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It weighed 1.6 kg and was extremely well balanced when held at the leather-wrapped grips halfway down. Prior to the outbreak of World War I, there had been controversy as to whether lances or sabres were the more effective “armes blanches” (that is edged weapons) for cavalry, but neither proved a match for modern firearms. Generally, the troops can retreat faster than they can advance, so in an age when “breakthrough” machines (tanks, armored cars) either did not exist or were even slower than walking men, cavalry was given the task of harassing a retreating army in an attempt to turn their retreat into a rout and prevent them forming a defensive position further back....

Two 19-year-old students secretly climbed the northwest face of the Acropolis and tore down the swastika banner. When looking at the photo from a philosophical view, it’s somewhat of a statement on where Western civilization had arrived in 1941, in the midst of a takeover by a regime based on racial ideology, genocide, and domination. Germany invaded Greece to rescue Italy after the latter’s invasion of Greece failed miserably. A rapid German Blitzkrieg campaign commenced in April 1941 and by June Greece was occupied by the Nazis who proceeded to administer the most important regions themselves, other regions of the country were given to Germany’s partners, Fascist Italy and Bulgaria....

While studying at the Imperial Marine Academy in Trieste, and then the Imperial Military Engineering School in Tulln, Austria, he began to pursue painting. Although his military career with the Austro-Hungarian Empire was short-lived, lasting only from 1859 to 1863, the lure of the seas and far-flung places inspired by his naval education and his Orientalist painting teachers led him to South America, China, and then Japan, which he reached in 1864....

Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party, arrived from Illinois via Portland, Oregon, on the schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay in 1852 and named “Seattle” in honor of Native American Chief Si’ahl of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. The gold rush of the 1900s led to massive immigration, with major arrivals of Japanese, Filipinos, immigrant Europeans, and European-Americans from back east....

One day a politician may have been in favor, the next he could be facing the firing squad as an enemy of the people. In the Soviet Union, people were literally written out of the history books by using photo manipulation techniques. After he came to power in 1929, Stalin declared war on the Soviets he considered tainted by their connections to the political movements that had come before him....

Some 164,000 Jews were interned there, to whom were added tens of thousands of Jews from the district, other Jews from the Reich, and also Sinti and Roma. The ghetto, although intended to be a temporary transit facility, lasted for more than four years after the interests of local Nazis led to a decision to exploit the Jewish labor force. In the spring of 1940, the Lodz ghetto was sealed from the rest of the world by a wooden fence surrounded by additional barbed-wire fences....

The ads tout scientific ways to “add attractive pounds and inches” (a complete oxymoron in this day and age) and “add glamorous curves to your figure.” And it wasn’t about health: the ads make it clear that being skinny or slender is the least attractive look. “If you want to be popular, you can’t afford to be skinny!” announces one ad aimed at females. Another features a man lamenting, “A skinny man hasn’t a chance… I wish I could gain flesh....

The Women’s Army Corps (WAC) was the women’s branch of the United States Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps(WAAC) on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full status as the WAC on 1 July 1943. Its first director was Oveta Culp Hobby, a prominent society woman in Texas. About 150,000 American women eventually served in the WAAC and WAC during World War II....

These images provide a glimpse into the fashion and elegance of the era, underlining the timeless appeal of youth. The concept of the “teenager” had only recently been introduced, with the term first coined in 1941. By 1944, Seventeen magazine had published its inaugural issue, catering specifically to this new demographic. The magazine focused on fashion and interests that were distinctively aimed at young women who were no longer children but not yet adults....

From construction to destruction, we visit the station’s crowded, light-filled concourse, its ornate statues, and its dedicated people. Although this impressive building only stood from 1910 to 1963, the memory of its majestic presence in the heart of New York City lives on to this day. The story begins in the late 1890s when Pennsylvania Railroad leaders Alexander Cassatt and Samuel Rea dared to pioneer two feasts. First, they would lay down tracks in the turbulent Hudson and East Rivers to reach Manhattan, which had become a global hub of commerce....

It ran with the caption: “At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car“. Evelyn McHale is probably the most famous Empire State Building suicide victim. The young and pretty Evelyn leaped from the 86th-floor observatory in 1947 and landed on the roof of a United Nations limousine parked on the street below....

At night, the glow of the bombs lit up the sky, and mushroom clouds could be spotted rising over the horizon during the day. In classical American fashion, fear was not the only reaction. Vegas started becoming a destination for a certain type of people — Nuclear Tourists. Let’s roll back to understand why Nevada was selected for nuclear testing. The Yucca Flats of Nevada was located in the center of the American wasteland, making it the perfect place for nuclear testing....

The color effects on these pictures are created using the so-called “photochrom” technique. Photochrome was a process for producing colorized images from black-and-white photographic negatives via the direct photographic transfer of a negative onto lithographic printing plates. The process was invented in the 1880s and was most popular in the 1890s. The result is a cross between a photograph and a painting that depicts famous Scottish towns, landscapes, and buildings in a unique way....

The boy standing beside Escobar is his only son. He also took his family on a first-class trip to Disneyland at about the same time. That’s the White House’s North Portico, and that means that Escobar and his son are standing on the sidewalk adjacent to Pennsylvania Ave which at the time was open to vehicular traffic. Any pedestrian could walk along the street and pose for a similar photograph – and in fact, you can still do so today, though the fence has gotten higher....

The Pembroke outpost in Ontario, Canada, reported the Globe and Mail, was “a small air-conditioned shop on the main street, fitted with booths and screens on which color pictures of merchandise articles are to be flashed.” Customers sat down in front of one of eight booths fitted with 27-square-inch color televisions. The various product catalogs were stored similarly to microfilm in libraries and the staff changed the images being loaded on the screen depending on what the customer was looking for....

Princess Diana was a very important figurehead in convincing people that merely touching AIDS victims was alright, and they wouldn’t die by shaking their hands. The princess was quoted as saying “HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it”. Diana would usually visit the ill or dying in hospices across the world in order to raise awareness for the diseases and compassion for those that were diseased....

Per police regulation, employees of the London General Omnibus Company put their 60-person bus to a “tilt test”. The test was considered passed if the double-decker buses would tilt 28 degrees without tipping. There are sandbags in the upper deck to simulate 60 passengers. Note the chains and the slight lip, those are not preventing the vehicle from tipping. The lip is to prevent the vehicle sliding laterally down the ramp....

Abraham Lincoln, widely revered as one of the greatest leaders in American history, left an indelible mark on the nation during his tenure as the 16th President of the United States. Serving as the first president to be extensively photographed, Lincoln’s images have become powerful visual documents that chronicle his remarkable journey and the turbulent era in which he lived. Recognizing the medium’s potential, Lincoln embraced photography as a means to connect with the American people, allowing them to visualize their leader in an unprecedented manner....

You had to be a hard man to look Himmler in the face like that. This is standing for what’s right, this is a single man who, after losing so much, stands up and stares at Himmler himself. This image is defiance. Shirokaya was a labor camp that held up to 2,000 prisoners; skilled laborers from the Minsk Ghetto and captured Red Army soldiers that refused to work or operate with the partisans in the forests of Belarus....

The aim was to allow the very rich to come and slum it in a fashionable district, Montmartre. Nicknamed “The First Palace of Women” by Oller and Zidler, the cabaret quickly became a great success. The facade was decorated with glittering electric lights, which were a novelty at the time, with a huge red windmill at the very front of the building. The red windmill was designed to indicate the history of Montmarte, a village that once had many windmills in it....