Many wartime photos of dramatic explosions, especially those with action like this one, are in fact staged after the fact. Maybe this one was as well. It may also be from a postwar film. Cameras were not light and handy like today, typically had slow ex…
The Me 264 was designed from the beginning as part of the “Amerika Bomber” project. Its goal was to be able to carry a small load to the United States but also to support U-boat operations far into the Atlantic. The Amerika Bomber was a project to obtai…
An American tank crew stands beside Bernard Herzog - an American citizen who lived in the Philippines - after his liberation from the Santo Tomas internment camp run by the Japanese in the old University of Santo Tomas campus, Manila. As you can see, he…
In May 1910, European royalty gathered in London for the funeral of King Edward VII. Among the mourners were nine reigning kings, who were photographed together in what very well may be the only photograph of nine reigning kings ever taken. Of the nine sov…
The picture was taken during the Battle of Verdun, one of the deadliest battles of the Great War. The concentration of so much fighting in such a small area devastated the land, resulting in miserable conditions for troops on both sides. The shells turn…
In the summer of 1944 the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration, a large-scale, complex offensive against the Nazi invaders in Belarus, Poland and the Baltic republics. This vital Soviet offensive was launched just after Allied troops had landed in …
Looks like this man has seen some horror, a little bit like one thousand-yard stare. Note silver badge on his chest, that badge represents Infantry Assault Badge which was awarded in Silver and Bronze. This decoration was instituted on 20 December 1939 …
Originally intended to prevent crime and drunkenness, it soon became clear that Prohibition did just the opposite, as illegal speakeasies became prevalent and bootlegging essentially led to the establishment of organized crime in the United States. Iron…
Although Adolf Hitler claimed the Germans were of a superior Aryan race of white, tall, blonde hair, blue-eyed individuals, he himself was of modest height, blue-eyed, and brown-haired. Traudl Junge, his last secretary often told in interviews, that peo…
A sixteen-year-old German anti-aircraft soldier of the Hitler Youth, Hans-Georg Henke, taken prisoner in the state of Hessen, Germany. He was a member of the Luftwaffe anti-air squad who burst into tears as his world crumbled around him. His father died…
The facility is the Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt Hermann Goering. It was located in Volkenrode, a suburb of Braunschweig and it was the most advanced wind tunnel test facility in the world at the time, though they were never able to fully calibrate most of t…
The boy did in fact survive the war and became a truck driver. In the photo he's sitting outside where his house used to be. Photographer Toni Frissell regarding this picture: “I was told he had come back from playing and found his house a shambles—his …
The B-32 Dominator was a heavy bomber made for United States Army Air Forces during World War II, and had the distinction of being the last Allied aircraft to be engaged in combat during World War II. The B-32 Dominator was initially intended as insuran…
The "Soviet flag over Reichstag" photograph is full of symbolism and represents a historic moment. Erected in 1894, the Reichstag's architecture was magnificent for its time. The building contributed much to German history and was considered by the Red …
This detonation, known as the Baker Test, was part of Operation Crossroads in Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The purpose of the tests was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on warships. The Crossroads tests were the first of many nuclear tests h…
In the summer of 1911, the American archaeologist Hiram Bingham arrived in Peru with a small team of explorers hoping to find Vilcabamba, the last Inca stronghold to fall to the Spanish. Traveling on foot and by mule, Bingham and his team made their way…