Three more flights were made that day with Orville’s brother Wilbur piloting the record flight lasting 59 seconds over a distance of 852 feet. The Wright brothers documented much of their early progress in photographs made on glass negatives. The Library of Congress holds many of these historic images, some of which are presented below. Since 1899, Wilbur and Orville Wright had been scientifically experimenting with the concepts of flight....

Hiroshima was a minor supply and logistics base for the Japanese military, but it also had large stockpiles of military supplies. The city was also a communications center, a key port for shipping, and an assembly area for troops. It was a beehive of war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns; children were shown how to construct and hurl gasoline bombs and the wheelchair-bound and bedridden were assembling booby traps to be planted in the beaches of Kyushu....

Renowned for his on-screen charisma and undeniable presence, Stallone not only captivated audiences with his performances but also left an indelible mark on the fashion scene of the era. In these captivating snapshots, Stallone’s impeccable sense of style shines through, reflecting the essence of the 1980s. One cannot help but be enthralled by Stallone’s choice of attire during this time. From his signature rugged looks to his suave and sophisticated ensembles, he effortlessly embodied the spirit of the decade....

This unique position is reflected in its hearty cuisine, charming villages, and distinctive traditions. One such tradition is the Schlupfkapp, a flamboyant headdress that was once a hallmark of Alsatian women’s attire. Literally translating to “slip cap” in German, the Schlupfkapp is anything but subtle – a giant bow that captured both fashion and social identity in the region. The Schlupfkapp’s origins trace back to the 19th century. Back then, it started as a simple affair – a coif, a head covering often made of linen, tied with a small ribbon....

The Exposition Internationale would be the final European enactment of the ritual of Peace and Progress before the horrors of the Second World War. The Expo’s centerpiece was the appearance of two equally iconic structures, the German and Soviet Pavilions, facing off across a wide promenade. Their appearance and intent were in direct opposition to the avowed purpose of the 1937 Expo, to promote peaceful co-existence and cooperation among nations....

The number of people who fled the country from 1914-18 was approximately one-sixth of the Belgian population. They headed to the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands to flee the encroaching German troops. An estimated 250,000 no less headed to the four nations of Great Britain for safety. In fact, the Belgians in wartime Britain constituted the biggest single ethnic influx of refugees into Britain to date. About one in three stayed in London or its environs....

Known as “the Elephant’s Foot of Chernobyl”, this cooled molten mess of radioactive material was once potent enough to kill any human that stood in its presence. While its power has subsided over the decades, it still emits heat and haunts the power plant’s ruins with dangerous levels of radiation. This monster was born in the Chernobyl disaster. Lurking in the depths of the reactor ruins, the monster is one of the most dangerous things in the world....

Fat Man was the codename for the type of atomic bomb that was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third-ever man-made nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site and dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar....

They had been performing routine maintenance when Champion brushed one of the low voltage lines at the very top of the utility pole. His safety harness prevented a fall, and Thompson, who had been ascending below him, quickly reached him and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was unable to perform CPR given the circumstances, but continued breathing into Champion’s lungs until he felt a slight pulse, then unbuckled his harness and descended with him on his shoulder....

Their massive family was so unusual that photographer Leslie Jones from the Boston-Herald Traveler visited their home to document scenes of the family. Jones’ photographs capture the sprawling brood in detail, from the eldest teenage daughters to the new baby. Maurice Noonan, an Irish immigrant and pub owner, and his wife Mabel were proud dad and mom to 13 children during this period. The family including, 10 girls, two boys, and a baby whose sex we don’t know, lined up gamely for photos, showed off their daunting shoe-polishing routine, and, most impressively, demonstrated how they could all pile into a single car....

The builder designed special electric-operated elevator desks which rise, fall, and move left or right at the push of a button, to stop just before the desired drawer. The drawers also open and close electronically. Thus work which formerly taxed 400 workers is done by 20 with a minimum of effort. While nowadays it may be a rare sight, vertical files were extremely common in the paper era. In libraries, they were subject files containing news clippings and other information sources aside from books and stored in filing cabinets....

The all-male pledges were expected to play both male and female roles and they actually committed themselves to costuming and makeup with a serious degree of attention. The actors visited local photographers in costume, and the images were created as memorabilia and as cartes de visite which could be purchased by students and audiences. As these were all-male groups, the female characters were especially popular. Many societies prohibited women from performing on stage, so boys and men took the female roles....

Instead, fashion embraced looser, more comfortable garments that revealed more of the arms and legs. This shift had started about a decade earlier, with hemlines rising to the ankle and the move from the S-bend corset to the simpler, columnar silhouettes of the 1910s. Men’s fashion also became less formal in everyday wear. The decade can be divided into two distinct fashion phases. Early on, changes were gradual, and there was some hesitation to adopt the new, more revealing styles....

The tallest structures were the Temple Building at 10 stories and the Trader’s Bank Building at 15 stories. A new downtown to the west of Yonge and King Streets was built. The City of Toronto moved into a new City Hall, built at the head of Bay Street at Queen Street. Much of this new downtown was destroyed in the Great Toronto Fire of 1904, but it was quickly rebuilt, with new taller buildings....

There are about 76 million boomers in the U.S., representing about 29 percent of the population. In Canada, they are known as “Boomies”; six million reside there. In Britain, the boomer generation is known as “the bulge”. From 1944 to 1961, more than 65 million children were born in the United States. At the height of this baby boom, a child was born every seven seconds. Factors that contributed to the baby boom consisted of young couples who started families after putting off marriage during the War, government encouragement of growth of families through the aid of GI benefits, and popular culture that celebrated pregnancy, parenthood, and large families....

On the shore, with high, crashing surf as a backdrop, stood a young couple, Mr. and Mrs. John McDonald. As they moved forward, then back, clinging to one another, their body language told Gaunt a story that tightened his stomach. He realized that someone must be lost and he took a photograph from two hundred feet away. Only then did he learn that just moments before, the couple’s nineteenth-month-old son, Michael had been playing along the shoreline....

During his trip through exotic countries, Albert Kahn and Stéphane Passet visited Mongolia where they took this picture of a woman who was condemned to slow and painful starvation by being deposited in a remote desert inside a wooden crate that was to become her tomb. Initially, the bowls on the ground had water in them, though were not intentionally refilled, and the person inside was allowed to beg for food which often just prolonged their suffering as they generally didn’t get enough food for the passersby....

This photo collection from the 1910s features bizarre but adorable animals dressed and posed as humans with props, often with captions; these can be seen as progenitors of modern lolcats. Though he began photographing cute animals in 1902, he did not begin dressing them in tiny human costumes until 1905. As the story goes, his “eureka moment” came during a family birthday party. Folks were passing around and trying on a paper hat....

Lasting four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, the magnitude 9.2 earthquake remains the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history, and the second most powerful earthquake recorded in world history. Eyewitnesses described hearing a crunching, grinding noise as the earth shook. They recalled seeing asphalt roads rise and fall like waves and the ground opening and closing before them, water shooting up through the ensuing cracks. The violent shaking led to water, sewer and gas line breaks and widespread telephone and electrical failures....

The B-32 Dominator was initially intended as insurance against the failure of the B-29 program; however, the success of B-29 development and operational deployment made the cancellation of the Dominator a very real possibility at several points in its development. The Army Air Forces wanted to begin replacing B-17s and B-24s with B-32s in the summer of 1944. The plan called for Mediterranean-based B-24 bomb groups to transition first, followed by other groups in the 15th Air Force and finally 8th Air Force groups....