These vintage photographs show the airship Graf Zeppelin LZ 127 flying over Chicago in August 1929, on the American leg of its round-the-world trip. The crew flew the airship low over the city and the crowds were mesmerized by the sight. This is how the…
USS Brooklyn, the third United States Navy armored cruiser, was completed in 1896 in Cramp, New York, and named after a famous quarter of the City. Recognizable by her three very tall funnels, she embodied grace and might, being the tallest, fastest cruiser…
In 1942 and 1943, the Farm Security Administration photographer Jack Delano spent time in the rail yards of Chicago, documenting the busy freight hub and the workers’ everyday life. The photographs were made on Kodachrome color transparencies creating vibr…
Dubbed by the media as the “world’s largest log cabin,” (actually, second largest), the Forestry Building was constructed as part of Portland’s Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition of 1905. The cabin was an enormous structure, measuring 206 feet long (…
During the era of silent film, recommendations for behavior were displayed on title cards before a screening, offering advice including "Ladies, kindly remove your hats", "Loud talking or whistling not allowed", "Please applaud with hands only", etc. The Li…
These vintage photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States show teams of horses being used to move entire houses to new locations. With the rapid railway and urban development boom, a lot of people found themselves looking to …
These vintage photos, taken by Sten-Åke Stenberg, depict the street scenes and everyday life in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. The Soviet 1970s was long. Coinciding with the rule of Leonid Brezhnev from 1964 to 1982 in both scholarly and popular u…
A few months before Pearl Harbor was attacked, LIFE magazine ran a black-and-white photograph of an up-and-coming movie actress named Rita Hayworth. The redheaded beauty was kneeling on a bed made up with satin sheets, her silky nightgown is white, with…
He was “the Eighth Wonder of the World,” the biggest attraction in the history of professional wrestling. At seven-foot-four (2.23m), 450 pounds (205kg), André the Giant was a living, breathing legend, the kind of make-believe figure usually encountered on…
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 …
In 1942, shortly after the US entry into the war, the Navy established a special group called the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit to document and publicize its aviation activities. The main purpose of this photographic unit was to promote the recruitme…
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…
Recreational cannabis smoking took on a negative connotation in the American cultural imagination when people began to associate it with Mexican immigrants arriving in the US. After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a wave of Mexican immigrants poured int…
Blow dryers were invented in the late 19th century. The first model was created by Alexander F. “Beau” Godefroy in his salon in France in 1890. His invention was a large, seated version that consisted of a bonnet that attached to the chimney pipe of a g…
Edwardian fashion refers to the clothing that was in style between the late 1890s and 1914 or the beginning of the Great War. Also called La Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Era), and the Gilded Age, this was a time when women's fashions took on a new opulen…
The Anglo-French Concorde was co-developed by BAC, a forerunner of BAE Systems, and Aerospatiale, now a part of Airbus, and has a storied history. New technology was required throughout the plane. A distinctive design innovation was the plane’s droop no…
Born in 1907, Frida Kahlo lived for just 47 years. Andre Breton summed up Kahlo as “a ribbon around a bomb.” Here are some facts about the woman remembered as one of Mexico’s greatest artists. Kahlo lived most of her life in pain, the effect of contract…
It is a well-known fact that a cat which is falling upside down, has the ability to turn its body mid-air so that it lands on its feet. In past, many scientists such as George Gabriel Stokes, James Clerk Maxwell, and Étienne-Jules Marey had shown great int…
The first "strongwomen" appeared in the 19th century but were almost unheard of until much later. The appearance of strong women became more prevalent in sporting events and was also a common attraction in circuses where they would showcase their superhuma…
Thirty vivid, oversize black-and-white photos from the Library of Congress show Detroit in the 1940s. Full-screen scenes show vintage vehicles, fashions, hairstyles, the Crowley-Milner department store, Cunningham's drugs, a streetcar, Chrysler's tank asse…