Common Russian soldiers and Finnish troops had a great deal of respect for the dead and would allow both parties to retrieve and bury their dead in peace and would make impromptu ceasefires for such occasions. Each party also buried the dead of the opposing side, left a stick on the ground marking the burial site and all the tags intact that would identify the dead. The Soviet Union demanded that the Finns move the border between USSR and Finland back 25 kilometers from Leningrad and grant them a 30-year lease on the Hanko Peninsula for the construction of a naval base....

Some people who brewed Moonshine (a type of whiskey) did it in the middle of a forest or meadow. Moonshiners were often sought after by law enforcement. A lot of times, authorities had to track the alleged criminals on foot. So to avoid capture, some moonshiners changed their shoes because a set of human footprints would be suspicious and indicative of people brewing or transporting alcohol. Specifically, they put on cow shoes....

While much attention has been paid to the role of male guards in perpetrating these atrocities, the role of female guards in these camps has often been overlooked. These women were tasked with enforcing the strict rules and regulations of the concentration camps, but they also played a crucial role in the torture, abuse, and murder of countless prisoners. The psychology of these female guards is a complex and troubling subject....

During the 1980s, these drive-through photo processing booths dotted the American landscape, providing a quick and convenient way for people to transform their film rolls into tangible prints. These vintage pictures take us on a nostalgic journey back in time and explore the history and significance of Fotomat, a true icon of its era. Fotomat emerged in the late 1960s, capitalizing on the rising popularity of amateur photography and the increasing demand for photo processing services....

This design was updated during the Second World War to become flamethrower model 40. However, model 40 was considered too fragile so it was soon replaced by model 41, a simpler construction with smaller, horizontal, cylindrical backpack containers. “Wechselapparat” is German for “exchange apparatus”. The flamethrower, which brought terror to French and British soldiers was used by the German army in the early phases of the First World War in 1914 and 1915 (and which was quickly adopted by both)....

Because rents were low, tenement housing was the common choice for new immigrants in New York City. It was common for a family of 10 to live in a 325-square-foot (30-square-meters) apartment. Buildings often covered 90% of a standard 25-by-100-foot lot, with windows and ventilation only at the front and back. These pictures were taken by Jacob Riis, a Danish emigrant who settled in New York in 1870. His pictures of the squalid lives of New York’s immigrants made him the most famous photographer of his day and were credited with bringing reforms which offered some hope to the booming city’s poorest residents....

This was the highest honor Nazi Germany could give to any foreigner and represented Adolf Hitler’s personal admiration and indebtedness to Henry Ford. The presentation was made by Karl Kapp, the German consul in Cleveland, and Fritz Heller, German consular representative in Detroit. The peculiar admiration that National Socialists had for Henry Ford and the supposed sympathies that the Detroit industrialist harbored for Nazism keep attracting the curious, both academic historians and internet readers....

From a camera hidden in a matchbox to one camouflaged as a pocket watch for covert operations, these devices show the ingenious designs of yesteryear, some dating back to the 1880s. Some of these special cameras were made to look like a book, a packet of cigarettes, binoculars, radio player and even a handgun. One of the more intriguing pieces is the cigarette camera, designed after World War II but never mass-produced....

The battle, which lasted from 21 February 1916 until 19 December 1916 caused over an estimated 800,000 casualties (dead, wounded, and missing). The battlefield was not even a square ten kilometers. On September 25, 1984, 70 years after the start of the First World War, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met the French president François Mitterrand at the Douaumont cemetery in Verdun. The men stood in long, dark coats, without an umbrella....

Targeting solid German citizens too posh for a scooter but not wealthy enough for a car, the Messerschmitt bubble car eventually achieved iconic status. At the end of the Second World War, survivors of a ruined Germany were picking around the rubble. Amongst the human casualties were significant numbers of disabled servicemen. Fritz Fend, a former Luftwaffe technical officer, had secured a small workshop, where he began to experiment with ultra-simple personal transport – a ‘Flitzer’ (meaning to dash along): a man-powered tricycle employing cranks and levers which could be used by the disabled....

U.S. Vice-Consul W. F. Busser attended the rally along with 20,000 others. Busser – it is unclear how much German he understood – reported that Luna Park did had all the trappings of the Berlin Sportpalast rallies: massed choruses of “Deutschland über Alles” and the party anthem “Horst-Wessel Lied”, the full panoply of Nazi organizations – Hitler Youth, Frontline Veterans, the SA – with their tossing standards, a high podium backed by Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer blazoned in giant Gothic letters on an enormous blood-red backdrop....

The cabin was an enormous structure, measuring 206 feet long (62m), 102 feet wide (31m), and 72 feet high (22 meters, approximately 7 stories). A full million board feet of lumber went into it. Its construction was said to have cost approximately $30,000 (about $950,00 today). Most of the giant logs used in the building were selected and purchased from old-growth trees in Columbia County, Oregon, by the American lumber baron and philanthropist Simon Benson....

This remarkable vessel, whose construction was a marvel of its time, bears witness to an important moment in maritime history. In 1949, she was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn. Pamir was built at the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg and launched on 29 July 1905. She had a steel hull and tonnage of 3,020 GRT (2,777 net). She had an overall length of 114.5 m (375 ft), a beam of about 14 m (46 ft) and a draught of 7....

Fractured by internal conflict and foreign intervention for centuries, Afghanistan made several tentative steps toward modernization in the mid-20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, some of the biggest strides were made toward a more liberal and westernized lifestyle, while trying to maintain a respect for more conservative factions. Though officially a neutral nation, Afghanistan was courted and influenced by the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War, accepting Soviet machinery and weapons, and U....

Ceausescu maintained an independence from the Soviet Union that was unparalleled in the Eastern Bloc. In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries began to liberalize, Ceausescu maintained his hardline policies. In 1981, Ceausescu began an austerity program designed to enable Romania to liquidate its entire national debt ($10 billion). To achieve this, many basic goods, including gas, heat, and food were rationed, which drastically reduced the standard of living in Romania....

On the morning of September 8, 1934, en route from Havana to New York, the ship caught fire and burned, killing 137 passengers and crew members. At around 2:50 a.m. on September 8, while the ship was sailing around eight nautical miles off Long Beach Island, a fire was detected in a storage locker within the First Class Writing Room on B Deck. Within the next 30 minutes, the Morro Castle became engulfed in flames....

This stunning piece, measuring 20×40 inches when closed and 40×40 inches when open, houses an astounding 300 tools. The chest is a masterpiece of craftsmanship, made from mahogany, rosewood, ebony, and mother-of-pearl. Beyond its impressive functionality, the Studley Tool Chest carries a rich history, even earning a place on display at the Smithsonian. The chest was crafted by H.O. Studley, a skilled mason, carpenter, and piano maker born in 1838 in Lowell, Massachusetts....

In 1909, Kahn traveled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre to the Far East on business and returned with many photographs of the journey. This prompted him to begin a project collecting a photographic record of the entire Earth. He appointed Jean Brunhes as the project director and sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using the first color photography, autochrome plates, and early cinematography....

Frozen Niagara Falls has been a fascination for centuries, with the first recorded instance dating back to the winter of 1848 when an extreme cold snap caused the falls to freeze solid. However, it wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that people began capturing its frozen beauty in photographs. During this time, photography was still in its early stages, and the equipment was bulky and difficult to maneuver....

The photographer Hector Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture: “I found myself in solid lead for forty-five minutes … I was flattened against the wall while bullets were flying when the priest appeared. The truth is, I don’t know how I took those pictures, lying on the ground. Rondon shot the government soldier crawling his way up Navy chaplain Luis Padilla’s robe as Padilla looks in the direction of the rebel sniper fire....