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Long before sleek flat screens adorned our living rooms, television sets were bold expressions of artistic ingenuity, pushing the boundaries of conventional aesthetics. From the quaint and quirky to the utterly breathtaking, these vintage masterpieces showcased an unconventional beauty that is increasingly elusive in today’s tech-saturated world. In this article, we invite you to embark on a journey through time as we unveil 15 stunning retro TV set designs that embody the essence of unconventional beauty, designs that are hard to find in the modern era....

In 1896 Akeley started his first trip in Africa and it was also on this trip that Akeley came face to face with a deadly 80-pound leopard. During a journey to Somaliland, Akeley and his assistant were out hunting ostriches for the Field Museum in Chicago when the hunter spotted something lurking in the tall grass. As this was his first big trip, Akeley was a bit inexperienced and thought the mystery creature was a warthog....

He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname “The Great Stone Face”. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton’s “extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929” when he “worked without interruption” as having made him “the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies”. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, writing that “More than Chaplin, Keaton understood movies: He knew they consisted of a four-sided frame in which resided a malleable reality off which his persona could bounce....

The treatment had two branches: heliotherapy (natural sun therapy) and phototherapy (artificial light therapy). These progressive therapies presented and sold light as curative and transformative. From the late 1800s, light therapy – sometimes called phototherapy – became a key part of certain treatment regimes for tuberculosis, notably tuberculosis of the bones, joints and skin, as prolonged exposure to sunlight can kill the bacteria which cause the disease. Infected children who were sent out to special homes and hospital retreats were encouraged to spend as much time outdoors as possible....

After hauling the hunted whales back to shore, a team of scientists quickly drained each whale of their 7,000 liters of blood and pumped it full of formalin, a solution used to preserve the tissues and skin. The entrails and organs were also removed, including the 6-ton liver and 2.5-ton tongue. To prevent the tissues from rotting, refrigeration units were placed inside their hollow interiors. The whales placed on custom-built refrigerated 100-feet trailers (said to be the largest in the world at the time) before they embarked on their 20-year odysseys across Europe....

“Fayum portraits” is generally used as a stylistic, rather than a geographic, description. While painted cartonnage mummy cases date back to pharaonic times. These ancient Egyptian-Roman “death masks” are far more naturalistic than anything seen in the western hemisphere for at least the next 600 years. There is something profoundly disconcerting about gazing into the face of someone who lived so long ago, and have them look straight back at you – long and level, quizzical – in a way that simulates direct connection....

This is pretty much guaranteed to keep their airway out of the water whilst leaving the rescuer an arm free to paddle and/or grab onto something else. It also makes it hard for the victim to drown the rescuer. However, this method is not recommended if someone is seriously injured. The uniform is the OD M1941 Herringbone Twill cotton uniform. The HBT or Herringbone weave pattern was introduced as the first-ever “rip stop” type of fabric....

During this time Tunisia was occupied by the French in 1881 and administered as a protectorate in which the nominal authority of local government was recognized. Europeans at one time made up half the population in Tunis. Rapid redevelopment of the city occurred as the French-built new boulevards, neighborhoods, and infrastructure and the city became divided into a traditional Arab-populated medina and a new quarter populated by immigrants. The postcards show touches of French influence, with the nearly finished Cathedral of St....

According to the briefing, the purpose of the study was to examine how toxic a chemical is by exposing spiders to it and comparing how their webs differed from that of a normal spider web. The researchers exposed spiders to a range of different chemicals, including caffeine, marijuana, and Benzedrine — a type of amphetamine — and noted how they spun their webs under the influence of each of those substances....

From having the world’s first all-metal built and fastest fighter plane in the mid-1930s to flying mostly outdated aircraft in 1939. Polish pilots had no lack of determination though, which was accompanied by the bravery and a willingness to fight to the very end. In September 1939 the German Army, supported by Luftwaffe and the Navy invaded Poland. The Polish defenses, already pinched by the powerful and innovative Blitz assault, collapsed shortly after the Soviets launched their own invasion from the east....

Looking at the photo someone can see love right there. That is a look of determination. It says a lot about his love. The photographer is Mark Edwards and he later recalled: “I took this profoundly disturbing picture of a man carrying his cholera-stricken wife during the Bangladesh war in 1971. Ten million people crossed the East Pakistan border into India to escape the horrors of this bloody war”. In August 1947, the official birth of two states Pakistan and India, gave a permanent home for Hindus and Muslims from the departure of the British....

Her true fame came in the last years of World War II. As the only female tank officer in the 1st Guards Tank Army, Samusenko performed heroically during the Battle of Kursk, earning the Order of the Red Star. When her battalion commander fell in a later battle, Samusenko took charge and led her forces out of an ambush. She would serve as a tank commander throughout 1943 and 1944....

An unauthorized photo of Stalin inside the Kremlin shows the very moment he was informed that the German armies had advanced in Kiev (August 1941). What you see here is a man who up until a few weeks before had absolute confidence in Plan A, and who now has no Plan B. The picture was taken by Komsomolskaya Pravda’s editor-in-chief. The photographer secretly defied orders to destroy it as it was deemed not to show Stalin in a positive light....

While the prints may deceptively look like color photographs, but in fact, artificial color has in fact been added to black-and-white images. The process was invented in the 1880s by Hans Jakob Schmid, an employee of Swiss printing company Orell Gessner Füssli. It was highly time-consuming and required much attention to detail. The original tablet of lithographic limestone would be coated with a light-sensitive emulsion, placed under a photo negative, and exposed to sunlight for several hours....

The earliest stereoscopes, “both with reflecting mirrors and with refracting prisms”, were invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone and constructed for him by optician R. Murray in 1832. He discovered the illusion that if you drew two pictures of something—say, a cube, or a tree—from two slightly different perspectives, and then viewed each one through a different eye, your brain would assemble them into a three-dimensional view. Stereoscopy was improved by Sir David Brewster in 1849....

The photo was mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany and intercepted at a Warsaw post office by a member of the Polish resistance collecting documentation on Nazi war crimes. The original print was owned by Tadeusz Mazur and Jerzy Tomaszewski and now resides in Historical Archives in Warsaw. The original German inscription on the back of the photograph reads: “Ukraine 1942, Jewish Action [operation], Ivanograd”. This photo is considered, in the words of British journalist Robert Fisk, “one of the most impressive and persuasive images of the Nazi Holocaust”....

The rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels. The film was directed by Ishirō Honda, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It stars Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata, and Takashi Shimura, with Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka as Godzilla. In the film, Japan’s authorities deal with the sudden appearance of a giant monster, whose attacks trigger fears of nuclear holocaust during post-war Japan....

For two decades, André Rene Rousimoff towered over the professional wrestling stage like a colossus, winning over fans of all ages with his humble manner, boundless charm, and fearsome charisma in the ring. An exceptional performer whose very presence was enough to get the crowd on its feet, the French-born Gargantua became one of the most recognizable athletes in all world, second to only Muhammad Ali. In an age when wrestling stars were ghettoized from the mainstream, André crossed over to become a transcendent cultural phenomenon, with acting roles that are now considered classics by a generation....

The only sounds on Pennsylvania Avenue as the cortège made its way to the Capitol were the sounds of the muffled drums and the clacking of horses’ hooves. The widow, Jackie Kennedy, holding her two children by the hand, led the public to mourn for the country. In the rotunda, Mrs. Kennedy and her daughter Caroline knelt beside the casket, which rested on the Lincoln catafalque. Three-year-old John Jr. was briefly taken out of the rotunda so as not to disrupt the service....

This is the start of years of anti-Jewish propaganda. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels arranged for a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. He would later explain in an April 1st speech at the Berlin Lustgarten that the boycott was in retaliation for anti-German “atrocity propaganda” spread by the “international Jewry” in foreign newspapers. SA storm troopers were ordered to stand in front of Jewish shops, department stores, and offices to intimidate customers....