German soldier lighting his cigarette with a flamethrower, 1917. Two German soldiers with a Wechselapparat (“Wex”) flamethrower. The Germans introduced this small flamethrower in 19 17 to replace the earlier Kleif. The Wechselapparat (“Wex”) had a doughnut-shaped backpack fuel container with a spherical propellant container in the middle. This design was updated during the Second World War to become flamethrower model 40. However, model 40 was considered too fragile so it was soon replaced by model 41, a simpler construction with smaller, horizontal, cylindrical backpack containers....

These incredible color photographs of the German battlefront during the First World War, 1914-1918, were taken by Hans Hildenbrand. Although color photography has existed since at least 1879, it didn’t become popular until many decades later. The overwhelming majority of photos taken during World War I were black and white, lending the conflict a stark aesthetic which dominates our visual memory of the war. “In 1914, Germany was the world technology leader in photography and had the best grasp of its propaganda value,” writes R....

Woman suffering from acute melancholia. The Victorian Era may not have been the start of the institutionalization of patients with mental health problems, but it was certainly a period when the number of asylums and patients treated within them, exploded. Whether this rise was mainly due to an increase in psychotic illness or to a decrease in tolerance of the mentally ill in the community is unclear. Many patients were admitted under the Poor Law and Lunacy Acts....

Rising at a moment when Hollywood was redefining glamour and stardom, Kim Novak (born as Marilyn Pauline “Kim” Malloy) emerged as one of the most striking screen presences of the 1950s and early 1960s. She began her film career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became a major box-office draw, starring in Picnic (1955), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and Pal Joey (1957). Her reputation was cemented by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), now widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, followed by notable roles in Bell, Book and Candle (1958), Strangers When We Meet (1960), and Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)....

Mountain Chief of Piegan Blackfeet making phonographic record at Smithsonian. The interviewer is ethnologist Frances Densmore. 1916. Although the photo was probably staged, it does show anthropologist Frances Densmore sitting with Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot Indian tribe, while he interprets a song in Plains Indian sign language. The photo was taken for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institute on February 9, 1916. Mountain Chief was a Blackfoot leader of the 19th century....

Motorcycle chariots at New South Wales Police Carnival, 1936. Chariot racing was one of the most popular sports in the ancient Olympic Games and it was dangerous to both drivers and horses as they often suffered serious injury and even death. Two-wheeled carriages were drawn by horses and raced around a stadium called a hippodrome, making oval-shaped laps. From four to six chariots competed in a single race, normally consisting of seven laps around the circus....

Paris as seen from the church of Saint Gervais. These colored photos by Jules Gervais-Courtellemont will take you back through time to see how Paris looked in 1923. The vivid images are produced using the autochrome technique in which the plates are covered in microscopic red, green and blue colored potato starch grains (about four million per square inch). When the photograph is taken, light passes through these color filters to the photographic emulsion....

View of the Graf Zeppelin flying low over the Chicago skyline. These vintage photographs show the airship Graf Zeppelin LZ 127 flying over Chicago in August 1929, on the American leg of its round-the-world trip. The crew flew the airship low over the city and the crowds were mesmerized by the sight. This is how the Chicago Daily Tribune described the event in her August 30, 1929 edition: Millions of Chicagoans take to the streets as the Graf Zeppelin cruises over the city to the accompaniment of the most tremendous roar of welcome that ever went up to the skies from this mid-continent metropolis....

Soldiers inspect sculptures on the grounds of the hacienda. Situated halfway between the city of Medellin and Bogota, the Colombian capital, Hacienda Napoles was the vast ranch owned by the drug baron Pablo Escobar. In the early 1980s, after Escobar had become rich but before he had started the campaign of assassinations and bombings that was to almost tear Colombia apart, he built himself a zoo. At the height of his power, Escobar was estimated to be worth more than $30 billion....

Residents of West Berlin showing their children to their grandparents who reside on the Eastern side, 1961. The building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 divided families and neighborhoods in what had been the capital of Germany. The Wall represented a uniquely squalid, violent, and ultimately futile, episode in the post-war world. Life was changed overnight in Berlin. Streets, subway lines, bus lines, tramlines, canals, and rivers were divided....

In the quiet frames of the past, a kaleidoscope of ordinary moments unravels, revealing a vivid panorama of life in 1940s America. These snapshots brought to life through the stunning hues of Kodachrome film, transport us to a time when the country was poised on the threshold of change, painting a vivid backdrop to the era’s challenges and triumphs. The streets of cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles pulsed with the energy of a nation at work, even as the war effort occupied the foreground....

Fashionable women’s clothing in the 1890s moved away from the exaggerated styles of previous decades. Skirts were no longer as wide as in the 1850s or as bustled as in the late 1860s and mid-1880s. They were also not as tight as in the late 1870s. However, corsets remained a prominent feature, becoming even tighter in some cases. In the early 1890s, dresses had a tight bodice with a skirt that was gathered at the waist, falling more naturally over the hips....

Kwakwaka’wakw man inside board structure, curing mummy over smoke and coals of fire, 1910. Among the Kwakwaka’wakw people of the Pacific Northwest, the Hamatsa were a secret society. This society exercised a ritual often called a “cannibal” ritual, and some debate has arisen as to whether the Kwakwaka’wakw do or do not practice ritual cannibalism, whether their “cannibalism” is purely symbolic, or literal. The Hamatsa initiate, almost always a young man at approximately age 25, is abducted by members of the Hamatsa society and kept in the forest in a secret location where he is instructed in the mysteries of the society....

In late December 1979, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Afghanistan, deploying troops to support the Afghan communist government in its conflict against anti-communist Muslim guerrillas during the Afghan War (1978–1992). This intervention marked the beginning of a prolonged and costly conflict, with Soviet forces remaining in the country until mid-February 1989. The war soon reached a stalemate. Over 100,000 Soviet troops maintained control over urban centers, major towns, and key garrisons, while the mujahideen operated freely in the rural countryside....

Performers with Buff Bill’s Circus. In the early years of the 20th century, a number of circuses toured Northern Ireland providing entertainment, tricks, and a lot of excitement for the crowds. Though the dim lighting condition inside the circus’ tent prevented images from being made of the acts in progress, local photographer Herbert Cooper was able to take pictures of the clowns, acrobats, and animals outdoors, as they rehearsed their acts and mingled with the local people....

Two captured Luftwaffe bomber pilots walking among London citizens, September, 1940 Under British military escort, two German Luftwaffe crewmen, an Unteroffizier (Subordinate Officer, or Corporal) and an Oberleutnant (the highest-ranking Lieutenant Officer) who bailed out over the English countryside and were taken as POWs during a bombing raid emerge from the London Underground onto the city streets as shocked Londoners look on. The unorthodox travel arrangements for the two prisoners of war on public transportation probably served as a good propagandistic photographic opportunity, as the image would be widely disseminated and seen by a nation beleaguered by constant aerial assaults during the Blitz....

The discovery of an ancient Maya statue deep within the jungles of Honduras, 1885. The Maya people have been called many names over the years, such as “the mysterious Maya” and “the magnificent Maya,” and many scholarly books have been written about this ancient Mesoamerican civilization. Many years before European explorers came to the New World, the Maya people were building huge cities, studying astrology, creating complex written language in the jungles and coastal plains of Mesoamerica ━ a cultural region including both Mexico and parts of Central America....

It’s 1918 and France was caught in the final year of World War I. American photographer Lewis Hine traveled across the country for the American Red Cross, documenting their work with refugees, orphans, and wounded soldiers. Lost for decades, his poignant work has recently been made public by the Library of Congress. Lewis Hine has been acknowledged as one of America’s principal 20th-century photographers, best known for his moving portraits of immigrants on Ellis Island, child laborers in factories and mines, and steelworkers balanced on high girders of the Empire State Building....

Morbid as it may be, that’s some fine handwriting. In 1932-1933, at the worst point in the Great Depression years, unemployment rates in the United States reached almost 25%, with more than 11 million people looking for work. Farmers who had lost their land and homes to foreclosure as a result of the Dust Bowl made up a large part of the idle workforce. “Hoovervilles” (named after Herbert Hoover, the American president many blamed for the Great Depression) and shantytowns sprung up all across America, areas in which people gathered and constructed makeshift homes out of boxes, packing crates, abandoned cars, and scraps of wood....

Aerial warfare was by no means a First World War invention. Balloons had already been used for observation and propaganda distribution during the Napoleonic wars and the Franco-Prussian conflict of 1870-1871. Planes had been used for bombardment missions during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912. Yet, aerial warfare during the First World War marked a rupture with these past examples. It was the first conflict during which aircraft were involved on a large scale and played a significant role....