Tattoos have an extensive history in Japan, and to truly understand the stigma behind them it is essential to be aware of their significance. The first records of tattoos were found in 5000 B.C., during the Jomon period, on clay figurines depicting desi…
In 1910, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott led a privately funded expedition to become the first people to successfully reach the South Pole. The expedition was Scott's attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole, as well as carry out important s…
In 1949, Victor Hoeflich held a press conference to introduce the "Man from Mars, Radio Hat". Hoeflich knew a picture would tell the story so he had several teenagers modeling the radio hats for the reporters and photographers. Soon pictures and news st…
When an earthquake ripped through Santa Monica on March 10, 1933, the city was already in bad shape. The quiet community on the Pacific coast had prided itself in being socially elite and culturally refined, but that pride hadn’t stopped the Great Depressi…
These rare photos from the end of the 19th century capture a range of Bedouins at a time of change. As modern governments projected their power into previously ungovernable tracts of the desert, many Bedouins chose or were forced to abandon a purely nom…
These images are part of the book Weird War Two, a book from the Imperial War Museums that explores the stranger side of the Second World War. A war as extensive and long-lasting as World War II produces an incalculable number of artifacts. And museums …
Born in Wisconsin in 1868, Edward Sheriff Curtis took to photography at an early age. In 1895 he photographed Princess Angeline, the daughter of the Duwamish Chief Seattle, for whom the city was named. That encounter sparked Curtis' lifelong fascination…
Football, or “American football” as the rest of the world calls it, can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Both games have their origin in multiple varieties of football played in Britain in the mid-19th century, in …
The events of 1942 were crucial in the way that World War Two played out. The first Americans arrived in England in January - 'Overpaid, oversexed - and in North Africa Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps began their counter-offensive, capturing Tobr…
The once-impoverished region of Landes in southwestern France consisted of very flat and marshy terrain and barely even had any roads to speak of, which made moving around somewhat problematic. To navigate the soft and unsteady heathlands, shepherds dev…
These rare color views of the capital (then known as Constantinople) of the Ottoman Empire at the close of the 19th century were produced using the Photochrom process. The technique applies layers of artificial color to a black and white image with surpris…
After the Second World War, America's love affair with the automobile was in full swing. You could drive through about anything – movie theaters, car washes, restaurants, banks, and...even churches. That’s a very American way to attend church. These rar…
Keedoozle was the first fully automated grocery store in the United States; a most futuristic shopping experience that the world just wasn’t ready for. The story begins with Clarence Saunders who revolutionized grocery shopping, in a way that defines th…
The Italian Campaign of World War II was the name of the Allied operations in and around Italy from 1943 to the end of the war. Following victory in the North African Campaign, there was disagreement among the Allies on the next step they should take. …
On March 27, 1964, at 5:36 PM, a megathrust earthquake occurred in the Prince William Sound region of Alaska. The epicenter was about 10 km east of the mouth of College Fiord, approximately 90 km west of Valdez and 120 km east of Anchorage. Lasting four…
Edwardian fashion refers to the clothing that was in style between the late 1890s and 1914 or the beginning of the Great War. Also called La Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Era), and the Gilded Age, this was a time when women's fashions took on a new opulence …
Decades after her death, Eva Braun, the long-time mistress of Adolf Hitler, remains a mysterious and notorious figure. This is the photographic life story of a woman who met Hitler as a teenager and, in the last days of the war, became the Führer’s wife—on…
In 1969, more than 400,000 people descended on Bethel, New York, headed to a dairy farm owned by Max and Miriam Yasgur, where the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was being held. The epic event became synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 196…
Adolf Eichmann inspired Hannah Arendt's famous phrase ‘the banality of evil’. A career civil servant in Nazi Germany, he was put in charge of administering the ‘Final Solution’ and organized the seizure of Jews from all over Europe and their transportation…
The history of proto mobile phones goes back to 1908 when a US Patent was issued in Kentucky for a wireless telephone. Mobile phones were invented as early as the 1940s when engineers working at AT&T developed cells for mobile phone base stations. …