In June of 1963, Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon. He was attempting to show that to fight all forms of oppression on equal terms, Buddhism too, needed to have its martyrs. …
In the first decades of the 20th century, the Italian Cavalry School at Tor di Quinto near Rome was - along with the French Cavalry School at Saumur - the leading institution for horsemanship in the world. Tor di Quinto was probably the foremost academy fo…
A nineteen-year-old and her two-year-old niece and goddaughter are hurled off a collapsing fire escape during an apartment fire on Marlborough Street. The two waited with firefighter Robert O’Neil for a rescue ladder to reach them. As the firefighter cl…
The photos on display here are taken by Hugo Jager, a former personal photographer of Adolf Hitler. He traveled with Hitler in the years leading up to power and throughout World War II. He was one of the few photographers who were using color photograph…
The Falling Soldier became famous for the way it seems to capture, with terrifying immediacy, the moment when a bullet fatally strikes a Spanish Loyalist militiaman; later, it became famous for allegations that the photograph was "faked", or at least (thou…
During the 1920s Paris had gained a reputation for the variety of its nighttime pleasures and for its free and easy attitude toward life in general. Within this climate of relative tolerance, many gay and lesbian nightclubs opened and flourished. Among …
At the end of World War II, the city of Dresden was in ruins, all its buildings destroyed and thousands of civilians dead. The scale of the death and destruction, coming so late in the war, along with significant questions about the legitimacy of the ta…
Pictured here in September 1939, Einstein relaxes on the beach near his Long Island summer home with friend and local department store owner David Rothman. After some initial confusion in the store resulting from Einstein’s thickly accented request for …
This image might be one of the most impressive photographs of all time. While it might just look like a regular Polaroid of some industrial sludge in a rundown warehouse, you’re looking at the epicenter of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Known as “the E…
The Heavy Gustav, was completed towards the end of 1940 and the proof rounds were fired early in 1941 at the Rugenwalde Artillery Range. Both Hitler and Albert Speer, later to be his armaments minister, attended the occasion. Named after the head of the…
Photo was taken during a routine military expedition in Chukchi Peninsula, Soviet Union. It isn’t sure if the Chukchi Peninsula has more people or white bears. The climate is very severe and sometimes weather can be so fierce in winter that the temperat…
During the Great Depression, millions of people were out of work across the United States. Unable to find another job locally, many unemployed people hit the road, traveling from place to place, hoping to find some work. A few of these people had cars, …
They are all wearing dance shoes so they are probably performers for a variety show. Since no one had decent air conditioning back then, practicing their acts outside on the roof was better than in a stuffy theater. Someone must have thought it'd make a…
Tens of thousands of soldiers, reservists, and other members of the military were arranged to form massive compositions. Although if viewed from the ground or from directly above, these masses of men would appear meaningless, when seen from the top of a…
Towards the end of World War II, U.S. intelligence officials were afraid that the German dictator would flee Germany by assuming a disguise. By 1944 the world identified the man largely by his trademark toothbrush mustache and oily side-slicked hair, so…
Berlin after the War was a post-apocalyptic world. One of the largest and most modern cities in Europe was left a wasteland. There were vast piles of rubble everywhere. Other areas were rows of building walls with collapsed interiors — the skeletons of …
The Russians were coming from the East, the Brits and Americans from the West, all with the objective of taking the Chancellery, knowing that would signal the end. So when they both finally met there, and the Nazis were irrefutably vanquished, they must ha…
The embassy is an official state function and since the Third Reich outlived Hitler by six weeks, it would be odder if they did not raise the flag when the head of state died. Actually, Hitler's death wasn't officially announced until May 1st, but the O…
It’s amazing that this broadside ironclad was designed and built without the aid of computers. Someone put pen to paper and designed this. Then the parts were made by hand in some fashion or another. USS Galena was a wooden-hulled broadside ironclad bui…
In October 1918, Hitler and several comrades were temporarily blinded due to a British mustard gas attack near Ypres in Belgium. After initial treatment, Hitler was hospitalized in Pasewalk. While there on 10 November, Hitler learned of Germany's d…