In the early morning of 17 June 1939, Eugène Weidmann became the last person to be publicly executed by guillotine. He had been convicted of multiple kidnappings and murders, including that of a young American socialite. Beginning with the botched kidna…
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 New York City, funeral services for the 28 Germans who lost their lives in the Hindenburg disaster are held on the Hamburg-American pier, on May 11, 1937. About 10,000 members of German organizations lined the pier. Seems to be a mixture of Nazi Germ…
The Mangbetu people had a distinctive look and this was partly due to their elongated heads. At birth, the heads of babies’ were tightly wrapped with cloth in order to give their heads the elongated look. The custom of skull elongation called by the nat…
Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, strikes a pose for photographer Heinrich Hoffmann whilst rehearsing and listening to his recorded speech. The album, features black and white images of the Nazi leader in a series of poses, using expressive face a…
Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira all had about e…
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…
Maoris of 'C' Company, 28th Maori Battalion of the 2nd New Zealand Division perform the 'Haka' (ancestral war dance) for the visit of King George II of Greece, his wife the Queen, his cousin Prince Peter and Major General Freyberg. The location was at an a…
In the summer of 1944 the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration, a large-scale, complex offensive against the Nazi invaders in Belarus, Poland and the Baltic republics. This vital Soviet offensive was launched just after Allied troops had landed in …
The "Soviet flag over Reichstag" photograph is full of symbolism and represents a historic moment. Erected in 1894, the Reichstag's architecture was magnificent for its time. The building contributed much to German history and was considered by the Red …
Advertising has always been a strange blend of creativity, commerce, and compromise. Behind every glossy campaign lies that familiar moment when exhausted ad executives surrender to an idea that’s just “good enough” to sell — and to bill the client. The…
Before smartphones became the center of modern life, an entire era of cell phones defined how people communicated and connected. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, flip phones, sliders, and the once-dominant BlackBerry represented cutting-edge technolog…
In the early 1940s, Fort Bragg was more than just a military installation in North Carolina, it was a place where young men prepared for the uncertainty of war while still holding on to moments of normal life. Named after Confederate general Braxton Bragg, …
Religious music has long been created to inspire faith, uplift spirits, and carry meaningful messages. But somewhere along the way, a number of Christian albums managed to miss the mark with cover art and titles that now seem unintentionally suggestive, awk…
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…
In the late 1920s, German anthropologist Egon von Eickstedt set out on a series of expeditions across South and Southeast Asia. Between 1926 and 1929, his travels took him through India, Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), and Burma, where he produced an enormou…
In the mid-1980s, as personal computers began slowly making their way into households and offices across Yugoslavia, a new magazine appeared on newsstands: Računari. Launched in 1984, its name simply translated to “computers” in Bosnian, and its pages were …
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…
In November 1961, the promising young ethnographer Michael Rockefeller vanished along the southern coast of New Guinea. His disappearance captured the world’s attention — not just because he was the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, one of the wealthie…
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…