These evocative snapshots of London were taken by Swedish tourist Mats Örn in 1971 and 1977. They reveal what the capital city looked like in this bygone era, which is well known for be… Read More

Born 1904 as Marja Nissinen, American actress Marian Nixon began her career as a teen dancing in choruses in vaudeville. She began appearing in bit part in films in 1922 and landed her first… Read More

Born 1905, Serge Balkin was a celebrated photographer during his twenty-plus year career at Condé Nast Publications. An undeterred workhorse, Balkin’s images ran in Vogue, Glamo… Read More

The Límbó (Limmm-Bó) is a unique dance and is also known as the “Under Stick Dance.” The limbo dance, originally a ritual performed at ‘wakes’ in… Read More

Born 1932 in Johannesburg to Swazi and Xhosa parents, Miriam Makeba, nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, United Nations goodwill ambassador, and civil rig… Read More

Patrick Swayze was a huge animal lover and kept a menagerie of pets with his wife Lisa – which included farm animals, horses and dogs – at his ranch in the San Gabriel Mountains… Read More

George Braunsdorf, left, 6 feet 4 inches and Joe Damone, 5 feet 1 inch, demonstrate a pipe called the “Double Ender” in New York, June 2, 1949.(Ed Ford/AP Photo)According to its… Read More

The Catwoman is one Batman’s earliest comic book adversaries, initially appearing in Batman #1 (Spring 1940), and became the best-known and most frequently seen Batman villain. Catwoma… Read More

Born 1948 in Arundel, Sussex, English actress Judy Geeson began her career primarily working on British television series, with a leading role on The Newcomers from 1965 to 1967, before maki… Read More

Victorian era saw many changes in fashion, including changes in styles, fashion technology and the methods of distribution. Various movement in architecture, literature, and the decorative a… Read More

Estonia is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and… Read More

Born 1955 as William Michael Albert Broad, English musician, singer, songwriter and actor Billy Idol first achieved fame in the 1970s emerging from the London punk rock scene as the lead sin… Read More

Bebe Buell is an American singer and former fashion model. She was Playboy magazine’s November 1974 Playmate of the Month. From 1972 to 1979, Buell lived with rock musician Todd Rundgr… Read More

Crystal Gayle (born Brenda Gail Webb; January 9, 1951) is an American country music singer and songwriter. She is best known for her 1977 crossover hit, “Don’t It Make My Brown E… Read More

Clara Bow was born in Brooklyn, in 1905, “the most brutal poverty that was known at the time”. Stuck in a tenement slum with an abusive father and a violent, mentally unstable mo… Read More

In 1903, Benjamin and Mary Purnell founded the Israelite House of David, a religious society in Benton Harbor, Michigan. The House of David had many of the characteristics of a typical cult:… Read More

How can a picture of President Grover Cleveland, a man in a dress, and a man with a fake mustache and beard be related?According to Beverly’s Flickr, it is political satire referencing… Read More

Pop legends Liam Gallagher and Damon Albarn go eyeball-to-eyeball as a crowd of adoring fans look on.The Oasis frontman, dressed in a trademark bucket hat, is seen leaning into his southern… Read More

St. Louis is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, on the western bank of the latter. It is the largest… Read More

In 1931, Airstream began with Wally Byam’s dream: to build a travel trailer that would move like a stream of air, be light enough to be towed by a car, and create first-class accommoda… Read More

Mildred Alexander gave new meaning to the term “cathouse!” She operated a Sherman Oaks cat motel with 30 units that took up nearly an acre of ground.Each feline was housed in a l… Read More

Le Plessis-Robinson is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 10.5 km (6.5 mi) from the center of Paris. It was first mentioned in 839 as Plessiacus apud Casta… Read More

Born 1885 as Marie Adrienne Koenig in New York City, American actress and dancer Mae Murray began acting on the Broadway stage in 1906 with dancer Vernon Castle. In 1908, she joined the chor… Read More

In 1959 Dallas photographer William Langley had a problem: he needed a long-haired model for a shoot—the woman’s hair needed to blow in the breeze. But no local agency had a mode… Read More

Debra Jo Fondren, who was Playmate of the Year in 1978, skating at Playboy’s Roller Disco and Pajama Party in 1979.Debra Jo Fondren’s knee-length hair was so iconic that she was… Read More

It’s hard to imagine a life without a computer nowadays, but 40 years ago it was not that common. In a certain era in the past, vintage advertisements usually reflect how people felt a… Read More

Alla Ilchun was the first Euro-Asian model who has worked for twenty years at Dior. She was famous for her waist of 49 cm and eyeliner arrows.Alla Ilchun as a model in the 1950sIlchun was a… Read More

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (1917 – 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on… Read More

It was a troubling decade: America was a nation healing from the Great Depression, and had spent four years engaged in a war that would devastate millions worldwide. But on the beaches of Co… Read More

Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is one of Hollywood’s leading men, with an acting career that has spanned more than 50 years and included iconic roles such as Indiana Jones and Han… Read More

Back in the 1970s, Haiti was a tourist destination for the jet set, welcoming visitors like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. But political violence, instability and more recently the 201… Read More

Air France, in full Compagnie Nationale Air France, French international airline originally formed in 1933 and today serving all parts of the globe. With British Airways, it was the first to… Read More

Born 1915 as Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison in Manhattan, New York City, American actress and mezzo-soprano singer Patricia Morison made her feature film debut in 1939 after several… Read More

The 1950s was a decade of dramatic shift in the way Americans grew up and the activities that they were involved in. During the ’50s teenagers saw responsibilities shrink and free time… Read More

The Munsters is an American sitcom depicting the home life of a family of benign monsters. The series starred Fred Gwynne as Frankenstein’s monster and head-of-the-household Herman Mun… Read More

In late 1887, Calamity Jane Canary and cowboy Teddy Blue Abbott, wearing each other’s hats, shared drinks at a saloon in Gilt Edge, Montana, where she was living for the winter.Teddy B… Read More

Born 1897 as Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel in Racine, Wisconsin, American actor Fredric March was regarded as “one of Hollywood's most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 1… Read More

Audrey Hepburn had her first starring role in the romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953), also her first American film. The film was a box-office success and brought Hepburn to stardom. Her cr… Read More

American actress Betty White is also a pet enthusiast and an animal health advocate who works with animal organizations, including the Los Angeles Zoo Commission, The Morris Animal Foundatio… Read More

Ozzy Osbourne ironing a baby in 1983 as photographed by Mark Weiss. Weiss was a photographer for Circus Magazine beginning in the late 1970s where he began photographing Rock music’s l… Read More

Opened in 1938 the Ocean Hotel occupied a site of around 4 acres with 344 bedrooms and a dining hall that could seat 300 people. It consisted of a main building shaped like a crescent which… Read More

Born 1909 as Mildred Linton in Ottumwa, Iowa, American actress Karen Morley came to the attention of the director Clarence Brown after working at the Pasadena Playhouse, at a time when he ha… Read More

Returning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens and Nassau County as well as similar suburban areas in New Jers… Read More

Not a spelling mistake! Waulking (in Gaelic luadh) is the technique of not as easy as it looks! Finishing the newly-woven tweed by soaking it and thumping it rhythmically to shrink and softe… Read More

Born 1945 at Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, Belgian-French-Italian actress and singer Catherine Spaak spent most of her career in Italy, where she became a teenage star.From age 15 to… Read More

Born 1971 as Lesane Parish Crooks in New York City, American rapper, songwriter, and actor Tupac Shakur, better known by his stage name 2Pac and by his alias Makaveli, is widely considered t… Read More

The rollout of General Motors’ broad lineup of “X-Car” compact cars for 1980–which consisted of four separate vehicle lines spread across four brands–was a big… Read More

Born 1928 in Rome, Italian fashion photographer Johnny Moncada began with advertising photography and takes a definite path after meeting Joan Whelan, in 1954, an American model for Hubert d… Read More

Daguerreotypes were the first commercially viable photographic process. Developed by French chemist Louis Daguerre in 1839, the technique quickly made its way to the US in the 1840s, the beg… Read More

In July 1983, an adorably gangly 16-year-old Nicole Kidman was on the cover of Dolly Magazine; according to former editor Lisa Wilkinson, the issue was one of the most popular ones in the ma… Read More

In the 1960s bell-bottoms became fashionable for both men and women in London and expanded into Europe and North America. Often made of denim, they flared out from the bottom of the calf, an… Read More

Quebec is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. Located in Central Canada, the province shares land borders with Ontario to the southwest, Newfoundland and Labrador to the… Read More

Jacob C. Miller (August 4, 1840 - January 13, 1917) was a private in company K, 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment, and was wounded in the head near the Brock Field at the Battle of Chickamauga o… Read More

Called a “gushing pocket rocket” by MTV, Paula Abdul is the high-energy singer and dancer who restarted her career with eight seasons as a judge on the television talent show Ame… Read More

Born 1898 in Round Rock, Texas, Vander Clyde Broadway, stage name Barbette, was an American female impersonator, high-wire performer, and trapeze artist. He attained great popularity through… Read More

When we think of Marilyn photographers, the name Ben Ross is one that does not often come up, at least not immediately. However, when looking at his photographs they are some of the most bea… Read More

The bar was run by Chicago native Parnell St. Aubin, who’d played a Munchkin soldier in The Wizard of Oz, and his wife, Mary Ellen Burbach, a former Mae West impersonator with the Rose… Read More

The people of Sarajevo endured the longest siege Europe has witnessed since the end of the Second World War. For 47 months families were held hostage in their own city without food, medicine… Read More

Paul McCartney’s work as a singer/songwriter with the Beatles in the 1960s helped transform popular music into a creative, highly commercial art form, with an uncanny ability to blend… Read More

The fashions for weddings during the first half of the 1940s were limited by war rationing. Both food and clothing were rationed across the UK and U.S. For this reason, many brides in the ea… Read More

In 1954, during one of her annual pilgrimages to Miami, Florida, Bettie Page met photographers Jan Caldwell, H. W. Hannau and Bunny Yeager. At that time, Page was the top pin-up model in New… Read More

Phillip Garner destabilized this naturalness in his comic photograph of the ‘half-suit’: “The suit helps to create an illusion of a hard, or at least a firm and ‘prop… Read More

“All the best people come to Pontins” was the caption printed on a publicity brochure of Pontins, a British company operating holiday parks in the UK, founded in 1946 by Fred Pon… Read More

Born 1942 in Hartford, Connecticut, American actress Linda Evans had her first guest-starring role on a 1960 episode of Bachelor Father. After several guest roles in The Adventures of Ozzie… Read More

Born 1910 in New Jersey, American photographer Marion Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problem… Read More

Publicity shots of Joan Crawford and Dorothy Sebastian having fun on the beach in Santa Monica, California, in 1927. The photographs were taken by Don Gillum.The two had worked together in t… Read More

Before she released her 1976 album I’d Rather Believe in You, Cher and her friend Paulette walked into Norman Seeff’s studio unannounced. “They said, ‘We’re kin… Read More

Creating spectacular images in the face of technical and physical adversity, Captain Alfred G Buckham (1879-1956) was the foremost aerial photographer of his day. Between 1908 to the early 1… Read More

Born 1942 born in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, English actor Michael York made his film debut as Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew (1967). He then was cast as Tybalt in Zeffirelli’s 1968… Read More

A mobile home (also known as a park home, trailer, trailer home, house trailer, static caravan, RV, residential caravan, motorhome or simply caravan) is a prefabricated structure, built in a… Read More

In the early 20th century, getting drunk and riding a pig was considered one of the most extreme sports known to man Read More

In the late seventies, American photographer Matt Sweeney dropped out of high school with dreams of becoming a movie maker. Upon finding out about Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope education/t… Read More

Born 1914 in Posen, German Empire (now Poznań, Poland), German actress Lilli Palmer appeared in an operetta at the Moulin Rouge in France, and then to London, where she began her film c… Read More

Emma Ferrer, the granddaughter of style icon, humanitarian and legendary Belgian-British actress, Audrey Hepburn, has been photographed for the edition of Harper’s Bazaar, in the illus… Read More

Lionheart is the second studio album by the English singer-songwriter Kate Bush. It was released in November 1978, just nine months after Bush’s successful debut album The Kick Inside… Read More

“I was there to meet Bowie at Victoria station in May 1976 when he came back from his exile in Berlin and gave the shocking fascist salute. I had my head stuck through the barriers… Read More

Steffi Graf was born Stephanie Maria Graf on June 14, 1969 in Mannheim, West Germany, to Peter and Heidi Graf. She grew up in Brühl, a small West German town, and with parents who were… Read More

The Polish trade union, Solidarność, and its leader Lech Walesa, become household names across Europe and the world following the Gdansk shipyard strikes in the summer of 1980. In… Read More

Brooke Shields and Christie Brinkley first made the funny faces—twisted pouts and crazy eyes—at a party on Feb. 10, 1987. Twenty-six years later, the famous duo showed they&rsquo&hell…Read More

Belleville is a city in Ontario, Canada situated on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, located at the mouth of the Moira River and on the Bay of Quinte.Downtown Belleville, Ontario in 1975Bell… Read More

It’s the 1950s. The war is over, and the United States is enjoying a wave of unprecedented prosperity. Millions of GIs returned, eager for the comforts of home that they had been missi… Read More

Back in the 1920s, people thought that drinking radium, and thorium, infused water was healthy. One of the more famous varieties of this water was sold under the brand name Radithor. It was… Read More

A Countess from Hong Kong is a 1967 British romantic comedy film scored, written, and directed by Charlie Chaplin and starring Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Sydney Chaplin (Chaplin’s th… Read More

Dance is the most popular form of recreation in Africa. In towns, men and women of all ages meet informally in dance clubs to dance to the rhythms of popular musicians. In villages there may… Read More

Back in 1979, Swedish photographer George Kindbom, then a 27-year-old man who was eager to travel the world, visited London. During his holiday he captured a city on the cusp of a new decade… Read More

Hong Kong became the first of the Four Asian Tiger economies to industrialize during the 1950s. With a rapidly increasing population, the colonial government began reforms to improve infrast… Read More

Anne Frank frequently wrote about her sister Margot, who was three years older. “Margot doesn’t need raising, since she’s naturally good, kind, and clever, Anne wrote in he… Read More

Television was introduced to Americans in 1939 and began to gain a foothold after World War II (1939–45). In the 1950s, the sale of TV sets and the boom in programming made TV America… Read More

Tallulah Bankhead was an American stage and screen actress. She was a member of the Brockman Bankhead family, a prominent Alabama political family. Bankhead, however, differed from her famil… Read More

During the Spring of Nations (a series of revolutions which swept across Europe), Poles took up arms in the Greater Poland Uprising of 1848 to resist Prussian rule. The uprising was suppress… Read More

If you ever wondered what a yodeling master sounds like, well... this is it.  Franz Lang (December 28, 1930 – December 6, 2015), known as the “Yodel King,” was an al… Read More

In World War II, thousands of combatants across the globe experienced exiting an aircraft and parachuting to the ground, either as a paratrooper dropped into combat or as flight crew escapin… Read More

Scalping is often depicted in old-timey cowboy-and-Indian movies with lots of quavering music and dramatic pauses. But then you see the real scalp under a bell jar and it isn’t so melo… Read More

Nancy Sinatra had some big shoes to fill. Fortunately for the daughter of legendary Frank Sinatra, her smash hit single happened to be about shoes. After “These Boots Were Made For Wal… Read More

By 1972, the feel of the peppy mod sixties had faded away. In its place was a style that combined elements from the hippy counter-culture – by now, no longer really even “counter… Read More

The relatively low cost of the daguerreotype in the middle of the 19th century and the reduced sitting time for the subject, though still much longer than now, led to a general rise in the p… Read More

Short skirts have existed for a long time, though they were generally not called ‘mini’ or recognized as a fashion trend until the 1960s.Hemlines were just above the knee in 1961… Read More

Lana Wood is a Hollywood pseudonym for the Russian actress Svetlana Nikolaevna Zakharenko, the younger sister of Natalie Wood. Lana’s best-known role is as Bond girl Plenty O’Too… Read More

Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016), known simply as Prince, captured a series of selfies in the bathroom mirror of 2810 Montcalm Avenue in Los Angeles, where he was s… Read More

Born 1919 in in Budapest, Hungarian-American actress and singer Eva Gabor had her first movie role in the U.S. in 1941’s Forced Landing at Paramount Pictures. During the 1950s, she app… Read More