It’s difficult to convey to a modern audience the emotional impact of the stock market’s gyrations in the 1980s, or indeed in any distant decade because the most popular measures of market value have grown so much in the intervening years. For example, …
On a lazy Sunday afternoon in September 1942, photographer Marjory Collins wandered around New York City’s Central Park capturing a series of incredible images. The amazing and quasi-candid shots show families, friends, kids, lovers, and sailors enjoying a sun…
These rare photographs from the National Library of Ireland capture gorgeous portraits of the people of old Ireland in magnificent detail. The last decades of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th were a period of colossal change that ended up…
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…
Many Americans first encountered the phrase “the American Way” on huge billboards that by 1938 had sprouted in hundreds of U.S. cities and towns. Shopping for groceries, heading to work, or entering an empty stretch of highway, they were suddenly confro…
From the earliest recognition that a more deadly form of influenza was spreading quickly in fall 1918, US public health authorities recommended masks for doctors, nurses, and anyone taking care of influenza patients. Newspapers provided instructions on …
These two pictures are shown side by side in the Andrei Pozdeev Museum. The museum caption reads: "(Left) The artist Eugen Stepanovich Kobytev the day he went to the front in 1941. (Right) In 1945 when he returned”. This is the human face after four years …
The original settlement of San Cristobal de la Habana was founded on St. Christopher’s Day in July of 1515 and slightly more than four years later was relocated to the city of the bay of Bahia de la Habana. Not surprisingly, the ports and bridges provid…
These street pictures of the City of a Thousand Minarets capture the rapid growth and transformation of Old Cairo at the turn of the 20the century. The foundations of Cairo were laid in AD 969 by the Fatimid dynasty, but the city’s history goes further …
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 Depre…
Once the United States abandoned neutrality and declared war on Germany in April 1917, thousands of German commercial sailors were unlucky enough to be docked at American ports, including the crew of the world’s largest passenger ship, the SS Vaterland, wh…
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 f…
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…
Annelies "Anne" Marie Frank (12 June 1929 – early March 1945) was just an ordinary Dutch girl from an ordinary family. The family happened to be Jewish, which is why terrible things happened to them. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she lived most of her lif…
Before video stores, movies were solely watched in theaters, leaving studios hesitant to embrace video technology and video stores because they feared for losses in revenues. The first VCRs hit the market in 1975, and shortly thereafter the video rental st…
Disneyland was dedicated at an "International Press Preview" event held on Sunday, July 17, 1955, which was open only to invited guests and the media. Although 28,000 people attended the event, only about half of those were invitees, the rest having pur…
The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy fractured the nation just two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and five years after his brother John F. Kennedy was killed. But RFK’s funeral, particularly the train that took his body from…
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in the First World War, then known as “the Great War.” Though the Treaty of Versailles, …