Sophia Loren (born in1934, Rome, Italy), is an Italian film actress who rose above her poverty-stricken origins in postwar Naples to become universally recognized as one of Italy’s most beautiful women and its most famous movie star. She was named by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest female stars of Classical Hollywood cinema. Before working in the cinema, Sofia Scicolone changed her last name to Lazzaro for work in the fotoromanzi , popular pulp magazines that used still photographs to depict romantic stories....

Boy reels silk in a desert near Cairo. This collection of autochromes taken in the 1920s by Gervais Courtellemont and W. Robert Moore for National Geographic reveals the everyday life of Egyptian women, men, merchants, and children. They show familiar Cairo city locations and famous sites such as the pyramids. In the 19th century, there was the rapid growth of communities of unassimilated foreigners, mainly European, living in Egypt; these acquired a dominating influence over finance, industry, and government....

A Greyhound bus from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh. In 1942, twenty-one-year-old Esther Bubley, accepted a position with the Office of War Information (OWI) in Washington, D.C. to work as a darkroom lab technician. The OWI had recently absorbed the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and their stable of legendary documentary photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Jack Delano, and Russell Lee, among others. The OWI had shifted the focus of the photographers’ assignments away from rural poverty to various facets of the war effort, including aircraft factories and broader aspects of American infrastructure such as railroads....

On Saturday, July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber traveling at 200 miles per hour (330 km/h) out of Massachusetts headed for Newark Airport got lost in dense fog and flew into floors 78 and 79 of New York City’s Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world at the time. The accident caused the deaths of fourteen people (three crewmen and eleven people in the building) and damage estimated at US$1 million (at the time), although the building’s structural integrity was not compromised....

Hitler and generals inspecting the largest-caliber rifled weapon ever used in combat, 1941 The Heavy Gustav, was completed towards the end of 1940 and the proof rounds were fired early in 1941 at the Rugenwalde Artillery Range. Both Hitler and Albert Speer, later to be his armaments minister, attended the occasion. Named after the head of the Krupp family, the Gustav Gun weighed in at a massive 1344 tons, so heavy that even though it was attached to a rail car, it still had to be disassembled before moving so as to not destroy the twin set of tracks as it passed over....

What use is an inflatable dummy tank in a very real war? A lot, if the enemy believes that it’s real. During both World Wars, Allied forces made use of dummy versions of the British heavy tanks. These were constructed from a wooden framework and covered with painted Hessian cloth. The tracks were non-functional so some were fitted with concealed wheels underneath and were towed from place to place by a pair of horses....

This picture shows a pile of 105 mm shells spent during the course of a single day. A lone soldier surrounded by a mountain of empty shell cases, France. This lone British soldier up to his knees in spent shell cases offers a striking impression of the destruction that took place on the Western Front. However, this picture only tells half the story, with the other part of the story being the damage that the shells from these cases inflicted upon the enemy....

Erected in the dead of night on August 13, 1961, the Berlin Wall (known as Berliner Mauer in German) was a physical division between West Berlin and East Germany. Its purpose was to keep disaffected East Germans from fleeing to the West. When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, its destruction was nearly as instantaneous as its creation. For 28 years, the Berlin Wall had been a symbol of the Cold War and the Iron Curtain between Soviet-led Communism and the democracies of the West....

A V-1, “buzz bomb”, plunging toward central London, 1945. This bomb landed on a side road off Drury Lane blasting several buildings, including the office of the Daily Herald. Known as the Flying bomb, Buzz bomb or Doodlebug, V-1 was the first modern guided missile used in wartime and the forerunner of today’s cruise missile. The V-1 (and later V-2 ) added a new terror to an already terrible war – robot missiles....

These interesting photos, captured by photographer Charles Percy Pickering between 1863 and 1868, illustrate the ability of alcohol to transform a fine upstanding citizen into a staggering wreck. Across the five pictures, an upright, dignified gentleman slowly deteriorates into a sloppy drunk in a wheelbarrow. The set of photos is thought to be staged, educational photos perhaps commissioned by a local temperance group in New South Wales, Australia. Advocates of temperance encouraged citizens to be teetotallers, a term describing those who abstain from alcohol completely....

The 1970s in America marked a period of remarkable social and cultural change, with high schools serving as microcosms of the shifting values and attitudes of the time. Through a collection of vintage photos, this article provides a vivid glimpse into the fashion, activities, and generational shifts that defined the high school experience of this transformative era. Fashion played a crucial role in the lives of high school students during this decade....

The 1930s stand as a pivotal juncture in the evolution of house interiors and design principles, marked by a compelling fusion of historical influences and avant-garde innovation. During this transformative period, two predominant design sensibilities held sway: the opulent embrace of Art Deco and the enduring allure of traditional aesthetics. Art Deco, characterized by its geometric forms, bold lines, and ornate embellishments, encapsulated the zeitgeist of modernity. 1930 Armstrong linoleum – English revival style...

Tina Louise, is an American actress widely known for her role as movie star Ginger Grant in the CBS television situation comedy Gilligan’s Island. She began her career on stage in the mid-1950s before landing her breakthrough role in 1958 drama film God’s Little Acre for which she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. Tina was born in New York City to a fashion model mother and a candy store owner father....

Souc-el-Trouk, Tunis. These stunning color postcards of Tunisia show its vibrant streets, spectacular architecture, and the everyday life of Tunisian people. Produced in 1899, the postcards were printed using the popular Photochrom technique invented by a Swiss printer in the 1880s. 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....

As early as the fifteenth century, baby walkers helped toddlers learn to walk and encouraged erect posture (which carried moral overtones of upright character). European book illustrations and paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries show similar baby walkers and attest to their popularity. Like today’s counterparts, they gave toddlers circumscribed mobility. They also, importantly, prevented dangerous tumbles into hot stoves and fireplaces. With regular usage, wooden and wicker baby walkers had considerable wear and tear....

These interesting candid photos were taken on the roof of the D. B. Loveman & Company department store in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. The photographer was Charles Gustavus Walline who himself worked at the department store. His subjects were his coworkers on their lunch break. Loveman’s was Chattanooga’s largest department store when it opened in the 1880s at the corner of 8th and Market streets. Undaunted after his store was destroyed by fire in 1891, Loveman promptly rebuilt a larger building on the same site....

Moving through city streets, rural roads, and temporary encampments, the camera of Paul Almásy captured a side of Western Europe rarely acknowledged in mid-20th-century visual history. Born in Budapest in 1906 and later based in Paris, Almásy devoted his career to documenting people across social boundaries, paying particular attention to communities living on the margins. His photographs offer a quiet but powerful record of Romani life in countries such as France, the Netherlands, and England from the 1930s to the 1960s, a reality often associated only with Eastern Europe....

Dr. Goebbels, Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda), visiting Lauban shortly after the liberation with the camera crews of the Wochenschau. Here he is seen congratulating the 16-year-old Willi Hübner. As casualties mounted during the Second World War, Germany was forced to call up ever-younger conscripts to fill the ranks of the Wehrmacht. So dire was the situation at the end of 1944, that boys born in 1928 were called up to serve the Fatherland....

A German child meets her father for the first time, 1956. A German World War II prisoner is released by the Soviet Union and reunited with his 12-year-old daughter, who has not seen him since infancy. The child has not seen her father since she was one year old. The event, where this famous photo was taken, was part of what was known as “ Die Heimkehr der Zehntausend ” (The Return of the 10,000), as they were the last German prisoners of war to be released by the Soviet Union since the end of World War II....

Adolf Hitler attending the memorial service of Polish First Marshall Jozef Pilsudski in Berlin, 1935. The head of Poland Józef Piłsudski died on May 12, 1935. His funeral was made a few days later in Warsaw. But in Berlin, there was a service for Piłsudski ordered by Adolf Hitler. In the picture, you can see Adolf Hilter during the service for Piłsudski and a symbolic coffin with a Polish flag and eagle....