Yesterday Today

The First Photograph of a Woman Smoking: Lola Montez 1852

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Considered to be the first photograph of a woman smoking, this is Lola Montez’s portrait by Southworth & Hawes.

A savvy self-promoter, Lola Montez is the first woman ever to be photographed smoking. She made sure the cigarette is the focus of the picture. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This is Lola’s third and most provocative and widely recognized daguerreotype, the image of her smoking. In Boston in 1852, she was welcomed to the daguerreotype studio of Southworth and Hawes. The pair captured daguerreotypes of key intellectual and artistic personalities, thus, Lola’s appointment in their studio was a clear signal of her status as a celebrity. The most well known of their daguerreotypes from this sitting shows Lola standing and resting her arms on a fabric covered table. Her wrists are crossed, a gesture of elegance, but she holds a cigarette between her gloved fingers, a particularly controversial detail given that it was not proper for women to smoke in public, let alone be photographed participating in such a gentlemanly activity.

Her facial expression in the portrait is one of indifference and hardness, her cocked head and her arched eyebrows creating a sense of intrigue. Her sharp facial features are softened slightly by her dark brown ringlets on either side of her face and her lace scarf. This intricate lace ornamental fabric around her collar contrasts starkly with her dark overcoat, and the lace and the cigarette are the two brightest whites in the image, drawing the eye to these contrasting symbols of femininity and hardness. The two patterned fabrics, the large floral decoration on her skirt and the plaid fabric on which she rests her hands serve also to represent soft femininity and stiffness, respectively. Her fashionable clothing and hairstyle give her the sense of being genteel and respectable, but this impression is countered by her brazen depiction of herself as an uninhibited smoker.

Fascinating Black and White Photos of Life in Britain in 1939

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Boys release toy balloons bearing appeals for the Doctor Barnardo’s Home at Stepney, London, August 1939

After the German invasion of Poland, The King declared war in September 1939.

In preparation for war, Britain undertakes measures including calling up of troops, citizens returning home from abroad, children rehearsing safety drills. The government also thought of all the possible dangers and difficulties the Home Front would face and started to take precautions.

Boys release toy balloons bearing appeals for the Doctor Barnardo’s Home at Stepney, London, August 1939

Take a look at life in Britain in 1939 through these fascinating black and white photographs.

The ladies’ rifle team of Downe House School in Berkshire set out for a practice session with their guns, April 1939

Stunning Portraits of Elizabeth Taylor From 1961

Over the course of his six-decade-long career, legendary photographer Douglas Kirkland has taken some of the most recognizable photos of some the most iconic celebrities of all time, among them is Elizabeth Taylor who he photographed her in 1961 when he just started his photography career. Elizabeth’s tracheotomy scar from an emergency procedure due to pneumonia that left her unable to breathe during the filming of Cleopatra in Rome is clearly visible.

“Elizabeth was the one who started my career,” Kirkland said. “At the time she was the biggest movie star in the world, but she had been very ill and had vanished from the public eye for close to a year, and this was the first time people were going to see her — that was if she would allow me to photograph her. [One thing you notice is] her tracheotomy scar; she felt it was her statement and who she was at the time. She wasn’t into hiding it, ‘cause it was something that had saved her life.”

Douglas Kirkland was a young photographer at Look magazine and was sent to Las Vegas to sit on an interview with Elizabeth. She has said yes to the interview but no picture. She has not been seen for a while and had has a tracheotomy as result of being ill during the first attempt to shoot Cleopatra. “After the interview I went up to her and held her hand and said:,‘it is wonderful to meet you. My name is Douglas Kirkland, I am new with this magazine, can you imagine what it would mean to me if you let me photograph you’ I did not let go of her hand, she wore jungle gardenia perfume which I could smell later on, she thought for a while and said “Come back tomorrow at 8pm.’”

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Family Ride on a Five Seat Bike in England, 1950

Who needs a van when you can ride as a family! How cool is this family circa 1950.

Mr. Eric Jewell, of Dukes Avenue, Finchley, London, finds the solution to go with his whole family to the countryside: a five seat bike.

Here, Jewell with his wife and children on a “quinticycle” – adapted from a tandem with a sidecar.

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18 Amazing Photos Showing the Inside of the Frankfurt Main Train Station during the 1950s

Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof, often abbreviated as Frankfurt (Main) Hbf and sometimes translated as Frankfurt central station, is the busiest railway station in Hesse, Germany. It is one of the largest train stations in Europe and is located just west of the city center.

The affix “Main” comes from the city’s full name, Frankfurt am Main (“Frankfurt on the Main”). Because of its location in the middle of Germany and usage as a transport hub for long and short distance traveling, Deutsche Bahn refers to it as the most important station in Germany.

More than 350,000 travelers use this station every day. To be able to manage this great volume of traffic, the central station has more than 25 platforms in five departure halls.

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40 Portrait Photos of Actor Glenn Ford in the 1940s

Born 1916 in Quebec, Canadian-American actor Glenn Ford had his first major movie part in Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939) at 20th Century Fox. He often portrayed ordinary men in unusual circumstances.

Ford was most prominent during Hollywood’s Golden Age as one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, who had a career that lasted more than 50 years. Although he played in many genres of movies, some of his most significant roles were in the film noirs Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953), and the high school angst film Blackboard Jungle (1955). However, it was for comedies or westerns which he received acting laurels, including three Golden Globe Nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy movie, winning for Pocketful of Miracles (1961).

Five of Ford’s films have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant: Gilda (1946), The Big Heat (1953), Blackboard Jungle (1955), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and Superman (1978).

Ford retired from acting in 1991 following heart and circulatory problems. He suffered a series of minor strokes which left him in frail health in the years leading up to his death. He died in his Beverly Hills home in 2006 at the age of 90.

Take a look at these vintage photos to see portrait of a young and handsome Glenn Ford in the 1940s.

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Yesterday Today: September 27

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A fully air-conditioned luxury lawn mower from the 1950s.

Marilyn Monroe without makeup, 1955

Vintage Photographs of Egypt From Between the 1860s and 1890s

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River view, Alexandria

The Adelphoi Zangaki (Zangaki Brothers) were two brothers of Greek origin, active as photographers in Ottoman Egypt from the 1860s through to the 1890s. Little is known about them, except their initials, C. and G., and that they worked out of Port Said and Cairo from around the 1860s through to at least the 1890s. Many of the Zangaki photographs are signed with a brother’s initial and/or a place of business, e.g., “C. Zangaki” or “Zangaki, Cairo” or occasionally “A. Zangaki”.

The two brothers specialized in photographing ancient monuments and scenes of everyday life, producing photographic prints for the tourist trade, but it remains unclear how they came to learn photography. However, shortly after their arrival in Egypt they had become established photographers with studios in Cairo and Port Said.

The Zangaki brothers traveled along the Nile, accompanied by a horse-drawn darkroom wagon to document the Egyptian scenery, architecture and events. Their pictures included views of the pyramids at Giza or the Sphinx and cities, as well of Egyptians going about their daily lives. They occasionally worked with the French photographer Hippolyte Arnoux in Port Said, documenting the works on the Suez Canal. They were also among the first commercial photographers to produce large-scale images of late 19th- century Egypt.

Students in the Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo

Farrah Fawcett Attending the “Celebrity Battle of the Sexes” Tennis Tournament in Mission Viejo, California, 1977

Actress Farrah Fawcett attends the taping of “Celebrity Battle of the Sexes” tennis tournament on April 3, 1977 at Marguerite Park in Mission Viejo, California. She teams her tanned limbs and tomboy-ish Adidas shorts and T-shirt with a silk scarf for a touch of glamour.

Hollywood stars compete in a series of athletic events, men versus the ladies, to prove who was the superior sex. This special game show and those that followed each six-months at CBS, was an evolution from the station’s “Challenge of the Sexes” (1976), which had cast everyday people, and “Battle of the Network Stars” (1976).

In tennis, “Battle of the Sexes” describes various exhibition matches played between a man and a woman, or a doubles match between two men and two women in one case. The term is most famously used for an internationally televised match in 1973 held at the Houston Astrodome between 55 year-old Bobby Riggs and 29 year-old Billie Jean King, which King won in three sets. The match was viewed by an estimated fifty million people in the United States and ninety million worldwide

Two other matches commonly referred to as a “battle of the sexes” include one held four months earlier in 1973 between Riggs and Margaret Court over the best of three sets, and one in 1992 between Jimmy Connors and Martina Navratilova over the best of three sets, with hybrid rules favoring the female player dubbed “The Battle of Champions.”

At least eight other exhibition matches have been played between notable male and female tennis players starting in 1888, though only some of them were referred to at the time as a “battle of the sexes.”

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Cringeworthy: Matching Family Sweaters of the 1960s

The trend for wearing matching family clothes was undeniably a huge thing among families in the past, as you clearly can see numerous cringeworthy memes about it.

Take a look at these wool-clad families modeling their matching sweaters through 20 intensely awkward vintage photographs from the sixties: