The Golden Age of Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the period of classical Hollywood cinema, started with the silent movie era and the first major feature-length silent movie called The Birth of a Nation (1915). The Golden Age of Hollywood ended with the demise of the studio system, theemergence of television, the rising costs and subsequent losses notably Cleopatra (1963).
During the Golden Age of Hollywood, thousands of movies were issued from the Hollywood studios, and of course the classic beauties played very important roles in this era.
These rare and gorgeous color photographs that captured portraits of classic beauties in the late 1930s and 1940s.
The Gulag was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced-labour camp-system that was set up under Vladimir Lenin and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s. English-language speakers also use the word gulag to refer to any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union, including camps which existed in post-Stalin times. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as by NKVD troikas or by other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized by many as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.
The agency was first administered by the GPU, later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The Solovki prison camp, the first corrective labor camp constructed after the revolution, was established in 1918 and legalized by a decree “On the creation of the forced-labor camps” on April 15, 1919. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s. According to Nicolas Werth, author of The Black Book of Communism, the yearly mortality rate in the Soviet concentration camps strongly varied, reaching 5% (1933) and 20% (1942–1943) while dropping considerably in the post-war years (about 1 to 3% per year at the beginning of the 1950s). The emergent consensus among scholars who utilize official archival data is that of the 18 million who were sent to the Gulag from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million perished there or as a result of their detention. However, some historians question the reliability of such data and instead rely heavily on literary sources come to higher estimations. Archival researchers have found “no plan of destruction” of the gulag population and no statement of official intent to kill them, and prisoner releases vastly exceeded the number of deaths in the Gulag.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who survived eight years of Gulag incarceration, gave the term its international repute with the publication of The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. The author likened the scattered camps to “a chain of islands”, and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates (colloquially referred to as simply “camps”) and 423 labor colonies in the Soviet Union. Many mining and industrial towns and cities in northern and eastern Russia and in Kazakhstan such as Karaganda, Norilsk, Vorkuta and Magadan, were originally blocks of camps built by prisoners and subsequently run by ex-prisoners. (Wikipedia).
Young boys in a gulag stare at the cameraman from their beds. Molotov, USSR. Date unspecified.A miner who died working in a forced labor camp is put to rest under the ground. Vaygach Island, USSR. 1931.Polish families are deported to Siberia as part of the Soviet Union’s relocation plan. Influential families in conquered states would often be forced into labor to help systematically destroy their culture. Poland. 1941.Not every political prisoner was lucky enough to pushed into forced labor. Here, the bodies of thousand of Polish people lie dead in a mass grave. Katyn, Russia. April 30, 1943.The dead bodies of political prisoners, murdered by the secret police, lie inside of a prison camp. Tarnopil, Ukraine. July 10, 1941.Convicts sleep inside of a sod-covered house in a Siberian gulag. Siberia, USSR. Date unspecified.Posters of Stalin and Marx gaze down at the prisoners inside of their sleeping quarters. USSR. Circa 1936-1937.Prisoners at work building the White Sea–Baltic Canal, one of the first major projects in the Soviet Union made entirely through slave labor. 12,000 people died while working amid the harsh conditions at the canal. USSR. 1932.The chiefs of the gulags. These men were responsible for forcing more than 100,000 prisoners to work. USSR. July 1932Prisoners in a Soviet gulag dig a ditch while a guard looks on. USSR. Circa 1936-1937.Stalin comes out to inspect the progress on the Moscow Canal, which is being built by imprisoned workers. Moscow, USSR. April 22, 1937.A gold mine that, during Stalin’s reign, was worked through prison labor. Magadan, USSR. August 20, 1978.Philosopher Pavel Florensky after being arrested for “agitation against the Soviet system.” Florensky was sentenced to ten years of labor in Stalin’s gulags. He would not serve the full ten years. three years after this picture was taken, he was dragged out into the woods and shot. USSR. February 27, 1933.The directors of the gulag camps gather together to celebrate their work. USSR. May 1, 1934.Two Lithuanian political prisoners get ready to go to work in a coal mine. Inta, USSR. 1955.The crude lodgings that host a group of prisoners in one of Stalin’s gulags. USSR. Circa 1936-1937.Prisoners at work operating a machine inside of a gulag. USSR. Circa 1936-1937.Prisoners at work on the White Sea-Baltic Canal. USSR. Circa 1930-1933.Prisoners hammer away at the rocks in the White Sea–Baltic Canal. USSR. Circa 1930-1933.Yuriy Tyutyunnyk, a Ukranian General who fought against the Soviets in the Ukranian-Soviet War. Tyutyunnyk was allowed to live in Soviet Ukraine after the war — until 1929, when Soviet policies changed. He was arrested, taken to Moscow, imprisoned, and killed. USSR. 1929.Prisoners transport lead-zinc ore. Vaygach Island, USSR. Circa 1931-1932.Prisoners digging clay for the brickyard. Solovki Isalnd, USSR. Circa 1924-1925.Officials look over their laborers, at work on the Moscow Canal. Moscow, USSR. September 3, 1935.A “penal insulator” inside of a gulag. Vorkuta, USSR. 1945.Stalin and his men inspect the work on the Moscow-Volga Canal. Moscow, USSR. Circa 1932-1937.Gulag prisoners forced to work on a mine overseen by the USSR’s secret police. Vaygach Island, USSR. 1933.Prisoners at work in a gulag pause for a moment’s rest. USSR. Circa 1936-1937.A guard shakes hands with a prisoner, at work cutting down lumber. USSR. Circa 1936-1937.Guards walk through a gulag during an inspection. USSR. Circa 1936-1937.The prison photo and papers of Jacques Rossi, a political prisoner arrested for his connections to revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, hang on the wall of a gulag. Norillag, USSR.Men at work on the Koylma Highway. The route would come to be known as the “Road of Bones” because the skeletons of the men who died building it were used in its foundation. USSR. Circa 1932-1940.Colonel Stepan Garanin, at one time the chief of the Kolyma Force Labor Camps, prepares for his new life as a prisoner. USSR. Circa 1937-1938.A miner who died working in a forced labour camp was surrounded by prisoners as he was buried on Vaygach Island.Two Lithuanian political prisoners get ready to go to work in a coal mine in Inta, USSR. The Inta labour camp existed from 1941 to 1948, and prisoners were mainly engaged in the mining of local coal deposits. The number of inmates at the camp reached 20,585 at its highest size. In 1948, the camp was shut down and reorganized into a special camp for political prisonersStalin and his men are pictured examining the Moscow-Volga Canal, built by prisoners in 1932.Guards walk through a gulag during an inspection in 1936. As of March 1940, there were 53 Golag camps and 432 labour colonies across the USSR. Today’s major cities in the Russian Arctic were originally camps build by prisoners and run by former prisonersConvicted men sleep inside of a sod-covered house in a Siberian gulag, Siberia, at an unknown date. Prisoners lived in squalid conditions, and many people died of starvation or exhaustion from working too many hours and not receiving enough food from the prison staffPrisoners at work in a gulag pause for a moment’s rest in 1936. By the time the last Soviet gulag closed its gates, millions had died. Some worked themselves to death, some had starved, and others were simply dragged out into the woods and shot.Hunger, physical punishment and sexual harrasment – and that’s only the beginning of the suffering for women in the Gulag.Prisoners work at Belbaltlag, a Gulag camp for building the White Sea-Baltic Sea, 1932Manacled and with barely enough clothing to keep them warm, prisoners had to work in Siberian temperatures. Toture, or death, was common for anyone who didn’t comply.Prisoners with severe malnutrition in a camp hospital, most were expected to die. How much bread they got depended on how much timber they had cut the day before – a tally that could be the difference between life and deathPrisoners building a copper factory in Norilisk in 1949. Few survived the brutal conditions.Women and children work at a gulag in 1932. Prison nurseries did exist, but malnutrition, restrictive breast-feeding schedules and astonishing cruelty often resulted in the child suffering an early death
Mobile phone, 1932A telephone operator at the Central Office wears a portable headset made by the American Bell Telephone Company, 1923.The Toshiba company’s new videophone, the Model 500 View Phone, being tested at the company’s Tokyo headquarters, 6th May 1968.Grasshopper shot near Miles City, Montana, 1937New Year’s Eve, 1943, New York City.Young chimpanzee Kokomo Jnr. playing with a hose pipe outside his owner’s apartment in New York City. 1960A cat and a bulldog in a toy car. 1933Babe RuthEveryone’s a critic.This chicken dinner is a little undercooked.This swan is just upset because it expected a limo.In 1979, Robin Williams became the first ever male cheerleader for the Denver Broncos football team.They used to sell UFO Detector in 1960s.
Born 1902 as Dorothy Walton Gatley at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress Ann Harding graduated from East Orange High School. Having gained her initial acting experience in school drama classes, she decided on a career as an actress and moved to New York City. Because her father opposed her career choice, she used the stage name Ann Harding.
A regular player on Broadway and in regional theater in the 1920s, in the 1930s, Harding was one of the first actresses to gain fame in the new medium of “talking pictures”, and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931 for her work in Holiday.
After initial work as a script reader, Harding began to win roles on Broadway and in regional theaters, primarily in Pennsylvania. She moved to California to begin working in movies, which were just then beginning to include sound. Her work in plays had given her notable diction and stage presence, and she became a leading lady. By the late 1930s, she was becoming stereotyped as the beautiful, innocent, self-sacrificing woman, and film work became harder for her to obtain.
Harding also worked occasionally in television between 1955 and 1965, and she appeared in two plays in the early 1960s, returning to the stage after an absence of over 30 years, including the lead in “The Corn is Green” in 1964 at the Studio Theater in Buffalo, New York.
After her 1965 retirement, Harding resided in Sherman Oaks, California. She died in 1981 at the age of 79.
For her contributions to the motion picture and television industries, Harding has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one in the Motion Pictures section 6201 Hollywood Boulevard and one in the Television section at 6850 Hollywood Boulevard.
Take a look at these glamorous photos to see the beauty of Ann Harding in the 1920s and 1930s.
Did you know that the tradition of giving Christmas cards started with the Victorians? In fact, a lot of our modern day Christmas traditions started in the Victorian era. But in those days most of the Christmas cards were still homemade, just like most of the gifts were.
The tradition of giving gifts goes back a long time, and in Norway we hear about the Vikings offering gifts to allying chiefs in order to establish and maintain good relations between the different clans. Even today, gifts, but perhaps even more so, cards, are used for the exact same purpose!
France, officially the French Republic, is a transcontinental country spanning Western Europe and overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Including all of its territories, France has twelve time zones, the most of any country. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and several islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra and Spain in Europe, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in the Americas. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi) and over 67 million people (as of May 2021). France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country’s largest city and main cultural and commercial centre; other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.
Inhabited since the Palaeolithic era, the territory of Metropolitan France was settled by Celtic tribes known as Gauls during the Iron Age. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture that laid the foundation of the French language. The Germanic Franks arrived in 476 and formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987.
In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but highly decentralised feudal kingdom in which the king’s authority was barely felt. King Philip Augustus achieved remarkable success in the strengthening of royal power and the expansion of his realm, defeating his rivals and doubling its size. By the end of his reign, the kingdom had emerged as the most powerful state in Europe. From the mid-14th to the mid-15th century, France was plunged into a series of dynastic conflicts for the French throne, collectively known as the Hundred Years’ War, and a distinct French identity emerged as a result. The French Renaissance saw art and culture flourish, various wars with rival powers, and the establishment of a global colonial empire, which by the 20th century would become the second-largest in the world. The second half of the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Catholics and Huguenots that severely weakened the country. But France once again emerged as Europe’s dominant cultural, political and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV following the Thirty Years’ War. Inadequate economic policies, an inequitable taxation system as well as endless wars (notably a defeat in the Seven Years’ War and costly involvement in the American War of Independence), left the kingdom in a precarious economic situation by the end of the 18th century. This precipitated the French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the absolute monarchy, replaced the Ancien Régime with one of history’s first modern republics and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation’s ideals to this day.
France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating much of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of European and world history. The collapse of the empire initiated a period of relative decline, in which France endured a tumultuous succession of governments until the founding of the French Third Republic during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Subsequent decades saw a period of optimism, cultural and scientific flourishing, as well as economic prosperity known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost. It was among the Allied powers of the World War II, but was soon occupied by the Axis in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War. The current Fifth Republic was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France.
France retains its centuries-long status as a global centre of art, science and philosophy. It hosts the fifth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world’s leading tourist destination, receiving over 89 million foreign visitors in 2018. France is a developed country with the world’s seventh-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by PPP; in terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy and human development. It remains a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state. France is a founding and leading member of the European Union and the Eurozone, as well as a key member of the Group of Seven, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and La Francophonie. (Wikipedia)
Military, 74th IR, 1898The cycling race Bordeaux-Paris, 1899The palace of electricity, Universal Exhibition of Paris, 1899The beach, Trouville, 1900The port, Cannes, 1900Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, Paris, 1900Beach cabins, Deauville, 1900Castle Coucy, Picardie, 1900Gustave and Jeanne, 1900Hotel Omnibus, 1900Military, 24th SIM, 1900Monumental door, 1900 Universal Exhibition in ParisNotre-Dame-du-Murier, Batz-sur-Mer, 1900Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Paris, 1900St Jacques Tower, Paris, 1900The Grand Palace, Paris, the Universal Exposition of 1900Trouville, 1900Villemoisson, Ile-de-France, 1900Washerwoman, 1900Entrance to the port of Trouville, 1901Place des Vosges, Paris, 1902Statue Victor Hugo, Paris, 1902The Chartreuse desert, France, 1902Biarritz, the big beach, 1904Villa Belza, Biarritz, 1904The Auteuil Viaduct, Paris, 1905Madeleine and Émilien, 1906Yvonne, 1908
Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, taken in February, 1865Boxing match aboard the U.S.S. New York, July 3, 1899Yvonne (13) and Alexander (12) Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn take drink and smoke on yacht near MajorcaAn Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, 1908Adolf Hitler with Mussolini’s son-in-law and Joachim von Ribbentrop, attend a Nazi Party rally, 1930sSoldiers wearing gas masks while peeling onions at Tobruk, October 15, 1941Captain Walter “Waddy” Young and his crew pose in front of their caricatures on their B-29 Superfortress, November 24, 1944Post officers show off their brand-new “Autopeds” scooters, Washington, D.C., 1917Performer Sarah Vaughan, 1946Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia, sling cart used in removing captured artillery during the American Civil War, 1865A mother helps her child off the trolley on a Broadway in New York City, July, 1913Black man drinking at ‘Colored’ water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, July, 1939Kissing the War Goodbye in V-J Day, August 14, 1945.A young John F. Kennedy immediately after his graduation from Harvard, in the summer of 1940Times Square, D-Day, 1944Observer on Iwo Jima, February, 1945Stalin and Churchill during the Yalta Conference, February, 1945Louis and Lucille Armstrong at the Sphinx, January 28, 1961A deserted boy holding a stuffed toy animal, London, 1945.“Young boy in Baltimore slum area” smoking a cigarette, July, 1938
Two young adults sit in the grass by a cliff near water and the village of Rottingdean in East Sussex in 1931A group of children sit, playing in the sand in 1931 at Dymchurch beach in Kent, which lies south-west of FolkestoneA girl puts an envelope in a postbox in Oxford in 1929A girl sits in front of the rhododendrons in 1929 at Kew Gardens in south-west London, which was founded in 1840Two Chelsea Pensioners in signature scarlet coats in 1929Two women buy ice cream from a vendor out of his converted car in Cornwall in 1928An informal portrait of a farmer and his cart in the small town of Crowland in Lincolnshire, near Peterborough, in 1928Locals enjoy the view of the Surrey Hills, in 1928A young girl plays on the beach with bucket and spade in Sandown on the Isle of Wight in 1928Characters in a pageant – Britannia and her colonies and dependencies – on the grass in Southampton in 1928A man posts a letter next to a traditional telephone box in Oxford in 1928A police constable passes the day with farmers gathering hay in Lancashire in November 1928Children play on the sand near Yarmouth, a popular destination for holidaymakers on the Isle of Wight in 1928A group of women hike in Cumbria in 1928A woman sends a letter at a red pillar box on the Isle of Wight in 1928Two girls send a letter at a red pillar box in Belfast in 1927English Boy Scouts on a hike stop for a rest near Ambleside, north-west of Windermere in Cumbria in 1929Two Chelsea Pensioners sit on the steps in Oxford in 1929An Ulverston tour bus in Cumbria in 1929A man mows grain in 1929Passengers ride on ‘Billy’, a locomotive picture running at the Kent seaside resort of Margate in 1931A child stands by The Cat and the Fiddle Inn in Exeter in 1931A woman walks on the street in Clovelly, 1931A woman posts a letter in Oxford in 1928Actors dress for a pageant as Britannia and her four knights as they pose for a photo in Southampton, Hampshire, 1928A part of the company of Yeomen preparatory, known as Beefeaters, at the Tower of LondonA girl stands in an unidentified field in Lincolnshire in 1929 holding barleyAn English woman points to her farm cart in Cambridgeshire, which bears the year before the photo was takenTwo children and a lady stand outside of a thatch-roofed cottage in Hampshire in 1931A family builds a sandcastle at the seaside resort of Sandbourne, near Bournemouth in Dorset in 1932A woman admires flowers in Clovelly, Devon, 1928Two girls talk outside a home in Chillington, Devon in 1928A boy posts a letter in a postbox in Sussex, 1928Two soldiers stand in Hythe, Kent, 1928A woman sells artificial flowers for charity on Alexandra Day in KentThe Chief Warder, a Coldstream Guardsmen, and a Yeoman Warder pose at the Tower of London in 1929Two girls eat lunch in a hayfield near Hawkshead in Lancashire in 1929, which is now part of CumbriaA portrait of Boy Scouts at Abinger Hammer, a village in Surrey situated in between Dorking and Guildford, on a Sunday hikeVeteran soldiers – known as Chelsea Pensioners – sit on the steps of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London in 1928A young girl stands outside her cottage near Clovelly, a village on the coast of North Devon in 1928A postman delivers packages with his parcel post barrow in front of a shop in Oxford offering ‘haircutting and shaving’ in 1928Two women enjoy a leisurely tea in 1928 in front of the Clock House in Buckinghamshire, which was originally a hospiceA policeman directs buses at the intersection of Trafalgar Square in the centre of London in 1929Women sit near the Avon River with Holy Trinity Church behind in Stratford in 1929
Circa 1920s, a picnic at Los Angeles’ California Alligator Farm, where patrons were allowed to mingle freely among trained alligators from 1907 to 1953.In April 1926, 41 members of the Ku Klux Klan gather at a ferris wheel at Cañon City, Colorado, a stronghold of the group in that era.Members of the Young Pioneers, a Soviet government youth group, don gas masks as part of an attack preparation drill in the Leningrad area, 1937.A 106-year-old woman sits in front of her home guarding it with a rifle, in Degh village, near the city of Goris in southern Armenia. Armed conflicts took place in and around nearby Nagarno-Karabakh, a territory in Azerbaijan also claimed by Armenia.Adolf Hitler poses in lederhosen, circa 1930s. Hitler had this photo and several others banned because, in his opinion, they undermined his dignity. The photos surfaced again after an Allied soldier found copies of them in a German house in 1945.French neurologist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (right) carries out an experiment in electrophysiology by triggering a subject’s muscles with electrical probes in order to produce a given facial expression, circa mid-19th century.The Cyclomer, an amphibious bicycle that never caught on following its introduction in Paris in 1932.Vehicles and pedestrians stand in chaos in Stockholm, Sweden on September 3, 1967, the day that the country switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right.Spectators watch a horse diving act at an unspecified location (perhaps Pueblo, Colorado) on July 4, 1905. Horse diving was a popular spectacle through much of the 19th century, with horses (with or without a person onboard) would jump from towers into a pool of water from heights as great as 60 feet.President Lyndon B. Johnson drives his Amphicar on April 10, 1965. This amphibious land-to-water vehicle of West German origin was produced for several years during the 1960s.Surrealist artist Salvador Dali poses for the photograph known as Dali Atomicus, a collaboration between himself and American photographer Philippe Halsman that was published in 1948. The photo was meant to explore the idea of suspension, and thus used wires, thrown objects, and Dali’s own jumping to create a tableau of objects in mid-air. It reportedly took 28 tries to get right.Much of Boston’s North End lies in ruin following the Great Molasses Flood of January 15, 1919, in which a molasses storage tank broke apart, releasing as much as 2.3 million gallons into the streets at 35 miles per hour, ultimately killing 21 and injuring 150.Facial cones to protect the user during a snow storm. Montreal, Quebec, 1939.A woman of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Mangbetu tribe holds her child, circa 1929-1937. The Mangbetu once practiced Lipombo, a tradition in which a baby’s head was wrapped tightly with a cloth in order to achieve an elongated skull, believed to be a mark of beauty.The German airship Hindenburg, swastikas and all, flies over New York City on the afternoon of May 6, 1937, a few hours before its historic, fiery crash in Manchester Township, New Jersey.Japanese Emperor Hirohito inspects his military’s acoustic aircraft locators — used to detect planes by the sounds of their engines in the days before radar — sometime prior to the end of World War II.A U.S. Navy plane travels through a flow-induced vaporization off the coast of South Korea on July 7, 1999. This phenomenon occurs when planes of a certain shape travel through humid air, causing abrupt air temperature and pressure variations that create the kinds of oddly-shaped vapor clouds seen above.Enos the chimpanzee lies in his fight couch before being inserted into NASA’s Mercury-Atlas 5 space capsule, in which he would become the first primate to orbit the Earth on November 29, 1961.Beach policeman Bill Norton measures the distance between a woman’s knee and the bottom of her swimsuit to be sure that it’s not too large — in keeping with rules of the time — in Washington, D.C., 1922.Cyclists smoke cigarettes while competing in the 1927 Tour de France.Alcohol, discovered by Prohibition agents during a raid on an illegal distillery, pours out of the windows of a storefront in Detroit, 1929.Circa 1917-1918, a man wears the Brewster Body Shield, the first body armor developed by the U.S. during World War I. this chrome nickel steel suit could weigh as much as 40 pounds and indeed stop some bullets.An enormous octopus balloon rises from the ground at the barrage balloon training center of Tennesse’s Camp Tyson, circa World War II. Barrage balloons were used by several countries during both world wars in order to disrupt the attack movements of aerial bombers by ramming into them or obstructing their vision.The as-yet unassembled face of the Statue of Liberty sits unpacked in New York soon after its delivery from France on June 17, 1885.Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla sits near his magnifying transmitter — an advanced version of the famed Tesla coil that he used for the wireless transmission of electrical energy — n his Colorado Springs laboratory, 1899.A pile of American bison skulls sits at an unspecified location, waiting to be ground down into fertilizer, circa mid-1870s.A man holds a Krummlauf, an experimental curved rifle barrel attachment developed by the Nazis during World War II in order to shoot around walls and over barriers. The impractical device was produced in small numbers and never saw much use in the field.A man wears an early version of roller skates powered with pedals and wheels, 1910.English archaeologist Howard Carter first opens the innermost portion of King Tutankhamun’s tomb soon after its discovery near Luxor, Egypt in 1922.A train lays wrecked after entering Paris’ Montparnasse station too fast and failing to break before crashing through the station wall and down onto the street below on October 22, 1895.A train lays wrecked after entering Paris’ Montparnasse station too fast and failing to break before crashing through the station wall and down onto the street below on October 22, 1895.Circa 1865, a boy stands near a pissoir, one of the many outdoor urinals installed on the streets of Paris starting in the mid-19th century. At their peak, Paris’ pissoirs numbered more than 1,000.German-American farmer John Meints displays the ill effects of the attack he suffered on August 19, 1918, when locals took him from his home in Luverne, Minnesota, whipped him, then tarred and feathered him. Meints was attacked amid anti-German sentiment that had taken root during World War I.Inventor Hugo Gernsback models his television goggles for LIFE magazine in 1963.Two men construct a death mask in New York, circa 1908. Death masks — wax or plaster casts made around the recently deceased’s head — were used for various purposes, largely those meant to honor the deceased with a statue or display of some kind.A French Red Cross dog wears a gas mask, 1917.A Native American telephone switchboard operator sits at work at Montana’s Many Glacier Hotel on June 26, 1925.Circa 1930s, a Chinese car driver who was convicted for speeding poses for a photo after being condemned to wear the traditional cangue — a wooden board weighing as much as 30 pounds and used in punishment for centuries throughout east Asia until the 1900s — for 24 hours.A man stands next to an enormous container used to store wine in Kakheti, Georgia, 1881.The first American hydrogen bomb test creates a massive cloud over Eniwetok Atoll, in the Marshall Islands on October 31, 1952.A woman tests a stroller intended to be resistant to gas attacks in Hextable, England in 1938, not long before the outbreak of World War II.On November 10, 1938, Maryland inventor George Stern displays his invention, a highly volatile fluid that vaporizes so rapidly that flames from the gases released will not burn. However, Stern stated that the formula’s only practical use would be in creating strange effects for horror films.A man poses with a motorcycle equipped with skis in order to travel through the snow in Kehrsatz, Switzerland during World War I.Circa 1890, a man named Robert McGee, reportedly scalped by a Sioux chief named Little Turtle — reveals his wounds.A dog named Laika, the first living creature ever sent into space, sits aboard the Soviet Sputnik II spacecraft, launched from Kazakhstan on November 3, 1957.A man demonstrates a steel cap, splinter goggles (vision is obtained through thin slits in goggles), and a steel dagger gauntlet, manufactured for the British military during World War I.James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, holds an early ball and basket used for the game at an unspecified date sometime prior to 1939.German youths wear bike tires repurposed as swimming aids, 1925.A pair of thylacines stand in their enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., circa 1904. Commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, this wolf-like marsupial inhabited Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea for millions of years until several factors included mass hunting brought it to extinction in 1936.In July 1921, a crowd reportedly consisting of approximately 10,000 men gather outside the New York Times building in New York’s Times Square in order to receive updates on the boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier.A Mongolian woman sits trapped inside a wooden box as a form of punishment, 1913.A soldier sprays the interior of an Italian house with a mixture of DDT and kerosene in order to control malaria during World War II, circa 1945.Waiters serve lunch to two steel workers on a girder high above New York City on November 14, 1930, during construction of the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
