardware originally created for Apollo, the Skylab space station took the nation’s astronauts from…
Bruce Lee (Chinese name Li Jun Fan, born in 1940) was a Hong Kong and American martial artist, martial arts instructor, actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing fr…
The 1950s were a period of huge change for Hong Kong. The end of Japanese occupation, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. and U.N. trade embargoes on China, and a mass influx of Mainland immigrants bringing low-cost labor to the city,…
Selena was a singer-songwriter who came to be known as the “Queen of Tejano music,” a popular form of music originating in Texas and taking influences from polka, rock, conjunto, and mariachi. An enormously popular singer in Latino communities across No…
Sophia Loren (born in1934, Rome, Italy), is an Italian film actress who rose above her poverty-stricken origins in postwar Naples to become universally recognized as one of Italy’s most beautiful women and its most famous movie star. She was named by the Am…