The Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection features color photographic surveys of the vast Russian Empire made between ca. 1905 and 1915. In those years, photographer Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian E…
In the early 1900s, the age-old custom of pistol dueling was briefly resurrected as a non-lethal sport by using wax bullets. While it still involved men shooting firearms at one another, the difference here was that defeated parties could be “theoretica…
Open air schools were purpose-built educational institutions for children, that were designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis that occurred in the period leading up to the Second World War. The schools were built on the concept…
In the early 20th century, polio was one of the most feared diseases in industrialized countries, paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children every year. A highly infectious disease, polio attacks the nervous system and can lead to paralysis, disabilit…
This picture is taken in the early 1900s at the Wyndham prison. Wyndham is the oldest and northernmost town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It was established in 1886 as a result of a gold rush at Halls Creek. However, the circumstances an…
AP photojournalist Horst Faas took this iconic photo on June 18, 1965, during the Vietnam War with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Battalion on defense duty at Phouc Vinh airstrip in South Vietnam. The headband message “War is Hell” typified an acerbic attit…
For decades, rumors circulated in Russia that Joseph Stalin had a “twin” who replaced him during certain situations. Decades after Stalin's death, the decoy finally decided to talk. Felix Dadaev, a former dancer and juggler, had been ordered to work to …
Roza Shanina was a Soviet sniper during World War II who was credited with fifty-nine confirmed kills, including twelve soldiers during the Battle of Vilnius. Shanina volunteered for the military after the death of her brother in 1941 and chose to be a …
The 1938-1939 German Expedition to Tibet was a May 1938 – August 1939 German scientific expedition led by German zoologist and SS officer Ernst Schäfer. Schäfer’s primary objective for the expedition was the creation of a complete scientific record of T…
In 1936 Jesse Owens arrived in Berlin to compete for the United States in the Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler was using the games to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany. Nazi propaganda promoted concepts of "Aryan racial superiority" and depicted ethn…
Most of what we think we remember about 1990s fashion comes from movies, music videos, and magazine spreads. But those were costumes. These portraits are something else entirely. They show what regular young men actually pulled out of their closets on an or…
A set of senior portraits can reveal more about an era than most fashion magazines ever could, capturing everyday style with an honesty that trends often miss. The photographs from Brookville High School’s Class of 1982 in Campbell County offer a clear …
Few episodes in modern history reveal the lengths a regime will go to manufacture consent quite like the personality cult Nicolae Ceaușescu built around himself and, eventually, his wife. During the Cold War, Romania stood apart even within the Eastern Bloc…
The 21st century has arrived, and yet so many of the technologies people take for granted today look remarkably similar to visions that were sketched out on paper decades ago. That is not a coincidence. The years between 1958 and 1963 represent what man…
It’s always surprising to hear about celebrity couples with major age gaps, but what’s even more shocking is how young some stars were when they first crossed paths with their future partners, sometimes still in their teens while the other was already well int…
Well before the celebratory ceremonies of 1959, Hawaii occupied a complex and often uncertain place within the American story. Annexed by the United States in 1898, the islands spent more than six decades as a U.S. territory, shaped by global events, cu…
Few medical cases have carried the weight and controversy of David Reimer’s life. Born in Canada in 1965, he became the subject of a radical experiment meant to prove that gender identity could be shaped entirely by upbringing rather than biology. Following…
Long before Photoshop and digital touch-ups, the art of seduction was perfected with paint. In the 1940s and 1950s, pin-up girls became cultural icons, their images gracing bomber planes, barracks walls, and magazine pages. They weren’t just pictures…
The colorful slides open a rare window into West Germany in the early 1950s, a country still rebuilding from the devastation of the Second World War. They are believed to have been taken by a U.S. Army nurse stationed at the 97th General Army Hospital in Fr…
Bacon perfectly toasted in disposable trays, sonic-powered dishwashers, and refrigerators that rose from the floor at the touch of a button—these were once visions of everyday life. In 1962, a book titled 1975: And the Changes to Come by Arnold B. Barac…