During the first half of the twentieth century, the original Pennsylvania Station was one of New York City’s grandest landmarks, a palace in the middle of Manhattan. These photographs take readers back in time to the height of Penn Station’s glory. From con…
For thousands of years, humans could only speculate what the Earth looked like. This changed on August 23, 1966, when the world received its first view of Earth taken by a spacecraft from the vicinity of the Moon. The photo was shot from a distance of a…
On September 11, 2001, US President George W. Bush went to Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Florida to meet students and staff and to bring attention to his plans for education reform. It looked like another regular day. That all changed after 8:46 a…
Originally the idea for a flight expedition over Mount Everest was proposed in 1918 by a British mountaineering physiologist, Alexander Kellas in his journal “The Possibility of Aerial Reconnaissance in the Himalaya.” As a skilled mountaineer and expert…
The South Fork Dam was built between 1838 and 1853 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to provide water for the operation of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal between Johnstown and Pittsburgh. Though the dam had been built accordin…
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 Panama Canal idea goes back to the 16th century. After understanding the riches of Peru, Ecuador, and Asia, and evaluating the time it took the gold to reach the ports of Spain, it was suggested in 1524 to Charles V, that by cutting out a piece of land…
The largest wooden airplane ever constructed and flown only one time, the H-4 Hercules (nicknamed Spruce Goose) represents one of humanity's greatest attempts to conquer the skies. It was born out of a need to move troops and material across the Atlanti…
Nothing says Italian food like pasta. Pasta is an integral part of Italy’s food history. Wherever Italians immigrated they have brought their pasta along, so much so today it can be considered a staple of international cuisine. Many school children were…
TIME magazine decided to create a list of the 100 most influential pictures ever taken. They teamed up with curators, historians, photo editors, and famous photographers around the world for this task. "No formula makes for iconic photos," the editors said. …
Nowadays it's hard to believe that thousands of people would be willing to stand out in the cold for hours just to try a McDonald’s hamburger. But when the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the whole city went mad. The Moscow McDonald’s initia…
DeLorean DMC-12, an innovative sports car, produced from 1981–1983, with gull-wing doors and stainless-steel body panels. It should have been the commercial coup of the century, leading to massive worldwide sales. For this was the car chosen to star …
The Battle of Midway was a turning point in the Pacific War. Before the Battle of the Coral Sea on 7-8 May 1942, the Imperial Navy of Japan had swept aside all of its enemies from the Pacific and Indian oceans. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japane…
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in the First World War, then known as “the Great War.” Though the Treaty of Versailles, …
On April 26, 1986, a series of explosions destroyed Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4, and several hundred staff and firefighters tackled a blaze that burned for 10 days and sent a plume of radiation around the world. More than 50 reactor and emergency workers were ki…
On September 1, 1939, the world was shocked as Nazi troops invaded Poland. Tensions soared in Europe, and world leaders recognized that this invasion could be the final straw that would lead to war. German military leaders had begun planning for war with P…
It began with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz as Nazi Germany attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. In January 1933, after a bitter ten-year political struggle, Adolf Hitler came to …
World War I was one of the defining events of the 20th century. From 1914 to 1918 conflict raged in much of the world and involved most of Europe, the United States, and much of the Middle East. In terms of technological history, World War I is signific…
John F. Kennedy was born into a rich, politically connected Boston family of Irish-Catholics. He and his eight siblings enjoyed a privileged childhood of elite private schools, sailboats, servants, and summer homes. During his childhood and youth, "Jack…
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…