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…
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…
Skylab was America’s first step toward making space something other than a nice place to visit. Developed in the shadow of the Apollo moon missions and using hardware originally created for Apollo, the Skylab space station took the nation’s astronauts from…
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…
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…
The process that led up to the national park idea is complex. From arts and literature came the Romantic movement, which encouraged the experience of the mountains and wilderness. Authors like Henry Davia Thoreau and Washington Irving exhorted Americans…
By the outbreak of the Second World War, Poland’s Military Aviation, quite commonly and incorrectly called the Polish Air Force, was inferior in every aspect. From having the world’s first all-metal built and fastest fighter plane in the mid-1930s to fl…
The flight attendant occupation took permanent shape in the 1930s as “women’s work,” that is, work not only predominately performed by women but also defined as embodying white, middle-class ideals of femininity. As the nascent commercial aviation indus…
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…
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…
When the Germans and their allies invaded Southeastern Europe, a large number of civilians (over 40,000) escaped from their homelands. Many fled all the way across the Mediterranean, hopping from island to island in search of shelter and safety. The British…
By the time the sun rose in New York City on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first and second waves of American troops had come ashore under heavy German fire on the beaches of Normandy. Working under the command of General Eisenhower, an armada of 5,0…
After centuries of isolation and several unsuccessful attempts by the Western nations at opening Japan to international relations and trade, the United States Navy sent Commodore C. Perry in 1853 with a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the Emperor…
In May 1915, Italy attacked Austria-Hungary along the Isonzo River and in the Trentino, hoping to conquer territory which it believed to be rightfully Italian. Unlike the larger-scale battles, this battle was dictated by the landscape of the sizable mounta…
On September 16, 1920, as hundreds of Wall Street workers headed out for lunch, a horse-drawn wagon parked in front of J. P. Morgan Bank — the world’s most powerful banking institution. Inside the wagon, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dynamite with 500 pounds (2…
The first flamethrower, in the modern sense, is usually credited to Richard Fiedler. He submitted evaluation models of his Flammenwerfer to the German Army in 1901. The most significant model submitted was a portable device, consisting of a vertical sin…
In the 1950s and 1960s, there existed a 'parallel world' of American advertising where mainstream brands targeted the African-American middle and upper classes in lead magazines such as Ebony and Jet. These ads never ran in wider society and show a very differ…
On one side towered a 7ft 3in (2.21m) German man-mountain who quit his job with an American freak show to join the Wehrmacht. On the other stood a 5ft 7in (170 cm) AP photographer Eddie Worth. Jakob Nacken stood quietly while the British troops frisked …
In the 19th century, there were no real institutions to regulate the advertising claims of health products. In such a climate, a popular so-called “patent medicine” market flourished. Manufacturers of these medical products often made misleading claims …
Decades after her death, Eva Braun, the long-time mistress of Adolf Hitler, remains a mysterious and notorious figure. This is the photographic life story of a woman who met Hitler as a teenager and, in the last days of the war, became the Führer’s wife…