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23 Amazing Vintage Photographs Taken Inside WWII Tank Factories
40 Stunning Photos of Actresses from the 1960s
26 Amazing Vintage Photos That Show Life in the Shanty Towns During the Great Depression
Many of the shanty towns that sprung up all over the United States during the Depression were facetiously called Hoovervilles because so many people at the time blamed President Herbert Hoover for letting the nation slide into the Great Depression.
In October of 1929, the stock market experienced a devastating crash resulting in an unprecedented number of people in the U.S. without homes or jobs, a period of history now known as the Clutch Plague.
While homelessness was present prior to the crash, the group was relatively small and cities were able to provide adequate shelter through various municipal housing projects. However, as the Depression set in, demand grew and the overflow became far too overwhelming and unmanageable for government resources to keep up with.
Homeless people in large cities began to build their own houses out of found materials, and some even built more permanent structures from brick. Small shanty towns—later named Hoovervilles after President Hoover—began to spring up in vacant lots, public land and empty alleys. Three of these pop-up villages were located in New York City; the largest of them was on what is now Central Park’s Great Lawn.
24 Wonderful Photos of American Silent Film Movie Actresses with Their Autographs in the Early 20th Century
Agnes Williams was the piano player at Fargo’s first Nickelodeon Theater, also a tremendous fan of early films, she wrote letters to every actor of the era, and they often replied to her fan letters, enclosing a signed photographic print of themselves.
Rare Portraits From the Smith and Telfer Studio in Cooperstown, New York, 1865-1885
Washington G. Smith (1828-1893) and Arthur J. Telfer (1859-1954) spent almost one hundred years photographing people, events, and scenes in and around Cooperstown. At the time of his gift Telfer was 93 years old and was widely thought to be the oldest working photographer in the United States.
Washington Smith worked with partners while he learned the daguerreotype and ambrotype processes in the 1850s. In 1864 he bought the Willoughby Block in Cooperstown and established his own “Photographic Gallery” where he remained until his death in 1893.
Telfer reluctantly joined Smith in 1887; he suspected that photography was a passing fad but Smith assured him that as long as folks continued to have weddings and babies he would never want for work. Telfer continued the business after Smith’s death and for another sixty years beyond. While portraits provided the bulk of their income, both photographers ventured outside the studio to record the world around them using large view cameras and, for the most part, glass plate negatives.
45 Beautiful Vintage Photos of Actress Sondra Locke
Sandra Louise Anderson (née Smith; May 28, 1944 – November 3, 2018), professionally known as Sondra Locke, was an American actress and director. She made her film debut in 1968 in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to star in such hit films as Willard, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way but Loose, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can and Sudden Impact. She worked often with Clint Eastwood, who was her companion for 14 years. She also directed four films, notably Impulse.
Locke and Eastwood had an often contentious relationship for more than a dozen years, which ended in a bitter palimony suit she filed against him in 1989. They settled after about a year, but she later sued him again in the mid-’90s for what the suit claimed was a sham development and directing deal at Warner Bros that Eastwood had set up. That suit was settled out of court. She then brought a separate lawsuit against Warners, which also was settled out of court.
Her 1997 memoir was titled The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly, riffing on one of Eastwood’s most popular film roles.
Locke died at age 74 on November 3, 2018. She died at her L.A. home, from cardiac arrest related to breast and bone cancer.
80 Amazing Photos of Shanghai, China between 1947 & 1949
Shipping out to China in December 1947 with three ten-year-old German cameras and a plum assignment from LIFE magazine, Jack Birns was fulfilling a boyhood dream. The reality was something else: refugees and prostitutes, soldiers and beggars, street executions and urban protests photographed in difficult and often dangerous circumstances amidst the poverty, corruption, and chaos of an expanding civil war.
By then the ruling Nationalist Party had been battling the Communist threat for more than two decades, and Birns focused his camera on the human drama unfolding as war pressed ever closer to the country’s financial, cultural, and commercial capital. His effort to show China’s misery up close ran afoul of Time-Life publisher Henry R. Luce’s fervent anti-communism, and for half a century many of these historic photographs lay unpublished in Time-Life’s archives.
Seen through the lens of hindsight, Birns’ photographs give us a sense not only of what China was like more than fifty years ago, but also of why the warfare, weariness, and desperation of the time proved such fertile soil for communist revolution.
Today these everyday scenes of ordinary people—pedicab drivers, street vendors, bar girls, police, politicians, prisoners—tell a story of national resilience and dignity in the midst of enveloping poverty, repression, and fear. Birns’s stark black and white photographs capture the dramatic end of an era, but they also look forward, letting us glimpse how Shanghai’s past prefigures the city’s commercial and cultural revival in the 1990s.
Photos by Jack Birns via Time Life
31 Terrifying Photos Showing the Early Days of Dentistry
People calling themselves dentists appeared in the late 1700s, though the profession wouldn’t be licensed for about 100 years. Before dentistry was licensed, doctors addressed tooth health. And before there were doctors, things were pretty dicey.
If you think going to the dentist today is scary, imagine a guy with a bloody apron approaching you with a pair of forceps, a pen knife, and no anesthesia. The early days of dentistry were beleaguered by a lack of knowledge and a belief that before anything could get better, blood had to flow.
These scary photos show how tooth extraction was terrifying from the late 19th century to early years of the 20th century.
40 Stunning Photos of Stevie Nicks on Stage During the 1970s and 1980s
Stephanie “Stevie” Nicks is a singer-songwriter known for her career with Fleetwood Mac which gave the band their only U.S. No.1 hit, Dreams. She changed the fortune of the band for the better after joining in 1974. She created history with her second album with the band, “Rumours” which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and went Diamond in the U.S.
After a very successful stint with the band, she decided to go solo. Her debut album, “Bella Donna” charted at No.1 on the U.S. Billboard and went Multi-Platinum within months of its release. Her second album, “The Wild Heart” also went Multi-Platinum establishing Nicks as a solo artist. She had many friends in the music industry, and she invited them to play music for her albums. Her next album, “Rock a Little” was also a huge hit and went Platinum like its predecessors.
However, the stress of working so hard had a toll on her mental and physical well-being, and she developed a drug addiction problem. The talented singer struggled hard to overcome her substance abuse and was eventually successful in leaving this troubled part of her life behind. A highly prolific performer, she is credited to have produced more than forty Top 50 hits with a sales figure exceeding 140 million albums.
Below is a collection of 40 vintage photographs capture Stevie Nicks while performing on stage in the 1970s and 1980s.
22 Amazing Photos of Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan in 1989
The final and complete withdrawal of Soviet combatant forces from Afghanistan began on 15 May 1988 and ended on 15 February 1989 under the leadership of Colonel-General Boris Gromov.
Planning for the withdrawal of the Soviet Union (USSR) from the Afghanistan War began soon after Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of Gorbachev, the Soviet Union attempted to consolidate the PDPA’s hold over power in the country, first in a genuine effort to stabilize the country, and then as a measure to save face while withdrawing troops. During this period, the military and intelligence organizations of the USSR worked with the government of Mohammad Najibullah to improve relations between the government in Kabul and the leaders of rebel factions.
The diplomatic relationship between the USSR and the United States improved at the same time as it became clear to the Soviet Union that this policy of consolidating power around Najibullah’s government in Kabul would not produce sufficient results to maintain the power of the PDPA in the long run.
The Geneva Accords, signed by representatives of the USSR, the USA, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Republic of Afghanistan (thus renamed in 1987) on 14 April 1988, provided a framework for the departure of Soviet forces, and established a multilateral understanding between the signatories regarding the future of international involvement in Afghanistan. The military withdrawal commenced soon after, with all Soviet forces leaving Afghanistan by 15 February 1989.
