These future fantasy collectible cards were published by the German company Echte Wagner in the first half of the 20th century. Originally Echte Wagner made margarine, and it made a lot of trade cards that were distributed all over Central Europe. In 19…
These vivid color photographs of Ireland were produced as tourist mementos and postcards using a technique called Photochrom. The collection features the main cities of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and Waterford alongside the main tourist attractions of the day. …
George V (1865-1936), King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1910, went to India in 1911 to be crowned Emperor of India in a great durbar in Delhi on 12 December 1911. The site for the durbar was in northwest Delhi and a city of tents came up across 25 …
The Durbar of 1903 was held in Delhi to celebrate the succession of the British monarch King Edward VII (the great-grandfather of the current British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II) as the Emperor of India. The Delhi Durbar was organized by Lord Curzon, In…
Jayne Mansfield (born in 1933) was an American actress, singer, nightclub entertainer best known for her bombshell curves and film roles during the 1950s and 1960s. A sex symbol while under contract at 20th Century Fox, Mansfield was known for her well-publ…
There has always been great interest in domesticating and training zebras as riding and harnessing animals. In the 1760s, French naturalist Buffon believed that zebras could replace horses and there were rumors in Paris that the Dutch had already trained a…
Raquel Welch (born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940) is an American actress and sex symbol who took the worldwide media by storm after the 1966 release of a movie poster featuring her natural assets in a wild and woolly prehistoric bikini. She was the oldest of thr…
For e brief time, early in the twentieth century, Coney Island was the most dazzling spectacle in the world — a wonderland of light, imagination, and ingenuity that seemed to herald an emerging nation’s promise at the dawn of the century that it would come…
The airship R33 was built by Armstrong Whitworth and was completed after the end of the First World War. Her first flight was in early 1919. She was sent to Pulham airship station where she clocked up over 300 flying hours in tests and the training of c…
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…
The Capilano Suspension Bridge is a simple suspension bridge crossing the Capilano River in the District of North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The current bridge is 140 meters (460 ft) long and 70 meters (230 ft) above the river. The bridge was …
On May 23, 1914, the SS Komagata Maru, a steamship carrying 376 passengers of Punjabi passengers - largely Sikhs but also some Hindus and Muslims - arrived on the west coast of the Dominion of Canada. Based on laws implemented to limit the immigration o…
The Battle of Cable Street was a clash between anti-fascist protestors and the British Union of Fascists on Sunday 4 October 1936. The BUF was an organization inspired by Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and allegedly included 50,000 members at its height befor…
The use of mechanical means for the application of exercise in therapeutics was first systematized and employed in a complete way by Dr, Gustav Zander, of Stockholm, about 1857. Zander’s vision of regular exertion using machines to honor health and well…
The samurai were a class of people who served the aristocracy with arms. The word first appeared in a document of the Heian period; before that time such people had been called mono-no-fu or bushi. Mono means ‘thing’ and fu means ‘man’; that is, men who dea…
David Douglas Duncan was a renowned war photographer and photojournalist, who first encountered Picasso in 1956 when he infamously rang the doorbell of La Californie, the artist’s home in Cannes. At the time, Picasso was in the bathtub and allowed Duncan to…
The Messerschmitt KR200 microcar was, and remains, the most evocative example of the bubble car genre; a tiny, instantly recognizable, three-wheeled tandem-two-seater, bearing of the aviation’s most potent brand names. Targeting solid German citizens to…
Death masks are fascinating but slightly haunting relics from an age before photos. Until cameras rendered them redundant, it was common for notable people to have metal, wax or plaster applied to their face when they had died, creating a “death mask”. …
Princess Diana visited the United States in early November 1985 with her husband Prince Charles. The royal couple stayed at the White House, where they attended a gala dinner on 9 November. The 24-year-old Princess was photographed dancing with the acto…
There are very rare occasions when people can see a new volcano emerging from virtually nowhere. Considered by some as one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World, Parícutin volcano is undoubtedly one of the wonderful geomorphological landscapes of the Globe…