Founded in 1918 by siblings Harry and Jack Cohn and friend Joel Brandt as CBC Film Sales Corporation, Columbia Pictures is one of the oldest studios in Hollywood. In its early years, the studio mostly churned out low-budget fare, leading the Cohns and Brandt to re-brand themselves in 1924 as the more sophisticated-sounding Columbia Pictures.Continue reading “In 1992, a 28-Year-Old Jenny Joseph Modeling for What Would Become Today’s Columbia Pictures Logo”
Category Archives: event & history
Opening Day at Disneyland, 1955
During the week of July 17, 1955, Walt Disney’s new theme park, named “Disneyland,” opened to the public in Anaheim, California. The 17th, a Sunday, was intended to be an “international press preview,” limited to selected invitees who could ride the attractions, witness the parades, and take part in the televised dedication of the park.Continue reading “Opening Day at Disneyland, 1955”
Execution by Cannon in Shiraz, Iran From the Mid-Late 19th Century
Execution by cannon was a method of execution in which the victim was typically tied to the mouth of a cannon which was then fired. The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head isContinue reading “Execution by Cannon in Shiraz, Iran From the Mid-Late 19th Century”
The Last Photos of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Wife Sophie in Sarajevo Moments Before Their Assassination, 1914
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28, 1914, is widely seen as the central, precipitating event of the First World War: the spark that lit the conflagration. In the summer of 1914, Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie accepted an invitation to visit the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. He hadContinue reading “The Last Photos of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Wife Sophie in Sarajevo Moments Before Their Assassination, 1914”
In 1944, George Stinney Jr., 14, Became the Youngest American Executed in the 20th Century When He Was Sent to the Electric Chair
George Stinney Jr. became the youngest person to be executed in the U.S in the 20th century when he was sent to the electric chair in 1944, but more than 70 years after his death his conviction was been overturned. On the afternoon of March 23, 1944, Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames,Continue reading “In 1944, George Stinney Jr., 14, Became the Youngest American Executed in the 20th Century When He Was Sent to the Electric Chair”
Can It Be Done? These Vintage Ideas From the 1930s That Seem to Have Been Implemented Today
That television newspaper + the car phone = the smartphone, right? And how about Skype for intramural television? All this is from Scoops magazine UK (1934/1935).
20 Disturbing Pictures That Show What Life in the U.S Looked Like Under Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas in the United States were also affected by formal and informal policies of segregation, but many states outside the South had adopted laws, beginning in the late nineteenth century, that variously banned discrimination in public accommodationsContinue reading “20 Disturbing Pictures That Show What Life in the U.S Looked Like Under Jim Crow Laws”
The Story Behind John Lennon’s Psychedelic Rolls-Royce Phantom V
Only 517 Rolls-Royce Phantom Vs were manufactured. It was an ultra-exclusive car, weighing 2.5 tonnes with a 3.6-metre wheelbase and the same 6.2L V8 engine as the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II. The British Crown owned two of them, ridden by Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother. However, even they are outshone by the car’sContinue reading “The Story Behind John Lennon’s Psychedelic Rolls-Royce Phantom V”
The Katyn Massacre: When The Soviets Murdered 22,000 Polish Men — Then Blamed The Nazis
The Katyn massacre[a] was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD (“People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs”, the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere, the massacreContinue reading “The Katyn Massacre: When The Soviets Murdered 22,000 Polish Men — Then Blamed The Nazis”
Nat Love, America’s Greatest Black Cowboy of the Wild West
Mounted on my favorite horse, my … lariat near my hand, and my trusty guns in my belt … I felt I could defy the world. — Nat Love in The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, 1907 Thousands of black cowboys drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail after the Civil War, but only NatContinue reading “Nat Love, America’s Greatest Black Cowboy of the Wild West”
