On a casual glance at the contraption shown here in the photo, you would think it one of Rube Goldberg’s latest inventions. But you’re wrong, for it’s a machine to teach pe… Read More

New York City was a bustling metropolis by the early 20th century, the city was a booming business and industrial hub, with new skyscrapers going up all around during this time. The Woolwort… Read More

The VS-300 helicopter, created and flown by Russian-American Igor Sikorsky, was first demonstrated on May 24, 1940 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. As the first American single main rotor helicop… Read More

The Devonshire House Ball in 1897 was a fancy dress ball, aka a costume party. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had hosted a similarly lavish ball in the 1870s, and it was immensely popula… Read More

Life in Moscow during the 1970s was marked by a period of stability and relative prosperity, following the tumultuous years of the Soviet Union's post-Stalinist leadership transition. The So… Read More

In 1940, a novel cigarette case keeps tabs on the cigarettes your friends “borrow.” When you want a smoke yourself, press one button to open the case. But when an acquaintance &l&hell…Read More

The Plymouth Superbird is a highly modified, short-lived version of the Plymouth Road Runner with applied graphic images as well as a distinctive horn sound both referencing the popular Loon… Read More

Brigitte Bardot (famously known as B.B.) was born born on September 28, 1934 in Paris to a bourgeois French family, her father being a successful industrialist. At the age of 13 she entered… Read More

Easy-chair comfort for the car driver was provided by an adjustable armrest which hooked over the back of the front seat, in 1950.The driving aid––a flexible metal bar with a sli… Read More

Born 1932 in White Plains, New York, American fashion model Joan Romano did her first job for Vogue magazine with Karen Radkai as the photographer in 1953. She modelled until 1959 working wi… Read More

After Office Hours is a 1935 crime drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring Clark Gable and Constance Bennett. The screenplay was written by Herman Mankiewicz.Jim Branch (Clark… Read More

“Blinders” of wire mesh in new spectacles designed for night driving are said to shield the eyes from the glaring headlights of oncoming cars, 1940. Mounted in an eyeglass frame… Read More

Meat Loaf flew onto the music scene like a bat out of hell during the 1970s. Equal parts beast and beauty, he performed with a feral elegance and passionate theatricality that came to define… Read More

The first commercial use of photography was in the production of portraits. Photography replaced painting almost completely from the 1840s, with fully equipped studios in existence. The phot… Read More

Olivia Newton-John’s first TV special titled “A Very Special Olivia Newton-John” was broadcast on ABC-TV on November 17, 1976. It was an opportunity to promote her Don&rsqu&hell…Read More

Romanian-born Hugo d’Alési (1849-1906) was one of the earliest artists to design posters for the French railway companies. They were printed using a process similar to chromolit… Read More

The Monkees is an American television sitcom that first aired on NBC for two seasons, from September 12, 1966, to March 25, 1968. The series follows the adventures of four young men (The Mon… Read More

Born 1912 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, American actress and singer Arline Judge made her theatrical debut in Broadway musicals and revues such as The Second Little Show and Silver Slipper. A… Read More

Born in Paris in 1887 into a family of tanners based in Picardy, Jean Patou first joined the army before turning his eye to fashion. His father was a tanner of chamois for luxury leather goo… Read More

Designed to help measure a patient’s teeth and the direction of bite, the gnathograph was developed by Dr. Beverly McCollum in the 1930s.The device measures how the teeth are aligned t… Read More

Equipped with an airtight cover and a close-fitting plunger, the kitchen device shown here enables a housewife to chop or slice onions without bringing the usual tears to her eyes. The plung… Read More

The exact date is difficult to pinpoint. Some claim that the legend of India’s ‘dancing elephant helicopters’ started in 1977 when the first one of its kind took to the air… Read More

The 1950s in Hong Kong began against the chaotic backdrop of the resumption of British sovereignty after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong ended in 1945, and the renewal of the Nationalis… Read More

A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, c… Read More

In the world of cinema, few movies have achieved the level of acclaim and adoration that The Shawshank Redemption has garnered over the years. As we delve into the depths of this captivating… Read More

Salvatore Ferragamo (June 5, 1898 – August 7, 1960) was an Italian shoe designer and the founder of luxury goods high-end retailer Salvatore Ferragamo S.p.A. An innovative shoe designe… Read More

A self-contained sound detector, easily carried and operated by one person, makes it possible for individual aircraft spotters to hear approaching aircraft through a set of earphones, 1942.W… Read More

Born 1944 in Shelbyville, Tennessee, American actress and director Sondra Locke performed in the theater company Circle Players Inc. while employed at WSM. In 1968, she made her film debut i… Read More

One of the most stunning Harley Earl design exercises of all time, the 1953 Buick Skylark is one of the most legendary GM cars ever built. Part of Earl’s “Triple Crown” of… Read More

Bruce Springsteen has been something of a heroic figure since his arrival on the national music scene in the mid-1970s. In an era when music was dominated by flat, formulaic sounds, he embod… Read More

It’s comforting to know that the media industry’s fascination with screwing their customers by telling them how they can use their own TVs is nothing new.“Phone vision,&rdq&hell…Read More

In Killaloe, County Clare an alternative method of swimming instruction has had a high success rate. Killaloe County Clare is situated on the banks of the river Shannon. At Pier Head, large… Read More

During the Great Depression, it was rare for most children to have any recognition of their birthday beyond a special cake served as dessert after family dinner.In the 1950s, there was a new… Read More

The Shrine Magazine was a fraternal publication that was distributed to members from 1926–1928. It featured fictional stories that appealed to both Nobles and ladies, temple activity r… Read More

“People always think of me as the Sixties Girl, but I never think of myself that way. Quite honestly, I hated what I looked like in the Sixties; I thought the magazines that put me on… Read More

WMT-TV Channel 2 in Iowa switched from its black and white programming to color for the very first time during a news report that took place on April 14, 1967.The news show started with news… Read More

The Jazz Age was a golden era of fashion. After the end of The Great War, women wanted simple, more comfortable clothing that would reflect the modern age and the active new woman. Fashion a… Read More

Lauren Bacall was a bewitching actor whose husky voice and smouldering onscreen chemistry with her husband Humphrey Bogart made her a defining movie star of the 1940s and who decades later w… Read More

Wham! were the biggest-selling pop musicians of the 1980s, selling more than 30 million certified records worldwide from 1982 to 1986, and one of the first internationally successful Boy Ban… Read More

Born 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, American actress and singer Lina Romay performed for a time with Xavier Cugat before eventually retiring. She was featured on Cugat Rumba Revue on NBC radio… Read More

In 1934, Hollywood photographer A.L. “Whitey” Schafer took this staged photo which mocked the Motion Picture Production Code (aka Hays Code), a set of moral guidelines that were… Read More

In 1929 the Minneapolis Tribune held a crossword puzzle contest consisting of 28 puzzles to be solved over a period of months. Mabel Gardner submitted her answers on a pair of white crepe de… Read More

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. Until… Read More

Known as the queen of the last feudal dynasty in Vietnam, Queen Nam Phuong is known for her matchless beauty. Before marrying to King Bao Dai, she was honored as Miss Indochina for three tim… Read More

Cadillac began the 1950s with carefully considered updates to its basic 1948 design, which was good enough to remain popular through 1953. As General Motors designer Mitchell once noted: &ld&hell…Read More

The surviving members of the Titanic crew received a warm and much-needed welcome when they arrived in New York on April 18, 1912. The crew had endured unimaginable horrors as the ill-fated… Read More

Born 1946 in Manhattan, New York, American actress and former model Ann Turkel was photographed for American Vogue in the 1960s. Patrick Lichfield captured images of her on location in the U… Read More

Galileo produced this extremely famous set of six watercolors of the Moon in its various phases “from life,” as he observed the Earth’s satellite through a telescope in the… Read More

When considering a list of the greatest pre-war collectible cars of all-time, the spectacular Tulipwood Hispano-Suiza has to be among the top of the list. Unquestionably it is the most famou… Read More

Forbidden City was a Chinese nightclub and cabaret in San Francisco, which was in business from 1938 to 1970. Although it was not the first Chinese American nightclub, Forbidden City was the… Read More

The Colditz Cock was a glider built by British prisoners of war during World War II for an escape attempt from Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle) prison camp in Germany.The only known photograph of… Read More

Fashion of the 1980s was characterized by a rejection of 1970s fashion. Punk fashion began as a reaction against both the hippie movement of the past decades and the materialist values of th… Read More

Nastassja Kinski was born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski on January 24, 1961 in Berlin, Germany, the daughter of German actor Klaus Kinski. In 1976, she met director Roman Polanski, who urged h… Read More

Born 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri, American model Sondra Peterson is best known for her work in the 1950s and 1960s appearing in major magazines beside other icons of the age like Veruschka… Read More

Born 1883 in Boston, American actress Pauline Frederick made her stage debut at the age of 17 as a chorus girl in the farce The Rogers Brothers at Harvard, but was fired shortly thereafter… Read More

The main model for all these lovely paintings was a working class sixteen year old girl called Geesje Kwak who had the luck and privilege to be transformed, at least in the artist’s st… Read More

Written by Frank Zappa, who co-directed with Tony Palmer, 200 Motels is a musical film which sought to project the surrealistic reality of being a pop musician on the road in 1971. The film… Read More

A 5,200-year-old pottery bowl discovered in Shahr-e Sukhteh (Burnt City), Iran has five sequential images painted around it that seem to show phases of a Persian Desert Ibex leaping up to ni… Read More

It was back in 1943 when Herman the Cat was officially hired by the United States Coast Guard as an “Expert Mouser” to essentially control or eradicate the rodent population aboa… Read More

It’s worth remembering that in 1965, most of the cars on the road didn’t have power steering, in fact some people had never even driven a car with power steering. With this in mi… Read More

Born 1919 as Marilyn Llewelling in Fort Worth, Texas, American actress Lynn Merrick was one of thirteen women selected by the Motion Picture Publicists Association as a “Baby Star&rdqu&hell…Read More

In 1954, the traveler could install a relief bunk in his car – an aluminum cot that extends above the seats from front to rear. While one person drives the other can sleep in full-leng… Read More

In the aftermath of WWII’s significant instability came the 1950s, suburbia, and the dream of a “picture-perfect” family.The 1950s were boomer years. The economy boomed, an… Read More

The story of Trinity Site begins with the formation of the Manhattan Project in June 1942. The project was given overall responsibility of designing and building an atomic bomb. At the time… Read More

Many people probably associate Queen Maud with elegant evening gowns, made by the most extravagant materials. But the iconic queen also had a sporty side and, not least, stylish clothes for… Read More

Born 1933 as Elizabeth Janet Pickering in New York City, Betsy Pickering began her modeling career in the early 1950s, making her first of several appearances on the cover of Vogue in 1953.B… Read More

Falling asleep at the wheel is just about impossible when an automatic “prodder” is worn by the driver. The prodder consists of an alertness indicator developed at Tufts College… Read More

In the 1980s, a middle-aged Canadian man decided to spend his entire life savings on building an indestructible suit that he could wear into battle against a wild grizzly bear. For about sev… Read More

Bill Mitchell (1912 – 1988) was one of the great automotive designers over General Motors’ storied history. His 18 years as GM Design Staff vice president produced a great legacy… Read More

David Crosby, founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash was arrested by Dallas police in April 1982 and charged with drug and gun possession. Crosby, 40 at the time, ended u… Read More

A person who is an animal lover is likely very empathetic toward animals, enjoys being around them, and feels a pull to help them when they can.Studies have determined that pet owners and an… Read More

Madame Butterfly is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Marion Gering, based on David Belasco’s play and the story by John Luther Long. It was adapted by Josephine Lovett a… Read More

In the first half of the 20th century, it was the social norm for men to be seen out an about with a hat on their head. Through the decades, the arrival of European immigrant communities to… Read More

As Americans gained more money and leisure time in the 1950s, proms became more extravagant and elaborate, bearing similarity to today’s proms. The high school gym may have been an acc… Read More

Jerrie Cobb was born in Norman, Oklahoma on March 5, 1931. With a pilot for a father, Jerrie took to aviation at an early age, first flying with her father at age 12. At 16 she was soaring o… Read More

The 1960s is a good period for the economy, helped by the fact that EEC (European Economic Community) countries stop charging custom duties when they trade with each other. They also agree j… Read More

In 1949, dual controls on a new motorcycle permit either rider to drive the machine. When used as a trainer the motorcycle permits a novice to learn to drive in 30 minutes, according to the… Read More

Comrade X is a 1940 American comedy spy film directed by King Vidor and starring Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr. The supporting cast features Oskar Homolka, Felix Bressart, Sig Rumann and Eve A… Read More

Bob Marley and the Wailers performing live at Jaap Edenhal, Netherlands on June 13, 1976. These amazing photographs, taken by Lex Van Rossen (1940–2007), document Marley performing in… Read More

Surfboards, whose usual habitat is the ocean, have taken to the land in a new sport devised by Portland, Oregon, youngsters in 1932. The surfboards, made of ordinary planks, are pulled along… Read More

Hjördis Genberg (1919–1997) was a Swedish actress and model. She was the second wife of English actor and author David Niven, and was among the first supermodels of Sweden.This ga… Read More

Born Josef Dzhugashvili in Gori, Georgia in 1879, the young Stalin studied to become a priest whilst secretly reading the works of Karl Marx. Politics was to become his religion and between… Read More

Fashion in the 1950s was influenced by the post-WWII era of the late 1940s and heavily featured newer materials like nylon, acrylic, polyester, and spandex. The end of the war also saw the r… Read More

Levitt Luzern Custer had always been interested in how things worked. Born in Dayton, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1913. Custer’s first invention was… Read More

Born 1962 as Leslie Wunderman in Manhattan, New York City, American singer, songwriter, and actress Taylor Dayne rose to fame in 1987 after her debut single “Tell It to My Heart”… Read More

In 1940, Jackson Doane, of Binghamton, unearthed a packet of letters, a ring and a picture in his family’s attic from Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, the older sister of Jackson’s great-g… Read More

James Burke, a scientific historian, had only one chance to nail this scene. A clip from the 1978 BBC television show Connections, season 1, episode 8, “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry”… Read More

Born on August 3, 1939, Jimmie Nicol is best known for replacing Ringo Starr in the Beatles for eight concerts of the Beatles’ 1964 world tour during the height of Beatlemania, elevati… Read More

Born 1946 in Manhattan, New York City, American actress Patty Duke portrayed Helen Keller in the film The Miracle Worker (1962) at age 15, a role she had originated on Broadway. She won an A… Read More

Moving slowly through the sweet-corn fields of California in 1954 was a weird tractor on stilts. The tractor was used to dust and detassel the high corn.The builder started with a 21-horsepo… Read More

Born 1933 in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, American photographer Bruce Davidson worked briefly as a freelance photographer in 1957. He has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 19… Read More

One of the largest oil refinery fires in Southern California began at 2:08 p.m. on May 22, 1958 with an explosion at the Hancock Oil Company facility near the top of Signal Hill, according t… Read More

Imagine a machine that could beat any human chess player. That sounds very ordinary. But what if that happened in the eighteenth century long before computers were around?A reconstruction of… Read More

A hybrid among vehicles, an amphibian bicycle that could travel on land or water, was demonstrated by its French inventor at a Paris exposition in 1932.Its wheels are hollow, bulbous floats… Read More

Nowadays, childhood lasts a long time with children remaining dependant on their parents, sometimes into adulthood, as they take advantage of educational opportunities. But during the Edward… Read More

Loves of an Actress is a lost 1928 American silent romantic drama film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Pola Negri. It was produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky with the distributi… Read More

A January 1970 raid at a New Orleans motel resulted in the arrest of the Grateful Dead vocalist/guitarist and 18 other individuals. Police reported seizing an assortment of narcotics, includ… Read More

Using the barrel for a horn, an English musician could play bugle calls on a rifle in 1938. A trumpet mouthpiece was inserted into the muzzle and the bolt removed. The notes produced were sh… Read More

Did you know that the first time Pete Townshend smashed his guitar was by accident, but apparently he liked the experience as it became a habit? Pete Townshend said it was an accident the fi… Read More

Brussels is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion o… Read More