In the late 19th century, the miracle device called the telephone had been invented but the simple concept of undergrounding telephone cables had eluded engineers. Due to technical limitations of the earliest phone lines, every telephone required its ow…
A rare and disturbing picture, so much about this is still a mystery. We don't know what became of the skull—or, indeed, what became of the young woman herself, or the man who sent it to her as a "gift" from the Pacific in the midst of World War II. The…
A lone African-American boy, left foreground, stands in a sparse crowd that turned out to hear Dr. Lycurgus Spinks, imperial emperor of one of the several Ku Klux Klan groups active in the South, speak to 56 members of his Invisible Empire, Jackson, Miss. …
Jean-Bédel Bokassa was a military officer and the head of state of the Central African Republic from his coup d'état on 1 January 1966. But being President wasn’t enough so in 1976 he proclaimed himself emperor of the nation, which was renamed the Central …
The Zangaki brothers were two Greek photographers, active between the 1870s-1890s, who worked in Egypt, producing prints for the tourist trade. They produced some of the finest images of late Victorian Egypt, yet so little is known about them. They w…
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In the spring of 1906 San Francisco was a city boasting 410,000 inhabitants — a world-class metropolis whose citizens, at the dawn of a new century, looked forward with a sense of civic pride and growing confidence. San Francisco’s very existence was th…
Apparently, back in 1900, Germans had high hopes for mankind and the inventions and experiences we would collectively create in the future. While you would think that these ideas would come from the minds of visionaries, scientists, or inventors, in thi…
New York Central's breathtaking Grand Central Terminal (or GCT) is a New York City landmark and world-famous station. It was built during the Golden Age of rail travel and exemplified the power and scope railroads wielded at that time. While the termina…
In the 1860s and 1870s, photographer Timothy O'Sullivan created some of the best-known images in American History. After covering the U.S. Civil War, O'Sullivan was the official photographer on the United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Pa…
Rescued East African slaves taken from a dhow aboard HMS Daphne, a British naval ship used to prevent the transportation of enslaved people. They were freed from Arab slave traders between November 1st and 4th of 1868. The HMS Daphne was sailing along t…
During the early twentieth century, Howard Carter, a British Egyptologist, excavated for many years in the Valley of the Kings—a royal burial ground located on the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes, Egypt. When Carter arrived in Egypt in 1891, he …
Dressed in their finest suits and ties with their top hats cocked towards the camera, these men and women seem to be posing for expensive portraits. But behind their tidy appearances are guilty eyes that hide some of the most sinister crimes policemen of t…
The Minneapolis Morning Tribune obituary says Ga-Be-Nah-Gewn-Wonce (variously known as Kay-bah-nung-we-way, Sloughing Flesh, Wrinkled Meat or plain old — well, really old — John Smith) was reputed to be 138 years old when he died. Whatever his precise a…
The most fascinating part about this picture is how it conveys the rapid social evolution from the era of the old west to the incredible technological advancement of the 20th century. You have to remember, this picture was taken only four years prior to Wo…
This photograph shows soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900, left-to-right: Britain, United States, Australia, British India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan. This was a British propaganda photo where the British requested the height…
This photo was taken in July 1913 by French photographer Stéphane Passet who was hired by Albert Kahn. Albert Kahn was a millionaire banker who pioneered color photography using the process invented by the Lumière brothers. During his trip through exoti…
The winter of 1952 was bone-chilling enough for the Imjingang River to freeze over, a river in northern Gyeonggi-do Province that flows down and across the middle of the Korean Peninsula. At the time, the peninsula was still at war, as the Korean War ha…
Although the photo was probably staged, it does show anthropologist Frances Densmore sitting with Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot Indian tribe, while he interprets a song in Plains Indian sign language. The photo was taken for the Bureau of American Ethnol…
A historical demonstration in 1887 showing the weight of the central span of a bridge being transmitted to the banks through diamond-shaped supports. The central "weight" is Kaichi Watanabe, one of the first Japanese engineers who came to study in the U…