Conversation pits and sunken living rooms were very common from the 1950s until the 1980s, but they drew inspiration from much older design forms, including traditional gathering spaces from ancient China and medieval Spain. The pits initially gained popula…
Beyond the regular duties of stewardesses, airline companies used the sexual appeal of their sky girls to create captivating and often racy ad campaigns. "Fly me" was an advertising campaign launched by National Airlines in the 1970s. The campaign was cre…
These fascinating vintage images show Atlantic City in the 1960s before gambling was legalized and huge hotel chains moved in. The images are part of Glen Fairweather’s collection. The city was incorporated on May 1, 1854, from portions of Egg Harbor To…
During the Victorian era, men’s outfits generally entailed a suit, which includes a coat, trousers, and waistcoat – all the garments were not usually of the same color or material. As outdoor wear, the Victorian period men would use a coat or cloak. S…
Once upon a time, Schlitz beer was known as "The beer that made Milwaukee famous" and was advertised with the slogan "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer". Schlitz first became the largest beer producer in the US in 1902 and enjoyed that status a…
These old photographs of the American frontier capture life and struggle in the Wild West. The completion of the railroads to the West following the American Civil War opened up vast areas of the region to settlement and economic development. The archetypic…
Back in the 19th century, Victorians thought nothing unusual about sending their loved ones bizarre and creepy images with the words “May yours be a joyful Christmas.” From frogs stabbing each other, and insects dancing in the moonlight, to Krampus (a half-…
The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was a heroic and tragic 63-day struggle to liberate World War 2 Warsaw from German occupation. The Uprising began on 1 August 1944 as part of a nationwide Operation Tempest, launched at the time of the Soviet Lublin–Brest Offensi…
Star Wars is an American epic space-opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. Lucas’s success as a writer and director with American Graffiti (1973) ga…
A boom in New York’s population in the mid-to-late 1800s led to the rise of tenement housing in lower Manhattan. Tenements were low-rise buildings with multiple apartments, which were narrow and typically made up of three rooms. Because rents were low, te…
These photos, taken by Eugène Atget, document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization. Atget took up photography in the late 1880s and supplied studies for painters, architects, and stage designers.…
Bettie Page ( born in 1923) was an American model who gained notoriety in the 1950s for her pin-up photos. Popularly referred to as the Queen of Pinups, she was famous for her free-spirited demeanor and unabashed sensuality. Her trademark short bangs, …
These vintage advertisements, published in magazines and newspapers from the 1930s to the 1960s show how weight gain was aspired to then as firmly as we today aspire to weight loss. The ads tout scientific ways to "add attractive pounds and inches" (a compl…
The term "burlesque" means a literary, dramatic, or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. It’s a form of theatrical entertainment featuring parodic humor, …
Here's a weird relic from the past: a 1979 calendar dedicated to cocaine. Yes, you read it correctly, to cocaine. While the substance was illegal, it wasn’t considered all that bad (and it was normal to advertise cocaine gadgets in magazines). Each month…
The AX-3 was designed at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) in the middle 1970s. A prototype, it was created to prove that a highly mobile suit requiring little effort to operate could use an internal operating pressure of 8 pounds per square inch. ARC, which …
Edward Linley Sambourne was one of the first photographers to capture street fashion by using a hidden camera. He made his living as an artist and is most notably known for his drawings and cartoons in Punch magazine, where he eventually became a full-t…
Spirit photography began in the late 19th century, around the time that the spiritualism movement was gaining traction across Europe and the United States. The photographers who practiced it claimed that they could capture images of portrait subjects and th…
Umbrella Rock on top of Lookout Mountain was one of the more iconic tourist spots from the 1880s through the 1940s. These images, assembled by Chattanooga’s local historical organization Picnooga, capture almost 60 years of photo opportunities on Umbrel…
Stunt shows featuring diving horses began in the 1880s and were a wildly popular attraction for decades, despite the obvious cruelty to the animals and the danger it posed, ironically, it would seem, more for the riders than the horses' theme. According…