In this article, we’ve collected a few rare photographs from the 1870s taken by Shinichi Suzuki (1835-1918) who photographed Japan for a foreign newsmagazine called The Far East. After his lumber family business was destroyed by a tsunami in 1854, Suzuk…
For thousands of years, warships were built of wood and powered by human muscles and the wind. Gunpowder carved the first niche for chemical energy and machine-made materials, but successfully mounting and using cannons aboard ships still required vast …
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…
The flight attendant occupation took permanent shape in the 1930s as “women’s work,” that is, work not only predominately performed by women but also defined as embodying white, middle-class ideals of femininity. As the nascent commercial aviation indus…
A few years before being commissioned by the tsar Nicholas II to photograph the Russian Empire in color, photographer Prokudin-Gorsky set off on an expedition to what is now Uzbekistan to observe a rare solar eclipse. The long trip to Uzbekistan failed …
In response to the Great Depression during which unemployment, poverty and the effects of the Dust Bowl ravaged the States in the 1930s, Farm Security Administration (FSA) was established by government to provide loans to farmers, facilitate the removal of…
An unauthorized photo of Stalin inside the Kremlin shows the very moment he was informed that the German armies had advanced in Kiev (August 1941). What you see here is a man who up until a few weeks before had absolute confidence in Plan A, and who now…
The idea of creating a monumental sculpture in the Black Hills was first suggested in 1923 by South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson, who had envisioned creating likenesses of famous Native American and American Old West personalities on a needlelike …
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 invention of individual diving suits in the early 18th century allowed a more refined exploration of the ocean depths. The initial drive for the creation of diving suits was to aid salvage missions, at a time when many ships (carrying many treasures…
The outbreak of war in 1914 left many Belgians homeless and penniless. Germany invaded Belgium on its way to France, sending hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees fleeing for their lives. The number of people who fled the country from 1914-18 was ap…
The R100 airship was built as part of a British government programme to develop airships to provide passenger and mail transport between Britain and the countries of the British Empire, including India, Australia, and Canada. Originally, it was proposed…
It was June 1980, just six months after the Soviet Union had invaded its southern neighbor to forestall the collapse of a pro-Soviet government in Kabul. Condemned by an Islamic war tribunal for denouncing nine families to the Russians, the man in the p…
The pattern of Influenza Outbreak of 1957 is sickeningly similar to COVID-19. A new and deadly strain of flu emerges in Asia, then spreads across the world and comes to the United States. A pandemic is declared. In 1957 the new virus was first reported …
Following World War II, pressures to recognize, challenge, and change inequalities for minorities grew. One of the most notable challenges to the status quo was the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas which que…
As a sequel to the successful 1939 New York World’s Fair, the second World’s Fair opened on April 22, 1964, and its theme was “Peace Through Understanding”. 650 acres (210 ha) of pavilions, public spaces, and displays from exhibitors around the world. C…
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…
The Statue of Liberty, officially Liberty Enlightening the World, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and Gustave Eiffel, was a gift to the United States from the people of France in 1886. With a tablet inscribed with the date of America’s independen…
The knocker-upper profession started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable. A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time. They would be paid a few pen…
This is the story of how the famous boxer Muhammad Ali convinced a suicidal young man to come down off the ledge. On January 19, 1981, The Los Angeles Times photographer Boris Yaro heard reports of a suicidal jumper on the radio. His editor wasn’t in…