The motivation behind the masks morphed with time. It was a way for the living to reconnect with the past or to memorialize the dead. Even in their earliest uses, which predated photography by thousands of years, death masks, along with their ‘life mask’ counterparts were used by painters and sculptors as a means of capturing the truest impressions of the subject in their work. Throughout history, the method of creating death masks remained the same....

Murray Hamilton plays the mayor, and Lorraine Gary portrays Brody’s wife. The screenplay is credited to Benchley, who wrote the first drafts, and actor-writer Carl Gottlieb, who rewrote the script during principal photography. Shot mostly on location on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, Jaws was the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and consequently had a troubled production with issues such as going over budget and past schedule....

The film, considered one of the first feature-length sci-fi films, stars Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Brigitte Helm. The film’s production spanned 17 months, from 1925 to 1926, and cost over five million Reichsmarks, equivalent to approximately $21 million today. Set against the backdrop of a futuristic urban dystopia, “Metropolis” was made during Germany’s Weimar period. The film’s narrative centers on Freder, the privileged son of the city’s ruler, and Maria, a compassionate figure revered by the workers....

His revolutionary approach to capturing the transient effects of light and color on canvas transformed the art world and paved the way for a new era of artistic expression. During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of impressionism’s philosophy of expressing one’s perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air (outdoor) landscape painting. The term “Impressionism” is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in 1874 (the “exhibition of rejects”) initiated by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon....

Her carrying capacity was over 15,000 troops and over 900 crew. During her war service as a troopship, Queen Elizabeth carried more than 750,000 troops, and she also sailed some 500,000 miles (800,000 km). The voyage would take about 5-7 days on average to go from the East Coast of the US to the British Isles while bringing troops to Europe. It looks crowded because everyone is on deck as it is pulling into the harbor (look at the top of the picture)....

It’s probably a publicity picture, not something the army would actually try to employ. The elephant would not respond well to the sound of that machine gun a few inches from his ears. The gun is John Moses Browning’s M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun, nicknamed “Potato Digger”. The M1895 was developed by John Browning during the 1890s, it was a belt-fed, air-cooled, gas-operated machine gun with a cyclic rate of 450 rounds per minute....

It must be really hard to go through what they did and look back knowing that everything that happened to them, all of their friends who were killed or maimed was in the name of something horrific, something totally repugnant to their own values. Original caption reads: Deutsche Kriegsgefangene in den Vereinigten Staaten sehen einen Bildbericht aus den deutschen Konzentrationslagern. English: German prisoners of war held in an American camp watch a film about German concentration camps....

The Marshalls Islands had been in Japanese hands since World War I. Occupied by the Japanese in 1914, they were made part of the “Japanese Mandated Islands” as determined by the League of Nations. The Japanese withdrew from the League in 1933 and began transforming the Mandated Islands into military bases. During the Second World War, these islands, as well as others in the vicinity, became targets of Allied attacks....

John Vachon’s first job at the Farm Security Administration carried the title “assistant messenger.” He was twenty-one, and had come to Washington from his native Minnesota to attend The Catholic University of America. Vachon had no intention of becoming a photographer when he took the position in 1936, but as his responsibilities increased for maintaining the FSA photographic file, his interest in photography grew. Like fellow FSA photographer Edwin Rosskam, Vachon arrived in Chicago in 1941....

Back then the main reason for wearing a helmet wasn’t protection from gunfire, but from shrapnel from exploding artillery shells. The original caption reads: “Saved by shrapnel helmet. This soldier, on the way to hospital after being bandaged at Field Dressing Station, shows the helmet which saved his life”. This photograph would have made ideal propaganda material as its accompanying caption demonstrates. The soldier in the middle of the scene is happy and triumphant....

The tour was also a chance for the film star to overcome a degree of stage fright. She remarked that the Korea trip “was the best thing that ever happened to me. I never felt like a star before in my heart. It was so wonderful to look down and see a fellow smiling at me”. In one show where the start was delayed the troops got frustrated and threatened to riot so the opening acts had to be canceled to get her onto the stage sooner....

It was to be the turning point for the fortunes of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, in that the failure of Operation Barbarossa arguably resulted in the eventual overall defeat of Nazi Germany. The Eastern Front, which was opened by Operation Barbarossa, would become the biggest theater of war in World War II, with some of the largest and most brutal battles, terrible loss of life, and miserable conditions for Russians and Germans alike....

Many institutions in the United Kingdom possess a variety of cultural items and human remains from countries around the globe. The vast collections stem from centuries of exploration and the growth of the British Empire through colonization. Collecting cultural items and human remains from other countries has been documented at least as far back as the fifteenth century. For the period after the fifteenth century these items, collected locally, were used to study differences in human populations and the origin of the human species, with items from overseas being brought back only if they were “rare or unusual specimens… for their curiosity value as well as for research”....

Published by Chicago phrenologist L.A. Vaught in 1902, the book lays out the 42 known elements of human nature (including Acquisitiveness, Benevolence, Amativeness, Weight) and how they’re made manifest in people’s heads, noses, ears, and chins. The author confidently states in his Preface: The purpose of this book is to acquaint all with the elements of human nature and enable them to read these elements in all men, women and children in all countries....

These impressive spans held the record as the longest cantilever spans in the world until the Quebec Bridge was completed in 1917. The bridge itself stretches over an impressive total length of 3,724.5 feet. In its original design, the Queensboro Bridge accommodated two elevated railway lines, two trolley lines, six lanes for carriages, and two pedestrian walkways. As early as 1804, numerous designs were proposed for a bridge crossing the East River at Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island....

It’s “inappropriately used” because MorPekh is meant to be used for amphibious landings and not in-land wars, but for the Chechen Wars, the Russians had to scramble every half-way combat-ready unit that they had. In the summer of 1999 the warlord Shamil Basayev and his Arab friend Al Khattab, decided to invade the Russian Federal Republic of Dagestan from the neighboring, then-independent Chechnya, in order to create some kind of a trans-Caucasian Islamic Emirates Sharia state....

Captured on NBC TV cameras and by AP photographer Eddie Adams, the picture and film footage flashed around the world and quickly became a symbol of the Vietnam War’s brutality. Eddie Adams’ picture was especially striking, as the moment frozen is one almost at the instant of death. Taken a split second after the trigger was pulled, Lem’s final expression is one of pain as the bullet rips through his head....

Numerous inventors came up with their own versions of the monowheel, some human-powered, some electric, some with gas motors, all working the same basic principle: the driver sits within a smaller inner ring, which presses against the main outer wheel, allowing the vehicle to roll forward while the driver remains level. In 1869, a French inventor created the first known monowheel, but it actually had two wheels. It was a giant wheel with a seat inside....

The effect was a brilliant one, both from within the design and on the outside. The cathedral of light was documented in the Nazi Propaganda film Festliches Nürnberg, released in 1937. The Lichtdom was the brainchild of Albert Speer, who was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to design and organize the Nuremberg Parade Grounds for the annual celebrations. It is still considered amongst Speer’s most important works. The location of the rallies was the Zeppelinfeld, built for more than 300,000 participants as part of a massive complex specifically made for those events....

A crinoline (hoop) is defined as a framework consisting of round/oval circles (shaped like a hoop) of whalebone, wire, or cane used to extend the skirt. The steel-hooped cage crinoline, first patented in April 1856 by R.C. Milliet in Paris, and by their agent in Britain a few months later, became extremely popular. Steel cage crinolines were mass-produced in huge quantities, with factories across the Western world producing tens of thousands in a year....