Yesterday Today

20 Fearless Female Heroes Of World War II That You May Have Never Heard Of

War is often seen as something that women should be protected from. Men are often portrayed as stronger, braver, or more prepared to face the horrors of battle. And yet, when given the chance, women have shown time and time again that they can brave those dangers just as well as their male counterparts.

These are the women who have become war heroes in their respective countries and around the world for their exploits during 20th century wars. Some became famous as martyrs to a cause, others for surviving impossible conditions, and still others for their complete selflessness in the face of death.

There are millions who have served. This list of women war heroes sheds a little light on a few.

Susan Travers
War roles: General in the French Foreign Legionnaire

English socialite Susan Travers was in France when World War II started. Initially, she trained as a nurse for the French Red Cross and later became an ambulance driver. Travers escaped to London when France fell to the Nazis. There, she joined the Free French Forces. She was sent to Syria and later North Africa to serve with the French Foreign legion as a driver assigned to Colonel Marie-Pierre Koenig. Travers soon fell in love with him. Her dedication to the married Koenig was fierce.

Even as Rommel’s Afrika Corps attacked Libya, Travers wouldn’t evacuate with female personnel. She and members of Koenig’s unit hid from the invaders for 15 days in sand pits. She drove Koenig through enemy lines under heavy fire, heading up 2,500 troops. They made it safely to the allied camp. After this act of bravery, Travers was promoted to general. She served in Italy, Germany, and France for the rest of the war, sustaining injuries when she drove over a land mine.

After the war, Travers joined the French Foreign Legion. Her request was approved by a fellow officer who knew her reputation and disregarded her gender. She was the only woman to ever serve officially with the French Foreign Legion. She went on to serve in Vietnam. She waited until her husband and Colonel Koenig to pass before publishing her memoir, Tomorrow to Be Brave: A Memoir of the Only Woman Ever to Serve in the French Foreign Legion, in 2000 at the age of 91.

Nancy Wake
War role: Guerrilla fighter, spy

Nancy Wake was a world traveler before the Second World War began. She was born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, and then lived in New York and London working as a journalist. She was living in Marseille with her French husband when Germany invaded the country. Wake didn’t hesitate to work for the French resistance. She hid and smuggled men out of France, transported supplies, and falsified documents.

The Germans captured Wake and interrogated her for days, but she gave up nothing. After her release, she escaped to Britain and joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE). With the SOE, Wake received weapons and paratrooper training. She dropped back into France as a spy. She blew up buildings, engaged in combat with the enemy, and killed an SS sentry with her bare hands.

The Gestapo tortured Wake’s husband when he refused to give up any information about his wife. He died as a result of the torture. Wake would discover this after the war. She ran for office in Australia and published her biography, The White Mouse (the Germans’ nickname for her), in 1988. She died in 2011 at the age of 98.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
War role: Guerilla fighter

At just 18, Kosmodemyanskaya was the first women to be named Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II. She volunteered for the Red Army Western Front as a saboteur and part of the reconnaissance group. The unit went behind enemy lines near Moscow to set land mines and to cut off German supply lines.

Under orders, Kosmodemyanskaya set fire to a stable and a few public buildings in the town of Petrischevo. She was captured by locals, possibly ratted out by one of her fellow resistance fighters. She was tortured by the Germans, forced to strip in the cold and march in the snow, and then beaten and whipped. She did not give up any information and was hanged the next day in the town center. A sign reading “arsonist” hung around her neck. Her body was left hanging for a month with visiting soldiers desecrating her body.

Lydia Litvyak
War role: Flight instructor, Senior Lieutenant, fighter pilot

Besides The Night Witches, the Soviet Air Force had other female units. Chief among them were the female-led bomber, ground-attack, and fighter squadrons. Litvyak was already a seasoned flyer, having been a member of flying clubs since 14. She joined the 586th Fighter Regiment and was an intense and effective instructor. She and a few other pilots were transferred to the all-male 437th Fighter Regiment. On her third combat mission, and after just three days with the squadron, Litvyak shot down Messerschmitt Me-109G and a Junkers Ju-88 bomber that were pursuing her commander. She was the first woman in military history to ever score a solo aerial victory in combat.

The pilot of the 109 survived the dogfight and couldn’t believe he was shot down by a woman. Litvyak, known as the White Rose of Stalingrad, went on to shoot down many more enemy aircraft until she disappeared over the Donbass. The last time she was seen, she was being pursued by around eight 109s. Her body has never been recovered.

Krystyna Skarbek
War role: Polish spy

Skarbeck, who would later change her name to Christine Granville, was a wealthy woman of Jewish heritage. She and her second husband were in Ethiopia when World War II began. She signed up with Britain’s Section D and went to Poland via Hungary to launch her resistance work. Her main role was to pass communications between allies. Skarbeck became known as the “flaming Polish patriot.” Under the guidance of the British, she organized Polish resistance groups and smuggled Polish pilots out of the country.

The Gestapo arrested Skarbeck in 1941, but she was released when she faked having TB by biting her tongue so hard it bled. She and partner Andrzej Kowerski changed their names to Christine Granville and Andrew Kennedy to escape detection. The pair were smuggled out of Poland to Turkey through Yugoslavia. Skarbeck, then Granville, wouldn’t return to Poland because her operative group had been compromised.

After being trained as a radio operator and paratrooper, she dropped into France on D-Day only to find that her resistance area had been infiltrated by the Germans. She hiked 70 miles to escape. Then Skarbeck turned Axis fighters in the Alps. She outed herself to the French who were working for the Gestapo and then orchestrated prisoner releases.

She survived the war and was rumored to be the inspiration for two of Ian Fleming’s Bond girls. Despite having survived the Gestapo, imprisonment, and many other dangers, Skarbeck’s life came to a violent end when she was murdered by a stalker, Dennis Muldowney, in 1952.

Eileen Nearne
War role: British spy

Nearne and two of her siblings served in the SOE. At 23, she parachuted into occupied France as a resistance message courier. Her communications centered mainly on the arrangement of weapons drops. A smooth talker, she escaped capture several times, but was eventually arrested and tortured by the Nazis. She was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp and later transferred to a labor camp where she escaped during a transfer to another camp. When she came across the Gestapo, she talked her way out of identification and arrest. Nearne hid in a church until the town was liberated by the Americans.

After the war, Nearne battled psychological issues and lived a quiet life with fellow SOE spy and sister Jacqueline until the latter’s death in 1982. Nearne died in 2010 and her body wasn’t discovered for several days. A search of her apartment revealed her war time resistance and spy role. She received a decorated hero’s funeral.

Annie Fox
War role: Nurse

Lt. Annie G. Fox just happened to be on duty at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. As the chief nurse on duty, Fox swung into action to tend to the injured and dying service personnel on the base. She initially received the Purple Heart, but when the requirements changed in 1944 (the recipient needed to have sustained battle wounds), Fox’s medal was rescinded. She received the Bronze Star instead.

Lise Børsum
War role: Refugee smuggler

Børsum was the wife of a physician in Oslo. She and her husband, Ragnar, smuggled Jews out of Nazi-occupied countries during World War II. They were arrested in 1943, and her husband was later released. She was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany and was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross in 1945. She wrote a bestselling book about her war experiences and dedicated her life to ending concentration camps all over the world. Børsum was an activist and humanitarian right up until her death in 1985. Her daughter, actress Bente Børsum, honored her mother with a stage play she wrote and performed.

Ruby Bradley
War role: POW nurse, Colonel

As a career Army nurse prior to World War II, Colonel Ruby Bradley served as the hospital administrator in Luzon in the Philippines. When the Japanese invaded, she and a doctor and fellow nurse hid in the hills. Eventually, they were turned in by locals and taken to the base, now a prison camp. Bradley and her staff spent threes years treating fellow POWs, delivering babies, and performing surgery. They also smuggled supplies to keep the POWs healthy, although Bradley herself weighed a mere 84 pounds when the Americans liberated the camp in 1945.

After the war, Bradley served as the 8th Army’s chief nurse on the front lines of the Korean war in 1950. She managed to evacuate all of the wounded soldiers in her care under heavy fire. She was the last to jump aboard the plane just as her ambulance was shelled. She was promoted to Colonel. She retired in 1963, but worked as a supervising nurse in West Virginia for 17 years. She received a hero’s funeral with full honors in 2002 at Arlington National Cemetery. She was 94.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko
War role: Russian sniper, major

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was already a celebrated sharpshooter before joining the Soviet Army. She was a student at Kiev University when World War II started and was part of 2,000 female snipers sent to the front. Only 500 survived. Older and more skilled than her fellow snipers, Pavlichenko had 309 confirmed kills, including 36 enemy snipers. Her male counterpart, Ivan Sidorenko, had 500 confirmed kills after six years of combat.

After being wounded by mortar fire, she went on a public relations and recruiting tour in the U.S. and Canada, dealing with sexist questions about her weight and skirt length from reporters. She would also become a sniper trainer. After her war time service, Pavlichenko became a historian at Kiev University. She also served on the Soviet Committee of the Veterans of War.

Aleda Lutz
War role: Flight nurse

Lutz volunteered with the 803rd Military Air Evacuation Squad. Their missions were to rapidly remove injured soldiers from the front as fresh soldiers came in. She flew 196 evac missions that brought back 3,500 men, logging more hours than any other flight nurse. In December of 1944, the C47 carrying Lutz and injured soldiers from Lyon crashed. The Veterans Administration Hospital in Saginaw, Michigan was renamed in her honor in 1990.

Noor Inayat Khan
War role: Princess, spy

Princess Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan’s father was Indian Sufi master and musician Inayat Khan, and her mother, Ora Ray Baker, was the niece of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy. Her paternal great great grandfather ruled the Kingdom of Mysore. Although she was born in Russia, Khan held a British passport. She was living in France when Germany invaded. Khan and her family managed to escape to England where she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She also worked for the British spy agency, SOE, as a wireless operator. The SOE sent her back to France in June of 1943, where she transmitted information back by Morse code. Even as other radio operators were discovered and arrested, Khan was determined to continue her work.

She was arrested by the SD (German intelligence) in October of 1943 and aggressively fought back. She refused to give up information under interrogation and sent a coded message to the SOE, which they ignored for some reason. When the Germans discovered her coded messages and notebooks, they used it to lure other British spies to France for arrest. Khan escaped briefly and was held in shackles for ten months after being caught. She was sent to Dachau concentration camp in September of 1944 and immediately executed.

Natalia Peshkova
War role: Combat medic

Peshkova was swept up along with a lot of young Russian girls in the country’s rush to pull together forces to fight the Germans. She was recruited right out of school at the age of 17 to be a combat medic. Peshkova found herself in such a poorly equipped unit that the weapons continuously malfunctioned. Disease, starvation, and the loss of a boot to a hungry horse was part of Pehkova’s tough stint in the Russian army.

At one point, she was separated from her unit and managed disguised herself while also hiding her weapon. If she discarded it, she would have been executed by her own military. She finally made it back and went on to become Sergeant Major, and was allowed to finish her education.

Reba Z. Whittle
War role: POW Nurse, lieutenant

Flight nurse Whittle is the only U.S. female solder to be a POW in the European theater of World War II. Whittle served in the 813th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron and her plane was shot down over Aachen, Germany in September of 1944. Whittle was one of only a few survivors and the Germans didn’t know what to do with her. The Swiss discovered her among the POWs and arranged for her release, along with another 109 male POWs, on Jan. 25th, 1945. Surprisingly, Whittle’s POW experience went undocumented and she was denied POW retirement benefits. This was unfortunate, as her war injuries prevented her from flying. She worked in an Army hospital in California until 1946.

After years of being denied benefits, Whittle received a settlement in 1955. She died of breast cancer in 1981. Her POW status was confirmed in 1983.

Barbara Lauwers
War role: Propaganda master

Czech born Lauwers had a law degree when she she moved with her husband to the United States in 1941. After she became a U.S. citizen in 1943, she joined the Women’s Army Corps and was assigned to the OSS, America’s precursor to the CIA. Lauwers was involved in a propaganda mission called Operation Sauerkraut in 1944. The goal was to demoralize German soldiers. Because Lauwers was fluent in five languages, she was a essential in turning German POWs into counter operatives.

The mission was quite successful and Lauwers and her counterparts were adept at convincing the Germans to turn. Lauwers continued to design, and then run, other propaganda operations across Europe. She also trained the POWs in intelligence gathering. Her propaganda tactics convinced 600 Czech soldiers to turn to the Allied side.

Violette Szabo
War role: Spy

Szabo was married to a French Foreign Legion officer Etienne Szabo. He was killed in action in 1942 and Szabo joined the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1943, vowing to do as much damage to the enemy as possible. She trained as a courier for missions in occupied France. She reorganized a resistance unit, damaged roads and bridges, and sent back regular reports.

She talked herself out of trouble a couple of times, but her luck ran out after she parachuted into France and sabotaged German communications. Under arrest by the German, Szabo was tortured and eventually transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp. She and two other SOE agents were executed by an SS officer at the camp.

Hannie Schaft
War role: Resistance fighter

Jannetie “Hannie” Schaft was a Dutch resistance fighter who refused to swear an oath to the Nazis. She joined Raad van Verzet, a resistance group with a communist ideology. She spied on soldier activity, aided refuges, and sabotaged targets. Her reputation as “the girl with the red hair” would eventually lead to her downfall. She colored her hair to cover up the red but after she was captured by the Nazis, her hair began to grow out.

The Germans then discovered that they had the legendary spy and resistance fighter in captivity. She was executed on April 17th, 1945. She was defiant up until the end, taunting the soldier who shot in the head and merely grazing her. She said, “I can shoot better than that.” The second shot killed her but not before leaving an ever lasting impression on her captors and witnesses. Schaft was 24. She received a state funeral after the war, attended by Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch royal family.

Felice Schragenheim
War role: Underground operative

What we know of Schragenheim has been preserved through her lover Lilly Wust, the former wife of a Nazi officer, and a survivor of World War II. What is known is that Schragenheim hid her identity as a Jew while working for a Nazi newspaper. She passed information for the underground resistance and smuggled Jews out of Germany. She operated in plain sight and maintained the appearance of someone well-connected to Nazis.

Wust and Schragenheim met in a cafe and instantly had feelings for one another. Wust was unaware of Schragengeim’s Jewish ethnicity, but wasn’t upset when she eventually found out. Wust and Schragengeim kept their relationship secret while the latter continued to operate for the resistance. After a day at the lake together, the Gestapo showed up at Wust’s home and arrested Schragenheim. Wust kept track of Schragenheim’s transfers from one concentration camp to the next and regularly corresponded with her, signing her letters as Aimee. Schragenheim managed to smuggle letters back to Wust, signed “your caged Jaguar.”

It was Wusts’s visit to Theresienstadt that sealed the fate of Schragenheim. Wust was thrown out by the camp director, and Schragenheim’s subsequent “death march” may have hastened her death. She succumbed to TB. Heartbroken, Wust divorced her husband and hid Jewish women in her basement to evade capture.

Wust held onto Schragenheim’s letters right up until her death in 2006. They were donated to the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Jerusalem. Wust dreamed of being reunited with a woman she considered reflection of herself and her spouse. “Twice since she left, I’ve felt her breath, and a warm presence next to me. I dream that we will meet again – I live in hope.” Wust received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Queen Wilhelmina
War role: Dutch resistance inspiration

Queen Wilhelmina was removed from the Netherlands against her wishes when the Nazis invaded. She foiled a plot to be kidnapped by the Nazis on the way to exile. From Britain, she broadcast messages of encouragement and hope to the Dutch resistance via Radio Oranie. Winston Churchill was a fan, calling the queen “the only real man among the governments-in-exile in London.”

Elsie Ott
War role: Flight nurse, lieutenant

Ott was a trained nurse who joined the Army Air Corps in 1941. She was sent to Karachi India where she was part of a mission that would evacuate injured soldiers as fresh troops were brought in. The plane didn’t have medical equipment sufficient to handle the serious injuries and disease of the troops. Ott’s only help was an army medic. The plane made several stops across the six-day flight after leaving India. She continued on with these kinds of flights for the rest of her career and was promoted to captain in 1946. She was also instrumental in outfitting the flights for optimum care of patients.

16 Vintage Photos of a Young Eva Perón Before Becoming the First Lady of Argentina

María Eva Duarte de Perón; née María Eva Duarte; (7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952), better known as just Eva Perón or by the nickname Evita was an Argentine actress, politician, activist, and philanthropist who served as First Lady of Argentina from June 1946 until her death in July 1952, as the wife of Argentine President, Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974). She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she moved to the nation’s capital of Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.

She met Colonel Juan Perón on 22 January 1944 during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. The two were married the following year. Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina in June 1946; during the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the pro-Peronist trade unions, primarily for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, championed women’s suffrage in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation’s first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party.

In 1951, Eva Perón announced her candidacy for the Peronist nomination for the office of Vice President of Argentina, receiving great support from the Peronist political base, low-income and working-class Argentines who were referred to as descamisados or “shirtless ones”. Opposition from the nation’s military and bourgeoisie, coupled with her declining health, ultimately forced her to withdraw her candidacy. In 1952, shortly before her death from cancer at 33, Eva Perón was given the title of “Spiritual Leader of the Nation” by the Argentine Congress. She was given a state funeral upon her death, a prerogative generally reserved for heads of state.

Eva Perón has become a part of international popular culture, most famously as the subject of the musical Evita (1976). Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez claims that Evita has never left the collective consciousness of Argentines. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the first woman elected President of Argentina, claims that women of her generation owe a debt to Eva for “her example of passion and combativeness”. (Wikipedia)

Here is a photo collection of beautiful young Evita before becoming first lady.

Ethel & Julius Rosenberg: The Only Spies Executed During the Cold War

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who spied on behalf of the Soviet Union and were tried, convicted, and executed by the federal government of the United States. They provided top-secret information about radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines and were accused of transmitting valuable nuclear weapon designs; at that time the United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons.

Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass (who had made a plea agreement), Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.

For decades, the Rosenbergs’ sons Michael and Robert Meeropol, and many other defenders maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, much information concerning them was declassified, including a trove of decoded Soviet cables, code-named VENONA, which detailed Julius’s role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets and Ethel’s role as an accessory.

Their sons’ current position is that Julius was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, though not of atomic spying, while Ethel was only generally aware of his activities. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be posthumously and legally exonerated.

In 2014, five historians who had published works based on the Rosenberg case wrote that newly available Soviet documents show that Ethel Rosenberg hid money and espionage paraphernalia for Julius, served as an intermediary for communications with his Soviet intelligence contacts, relayed her personal evaluation of individuals whom Julius considered recruiting, and was present at meetings with his sources. They support the assertion that Ethel persuaded her sister-in-law Ruth Greenglass to travel to New Mexico to recruit her brother David Greenglass as a spy.

The Rosenbergs were executed on June 19th, 1953. They were the only spies executed during the Cold War.

**Julius and Ethel Rosenberg dressed in swimming attire, circa late 1940s**

**Mrs Ethel talks to reporters in her Knickerbocker Village home after her husband Julius was arrested by the FBI on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage, New York, 18 Jul 1950.**

**Mrs. Ethel Rosenberg, 34, dries dishes in her knickerbocker village home, New York, 18 Jul 1950.**

**Ethel Rosenberg after her arrest on charges of espionage, New York, August 11, 1950.**

U.S. Deputy Marshals Harry McCabe (left) and James A. Shannon escort Mrs. Ethel Rosenberg, 35, as she appears in Federal Court, to be arraigned on an indictment charging her and her 33 year old husband Julius, were members of the atomic spy ring for Soviet Russia, New York, August 23, 1950.

**Julius and Ethel Rosenberg leave Federal Court after being indicted on charges of espionage in the Klaus Fuchs atomic spy ring, New York, 23 Aug 1950.**

**Julius and Ethel kissed passionately in prison car outside Federal Court, New York, August 23, 1950.**

Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, arrive at Federal Court for the opening of their trial on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage by passing secret atomic information to Russia. With the couple is Harry McCabe (left), U.S. Deputy Marshal, New York, 6 March 1951.

**Ethel and Julius Rosenberg sitting in police van after being convicted of espionage, New York, April, 1951.**

Mrs. Sophie Rosenberg addressed a rally at Union Square today and made an impassioned appeal to President Eisenhower to save the lives of her son, Julius, and his wife, Ethel, convicted atom spies who are scheduled to die in the chair at Sing Sing next Thursday night. Asserting their innocence, she told the sympathetic gathering “They never stole any atom secrets,” and made a public plea to the President and world opinion to save her children, Manhattan, New York, 11 June 1953.

**Michael (10) and Robert Rosenberg (6), the two sons of executed spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, look out from a car, June 16, 1953.**

Michael Rosenberg pats his younger brother Robert and tries his best to comfort him, as the youngsters ride away from Sing Sing prison after visiting their parents for the last time before they were executed, Ossining, New York, June 16, 1953. The Rosenbergs are scheduled to be executed on June 18th.

Demonstrators gather at Pennsylvania Station in New York, June 18th, to prepare for a trip to Washington, where they will parade with placards in a protest against the death sentence for convicted atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The day before, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas granted a stay of execution for the couple doomed to die in the electric chair on June 18th.

**Protests in Washington demanded the execution of Julius Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, on charges of espionage for the Soviet Union, June 19th, 1953.**

**The bodies of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg lie in repose at the L. J. Morris Funeral Home Chapel in Brooklyn, New York, June 20th, 1953.**

Rosenbergs laid to rest. The coffins of executed atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg lie (foreground) ready to be interred at the Wellwood Cemetery near Farmingdale, L.I., June 21, with a crowd in attendance and flowers arranged near the grave site. In center, middleground, Mrs. Sophie Rosenberg, mother of Julius, is escorted in tears by Emanuel Bloch (dark coat, gray hat), principal defense attorney for the late Rosenbergs. On Mrs. Rosenberg’s other side is a physician. The children, Michael 10, and Robert 6, were not there.

Vintage Photographs of Edinburgh, Scotland From the 1840s

In 1840s Edinburgh, painter David Octavius Hill and engineer Robert Adamson formed the city’s first photography studio, which created thousands of images until Adamson’s sudden death. They are best known for their wonderful portraits, but over the course of their sadly short partnership they also created quite a few city views.

At a time when most photographers worked with daguerreotypes, Hill and Adamson used the negative-positive process, creating negatives on paper (calotypes) which could then be printed on salted paper. The Special Collections at the University of Glasgow holds large numbers of their original negatives, and their online collection provides digitally reversed positive images.

The photographs are wonderful not only as some of the earliest views of a beautiful city, but for the aesthetic of the early paper negative. Even with skill level like Hill and Adamson’s, the process was still highly unpredictable. The photographs are imperfect–which is ultimately a testament to the incredible fact of their existence.

**Edinburgh Castle and the Grassmarket.**

**View from Calton Hill, after October 1844.**

**The National Commerical Bank, George Street.**

**The Edinburgh Tolbooth, with St. Columba’s Free Church under construction in the foreground, 1844-45.**

**View of the New Town from Calton Hill, after October 1844.**

Photos by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson

The Hidden Secrets of the Moai: The Famous Easter Island Heads Also Have Bodies Too!

Practically everyone has seen the iconic images of the Easter Island heads. What you may not have known is that those Easter Island heads actually have hidden buried bodies. Archaeologists have uncovered the bodies associated with the heads and found interesting discoveries that further our knowledge of the Easter Island civilization and how they created the monoliths.

The Easter Island heads are known as Moai by the Rapa Nui people who carved the figures in the tropical South Pacific directly west of Chile. The Moai monoliths, carved from stone found on the island, are between 1,100 and 1,500 CE. A bit of an aside, but CE refers to the “Common Era” and sometimes replaces the use of AD in historical and archaeological communities.

The reason the bodies have been hidden underground for so long is that the statues were build on the side of a volcano, which helpfully erupted all over the statues and buried them up to their necks.

Archaeologists have studied the statues on the island for about a century, and have actually known about the hidden bodies since the earliest excavations in 1914. The first photographs of the hidden torsos emerged in 2012, two years after Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project, began excavating the monoliths with the help of local Rapa Nui people. These amazing pictures below show moment archaeologists discovered Easter Island statues were covered in tattoos:

50 Amazing Vintage Photos From the 1940s Volume 4

Subscribe to get access

Read more of this content when you subscribe today.

**Broadway dancers at Coney Island, 1943**

30 Outrageous Vintage Cigarette Ads Claimed That “More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette”

One common technique used by the tobacco industry to reassure a worried public was to incorporate images of physicians in their ads. The none-too-subtle message was that if the doctor, with all of his expertise, chose to smoke a particular brand, then it must be safe. Unlike with celebrity and athlete endorsers, the doctors depicted were never specific individuals, because physicians who engaged in advertising would risk losing their license. (It was contrary to accepted medical ethics at the time for doctors to advertise.) Instead, the images always presented an idealized physician wise, noble, and caring who enthusiastically partook of the smoking habit. All of the doctors in these ads came out of central casting from among actors dressed up to look like doctors. Little protest was heard from the medical community or organized medicine, perhaps because the images showed the profession in a highly favorable light. This genre of ads regularly appeared in medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, an organization which for decades collaborated closely with the industry. The big push to document health hazards also did not arrive until later.

The ads in this particular theme are all from a single R. J. Reynolds campaign which ran from 1940 to 1949 and claimed that More Doctors smoke Camels. In the majority of these advertisements, the More Doctors campaign slogan was included alongside other popular Camel campaigns such as T-Zone ( T for Throat, T for Taste ), More people are smoking Camels than ever before, and Experience is the Best Teacher. In this way, Camel was able to maintain consistency across its advertisements.

Within the More Doctors campaign, a story can be told through a series of advertisements. The story documents a young boy s journey following in his father s footsteps into the field of medicine. In the first ad of this series, an obstetrician tells his little boy, Now Daddy has to go to another birthday party, son as he leaves his son s party to deliver a baby. Next, a doctor tells his grown-up boy, It s all up to you, son, as the young man decides whether or not to follow a career in medicine. Then, the young medical student, class of 46, is joined by his father, class of 06 during a lecture. Later, the young man is an interne, not quite on his own yet. Finally, he is seen opening up his very own private practice in the company of his adoring wife. This storyline, though not explicit, works to further portray the doctor as a family man and a determined, committed, self-sacrificing individual.

In an attempt to substantiate the More Doctors claim, R.J. Reynolds paid for surveys to be conducted during medical conventions using two survey methods: Doctors were gifted free packs of Camel cigarettes at tobacco company booths and them upon exiting the exhibit hall, were then immediately asked to indicate their favorite brand or were asked which cigarette they carried in their pocket.

Rare Photographs Show the Bedroom in Which Marilyn Monroe Was Found Dead on August 6, 1962

On August 5, 1962, the mysterious death of one of the most popular Hollywood stars, Marilyn Monroe, shook the world.

At approximately 3:00 a.m., Marilyn’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray, noticed Monroe’s bedroom light was on and the door was locked. She immediately called Monroe’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, on whose advice she looked in through a window and saw Marilyn lying facedown on her bed, covered by a sheet and clutching a telephone receiver.

After Dr. Greenson arrived, he entered the room by breaking a window and found Marilyn Monroe dead. At 4:25 a.m., the Los Angeles Police Department got called into the scene.

After a brief investigation, the LAPD concluded that Marilyn Monroe’s death was “caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide.”

Despite the coroner’s verdict, people are still offering numerous conspiracy theories about what really happened to Marilyn Monroe.

**The bedroom in which Marilyn Monroe was found dead of a barbituate overdose on August 6, 1962.**

**The bedroom in which Marilyn Monroe was found dead on August 6, 1962.**

**Police entering Marilyn Monroe’s bedroom.**

**The lifeless body of Marilyn Monroe.**

**Police photo showing the pill bottles at Monroe’s bedside.**

**The corpse of actress Marilyn Monroe is removed to the morgue on a stretcher by two police officers.**

The body of Marilyn Monroe was released by the coroner this afternoon 8/6, and taken back to the mortuary in preparation for burial. Marilyn’s body was at the county morgue for an autopsey and subsequant toxicological test.

**The body of actress Marilyn Monroe arrives at the mortuary August 5th. The actress was found dead in her home earlier in the day from an overdose of barbiturates.**

**The police warning notice posted on American actor Marilyn Monroe’s front door after her death, Los Angeles, California.**

**Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper, Eunice Murray and handyman Norman Jeffries, leaving the house after her death.**

American baseball player Joe DiMaggio wipes a tear from his eye after bursting into tears at the funeral of Marilyn Monroe in Westwood Memorial Park, Hollywood. He was the second of Monroe’s three husbands.

D-Day in Color: Stunning Colorized Photos of Allied Troops Landing Normandy Beaches in June, 1944

Some 156,000 Allied troops landed on five Normandy beaches during the operation on June 6, 1944, which would ultimately lead to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history and saw 4,400 allied troops lose their lives.

Striking shots show men storming French beaches under ominous grey skies for the invasion, glider pilots on landing craft, and British Airborne Pathfinders at Harwell checking their watches on the night of June 5, 1944, hours before the battle commenced.

The original black and white photographs were painstakingly colorized by electrician Royston Leonard, with each snap taking between four and five hours to complete.

“As time goes by I find I am doing more World War Two pictures and giving them a bit of colour helps the younger generation to connect and not just see them as something that happened long ago,” he said. “In the images I see a world that has gone mad and men and women pulled from their lives to sort out the mess. World War Two shows people at their best and at their worst. We must look and learn and not let it happen again.”

**The astonishing scale of the invasion can be seen in this image taken of the American forces arriving on Utah Beach.**

**U.S. troops from the USS Joseph T. Dickman wait to disembark from their landing craft as they approach Utah Beach on June 6 1944.**

**A craft from the USS Samuel Chase lands troops of the US Army First Division on Omaha Beach.**

**Glider pilots take the opportunity for a quick cigarette as they are crowded onto a landing craft.**

**Royal Marines descend from landing craft with their heavy backpacks, weapons and equipment on Juno beach.**

**American troops arrive on a Normandy beach in a lengthy procession from their landing crafts.**

**British troops show their true grit as they help injured comrades onto Sword Beach.**

**US Army Fourth Infantry Division troops take a breather after making their way onto Utah Red Beach.**

**British Airborne Pathfinders check their watches on the night before the invasion.**

**Reinforcements arrive by sea to bolster U.S. troop numbers on the Normandy front.**

**The USS LST-21, manned by the U.S. coastguard unloads British Army tanks and trucks onto a Rhino barge in the opening hours of their invasion of Gold Beach.**

**Troops load U.S. LSTs with artillery equipment, vehicles and troops in Brixham, England before they head for Normandy.**

**Nazi General Erwin Rommel inspects defences ahead of D-Day. On the actual day of the invasion he was away from the front celebrating his wife’s birthday.**

**German troops camouflage a Panzer VI Tiger tank with undergrowth in the Normandy village of Villers-Bocage.**

**Members of the 22nd Independent Parachute Company, 6th Airborne Division attend a briefing ahead of the D-Day invasion.**

**Troops establish a radio communications post after landing.**

Images: Royston Leonard

25 Amazing Photos Showing Everyday Life in Detroit in the 1940s

Detroit is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan, the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the county seat of Wayne County. The municipality of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 27th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and 14th-largest in the United States. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music and as a repository for art, architecture and design, along with its historical automotive background.

Detroit is a major port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest regional economy in the Midwest, behind Chicago and ahead of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, and the 14th-largest in the United States. Detroit is best known as the center of the U.S. automobile industry, and the “Big Three” auto manufacturers General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis North America are all headquartered in Metro Detroit. As of 2007, the Detroit metropolitan area is the number one exporting region among 310 defined metropolitan areas in the United States. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is among the most important hubs in the United States. Detroit and its neighboring Canadian city Windsor are connected through a highway tunnel, railway tunnel, and the Ambassador Bridge, which is the second-busiest international crossing in North America, after San Diego–Tijuana.

In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, the future city of Detroit. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. The city’s population became the fourth-largest in the nation in 1920, after only New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia, with the expansion of the auto industry in the early 20th century. As Detroit’s industrialization took off, the Detroit River became the busiest commercial hub in the world. The strait carried over 65 million tons of shipping commerce through Detroit to locations all over the world each year; the freight throughput was more than three times that of New York and about four times that of London. By the 1940s, the city’s population remained the fourth-largest in the country. However, due to industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, and rapid suburbanization, among other reasons, Detroit entered a state of urban decay and lost considerable population from the late 20th century to the present. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit’s population has declined by more than 65 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, which it successfully exited in December 2014, when the city government regained control of Detroit’s finances.

Detroit’s diverse culture has had both local and international influence, particularly in music, with the city giving rise to the genres of Motown and techno, and playing an important role in the development of jazz, hip-hop, rock, and punk. The rapid growth of Detroit in its boom years resulted in a globally unique stock of architectural monuments and historic places. Since the 2000s conservation efforts have managed to save many architectural pieces and achieved several large-scale revitalizations, including the restoration of several historic theatres and entertainment venues, high-rise renovations, new sports stadiums, and a riverfront revitalization project. More recently, the population of Downtown Detroit, Midtown Detroit, and various other neighborhoods have increased. An increasingly popular tourist destination, Detroit receives 19 million visitors per year. In 2015, Detroit was named a “City of Design” by UNESCO, the first U.S. city to receive that designation. (Wikipedia)

Subscribe to get access

Subscribe to continue reading

Yesterday Today