Selena was a singer-songwriter who came to be known as the “Queen of Tejano music,” a popular form of music originating in Texas and taking influences from polka, rock, conjunto, and mariachi. An enormously popular singer in Latino communities across No…
Sophia Loren (born in1934, Rome, Italy), is an Italian film actress who rose above her poverty-stricken origins in postwar Naples to become universally recognized as one of Italy’s most beautiful women and its most famous movie star. She was named by the Am…
These beautiful, romantic old postcards show Scotland from a time long gone. Originally published by the Detroit Publishing Company, they were created by image-makers fascinated by Scotland's castles and sweeping landscapes and much of the collection gives…
The Golden Gate Bridge is unquestionably an American icon whose symbolism power rivals that of the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty, in part through its representation of optimism, a distinctly American trait. Its visual linkage of form and n…
Clint Eastwood, in full Clinton Eastwood, Jr., (born May 31, 1930, San Francisco, California, U.S.), American motion-picture actor who emerged as one of the most popular Hollywood stars in the 1960s and went on to become a prolific and respected director-produ…
In his lifetime, Arnold Schwarzenegger has worn many shoes. A former champion builder to a Hollywood action icon to a politician, Schwarzenegger has been them all, and more. He has won several titles from Mr. Universe to Mr. Olympia during his bodybuilding …
Brigitte Bardot was born in September 1934 in Paris and is a French actress, singer, and model. Famous for portraying sexually emancipated personae with hedonistic lifestyles, she was one of the best-known sex symbols of the late 1950s and 1960s. Bardot…
Arising as a daredevil stunt in the aerial shows of the 1920s, wing walking was the act of moving along the wings of a biplane during flight. It started around 1920 at aerial barnstorming shows and originally began as a demonstration of planes’ balance …
The Lebanese Civil War was both an internal Lebanese affair and a regional conflict involving a host of regional and international actors. It revolved around some of the issues that dominated regional politics in the Middle East in the latter part of th…
Born in 1958 in Bay City, Michigan with the official name of Madonna Louise Ciccone, Madonna was the first daughter of Madonna and Silvio Anthony “Tony” Ciccone. She was nicknamed Nonno to avoid confusion with the elder Madonna, who was of French Canadian d…
By the first week of September 1914, the Germans had come within thirty kilometers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. The French and British armies were engaged in fierce fighting with the Germans in the First Battle of the Marne which repelled th…
Before anyone ever heard the word “cowgirl,” there were women who ventured west. Most traveled with their families on covered wagons, beginning in the 1840s. They moved from crowded eastern cities to settle in western states such as Kansas, Nebraska, Co…
It’s difficult to convey to a modern audience the emotional impact of the stock market’s gyrations in the 1980s, or indeed in any distant decade because the most popular measures of market value have grown so much in the intervening years. For example, …
In the early 1910s, photographer Harry Pollard traveled around Canada to take a series of photographs of the natives, who are one of the first people who settled in Western Canada and Alberta. These photographs capture, among others, people from Tsuu T’…
These rare historical photographs were taken from 1873 to 1877 and are part of Street Life in London, a book that was one of the first examples of social documentary photography. The authors, photographer John Thomson and journalist Adolphe Smith, aimed…
Pennsylvania’s rich coal mining history dates back centuries to the late 1700s and boomed between 1870 and 1930. The pictures collected in this article were taken by John Collier, an Office of War Information photographer, and capture the gritty life of min…
These images of Greenland, taken by the Danish physician and photographer Krabbe, focus on the way of life and the inhabitants (Danish Greenlanders and indigenous Greenlandic Inuit people) of this isolated Arctic area. The homes and boats of the Greenla…
In 1920, the southeastern part of Europe was a miserable place. The endless wars, beginning with the First Balkan War in 1912, continuing with World War I in 1914-1918, and other ethnic conflicts, had disrupted countless lives. The American Red Cross ha…
These amazing photochrom postcards of New York City were procured by the Detroit Publishing Company and offer a spectacular view of the Big Apple in natural colors. In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (unti…
These rare photographs from the National Library of Ireland capture gorgeous portraits of the people of old Ireland in magnificent detail. The last decades of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th were a period of colossal change that ended up…