Rare Historical Photos

The rate of inflation was 3,250,000% per month. Prices for daily commodities doubled every two days. The currency became worthless with kids using it like Lego bricks. During the hyperinflation period, it was cheaper to burn money than to buy firewood. By mid-1923 workers were being paid as often as three times a day. Their wives would meet them, take the money, and rush to the shops to exchange it for goods....

These advertisements aimed not only to educate women about hygiene but also to alleviate societal taboos surrounding menstruation. In their pursuit of breaking stereotypes, advertisers often employed unconventional and comical approaches, resulting in a series of ads that now stand as fascinating relics of the past. One striking aspect of these vintage ads is the use of peculiar visual imagery to capture the attention of potential customers. Advertisements frequently employed exaggerated illustrations and colorful cartoons to convey their message....

The waters did not overflow the river’s banks within the city but flooded Paris through tunnels, sewers, and drains. In neighbouring towns both east and west of the capital, the river rose above its banks and flooded the surrounding terrain directly. Winter floods were a normal occurrence in Paris but, on 21 January, the river began to rise more rapidly than normal. Over the course of the following week, thousands of Parisians evacuated their homes as water infiltrated buildings and streets throughout the city, shutting down much of Paris’ basic infrastructure....

Like their predecessors in the Civil War and successors in the wars that followed, these African American troops fought a war for a country that refused them basic rights – and their bravery stood as a rebuke to racism. After years of lobbying by civic leaders from Harlem, Manhattan’s celebrated black neighborhood, Governor Charles Whitman finally formed the all-black unit, first known as the 15th New York National Guard Regiment, in 1916, as the U....

After seven months in prison, he was sentenced to two years’ exile and was sent to the village of Solvychegodsk. After seven months in exile, he disguised himself as a woman and escaped on a train to St. Petersburg. When he was staying in Baku doing revolutionary activities he was arrested for the second time, this time for terrorism, robbery, and revolutionary agitation at the Caucasus. He was banned from the Caucasus for five years and sentenced to complete his previous exile in Solvychegodsk....

Finished spears were six or seven feet long, slim and sharply pointed at one end. Night spear fishing inside the reef was done by the light of kukui-nut torches as the bright light attracted fish in shallow waters. Fishermen made torches out of kukui nuts wrapped in leaves on top of a pole. The lamaku was a large torch made out of a short piece of the coconut leaf midrib....

The Northrop XB-35 stands as a testament to the audacious spirit of innovation that defined the aviation industry during the early 1940s. Developed by Northrop Corporation in collaboration with the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), the XB-35 was an experimental aircraft that pushed the boundaries of aeronautical engineering. With its revolutionary flying wing design, impressive payload capacity, and ambitious goals, the XB-35 aimed to revolutionize long-range strategic bombing. At the core of the XB-35’s groundbreaking design was its flying wing configuration....

While transportation and engineering show the first sign of the modern world, the Eternal City still demonstrates its glorious past. The old photographs depict horse-drawn carriages on the cobblestone streets near the Pantheon, popular attractions such as the Roman Forum or the Trevi Fountain without tourists, people going with their everyday routine, etc. While the images may look like photographs, they are actually ink-based photolithographs. This process, called Photochrom, adds precise gradations of artificial color to black and white photos....

This old German-made Mercedes was being transported to India as a trade-in on a shiny American model. Some 60 coolies, moving to the rhythm of a chant, balanced it on long poles. This was before the serpentine Tribhuvan Highway linking the capital to the Indian border was constructed in 1956, and the only way to get to Kathmandu was on foot or to fly. Cars bought mainly by the Rana or Shah nobility were brought to Calcutta by ship, driven sometimes up to Bhimphedi, and then carried over the mountains by porters....

Frank Carpenter embarked on his first global journey at a time when only a minuscule percentage of Americans had ventured abroad—less than one percent, to be exact. Through his photographic dispatches from the farthest corners of the Earth, Carpenter didn’t just share pictures. He provided a gateway for millions to explore the rich fabric of human life, showing the myriad customs, traditions, and landscapes of distant lands. Across three epic journeys around the globe, Frank Carpenter amassed a treasure trove of tens of thousands of photos, capturing the essence of the cultures and landscapes he encountered, and enriching the world’s understanding of its own diversity....

Eugene, who was on a raft, inadvertently drifted over the invisible line that separated the black and white sections of the 29th St Beach. One white beachgoer, insulted, began throwing rocks at the black kids. Eugene Williams slipped off his raft and drowned. The murder and the subsequent refusal by the police to arrest the person initially responsible ignited a race riot that would go down in history as one of the country’s bloodiest, and least-known, to date....

Among these avant-garde visionaries, André Courrèges stood as a trailblazer, redefining the landscape of fashion with his iconic Space Age designs. Space Age fashion emerged against the backdrop of the Space Race, a period characterized by fervent scientific exploration and the remarkable landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. As technological advancements and interstellar achievements captivated the collective imagination, fashion designers like André Courrèges embraced this wave of optimism and infused it into their creations....

He was probably shot by Baluba warriors that time used a lot of old muzzleloaded rifles/muskets (not as powerful as more modern rifles). After given first aid he returned to the fight against the invisible enemy in the jungle bush. During Congo Crisis, the Secretary-General to the UN was the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, who was very highly respected both in Sweden and in the international community (among others, JFK and Eisenhower often praised him)....

Contacting the Verein fur Raumschiffarht (German Rocket Society), he soon came in contact with a young engineer named Wernher von Braun. Impressed with the VfR’s work, Dornberger recruited von Braun to aid in developing liquid-fueled rockets for the military in August 1932. Commencing work with a team of 80 engineers at Kummersdorf, von Braun created the small A2 rocket in late 1934. While somewhat successful, the A2 relied on a primitive cooling system for its engine....

Gillingham’s great success in this case led him to found a new medical firm, J. Gillingham & Son, in 1866. The firm’s specialty was articulated limbs of great beauty and practicality, but they also made “mechanisms for dealing with curvature of the spine, paralyzed limbs and fractures and dislocations as well as knee caps and artificial eyes. The Lancet medical journal in a 1966 article described Gillingham’s prostheses as “strong, light, and durable” and took 10 days to make, were “easy wearing and not likely to get out of repair; simple in construction, and as beautiful as life in appearance....

Before modern air travel and first-class suites, the grandest thing in luxury air travel was the German Zeppelin airship. The Hindenburg was designed to ferry passengers across the Atlantic in serenity, with the dirigible floating smoothly through the clouds. The airship was considered the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. During the 1930s, airships like the Hindenburg class were widely considered the future of air travel, and the lead ship of the class, LZ 129 Hindenburg, established a regular transatlantic service....

Beginning with the botched kidnapping of an American tourist, the inspiring dancer Jean de Koven, Eugène Weidmann murdered two women and four men in the Paris area in 1937. His other victims included a woman lured by the false offer of a position as a governess; a chauffeur; a publicity agent; a real estate broker; and a man Weidmann had met as an inmate in a German prison. On the surface, his crimes seemed in most cases to have had a profit motive, but they generally brought him very small winnings....

It is said many of these adverts were literally created due to John Harold Johnson, founder of the Johnson Publishing Company dynasty. His hugely successful magazines Ebony and Jet – as well as other titles – catered to the Black middle and upper classes and he felt the readers would be more inclined to buy from mainstream companies that seemed to actually acknowledge them and their spending power. John Harold Johnson personally pitched to brands the idea that they should use Black models to market to his audience if they hoped to see higher sales....

The headband message “War is Hell” typified an acerbic attitude of many young American soldiers who were likely drafted and sent to the remote southeastern Asia jungles to engage in deadly and terrifying combat. A lot of the soldiers wrote graffiti on their helmets with inscriptions of their attitudes about where they were and why they were there. The contrast is what makes this photo iconic. You have this, bright, young handsome soldier with a smile on his face and then you have the text on his helmet....

Right after they disappeared past the crest of some cliffs, Rode and his men heard grenade explosions and heavy small arms fire, then all went quiet. On June 30, 5 am the next morning, Rode ordered more Jäger troops up the mountain under cover of the morning fog, who encountered Russian soldiers in a close combat gunfight. They were Russians of the 136th Infantry Regiment, 14th Infantry Division of the Red Army....