Long before dating apps compressed romance into swipes and algorithms, desire traveled by newsprint. In the back pages of local papers and alternative weeklies, small rectangles of text carried outsized hopes. These vintage personal ads, spanning roughly the mid-1950s through the 1980s, read today like messages in bottles—earnest, awkward, daring, and sometimes reckless. Time has rendered their outcomes unknowable. Some advertisers likely found what they were seeking; others moved on, settled down, or vanished into ordinary lives....

Major General Horatio Gordon Robley with his collection of Mokomokai tattooed heads. Major-General Horatio Gordon Robley was a British army officer and artist who served in New Zealand during the New Zealand land wars in the 1860s. He was interested in ethnology and fascinated by the art of tattooing as well as being a talented illustrator. He wrote the book Maori Tattooing which was published in 1896. After he returned to England he built up a notable collection of 35 mokomokai (Maori tattooed heads)....

Searchlights in the night sky during an air-raid practice on Gibraltar, November 20, 1942. The searchlights in this photo aren’t intended for the use of the crews running the lights. Their purpose is helping the anti-aircraft gunners spot incoming bombers. And the anti-aircraft gunners aren’t located at the lights. The glare from light reflecting off the fog doesn’t impact them as much, the benefit of the light in spotting bombers is greater than the harm of reduced visibility from glare....

In the early 20th century, open air schools became fairly common in Northern Europe, originally designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis. Open air schools were purpose-built educational institutions for children, that were designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis that occurred in the period leading up to the Second World War. The schools were built on the concept that fresh air, good ventilation, and exposure to the outside contributed to improved health....

Let’s take a stroll through history and peek into the past when the telephone was a mind-blowing invention. We’ve got these cool old photos that show us how people used to chat on the phone way back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These photos show us how the telephone changed things. It wasn’t just about the tech; it was about how we connected. Friends chatting, business deals getting done—all through this new invention....

With the birth of Émilie, Yvonne, Cécile, Marie, and Annette Dionne in 1934, the province of Ontario, coupled with Canada, discovered a “human goldmine”. From the moment the Quints were born, they were subjected to awful living standards and were abused by the Provincial government for financial gains. But, why were the Dionne Quintuplets and their parents, Elzire and Oliva, manipulated into such a horrible fate? During an era that was struggling economically, the Ontario government took advantage of a very rare event to make short-term financial gains....

Nowadays it’s hard to believe that thousands of people would be willing to stand out in the cold for hours just to try a McDonald’s hamburger. But when the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the whole city went mad. The Moscow McDonald’s initiative was a joint venture between McDonald’s of Canada and the Moscow city council. A plan first envisioned when George Cohon, founder, and CEO of McDonald’s Canada, met Soviet Union officials at the ’76 Summer Olympics in Montreal....

A massive smoke cloud rises into the sky moments after the 2.9 kiloton explosion. It was a blast heard around the world. News of what happened when two ships collided in the harbour of the historic port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on December 6, 1917, made headlines worldwide. In times of war, accidents happened in busy seaports, and life went on. But this time, things were different. One of the vessels involved in the collision was the SS Imo, a Norwegian war-relief ship....

The headquarters of Mussolini’s Italian Fascist Party, 1934. The building in the picture is Palazzo Braschi in Rome, the headquarters of the Fascist Party Federation (the local one, not the national Party headquarters). It was not always covered up like that; this set-up was displayed for the 1934 elections, in which Italians were called to vote either for or against the Fascist representative’s list. The “SI SI…” lettering (meaning “Yes Yes…”) was propaganda for one of the two plebiscite elections held during the Fascist Regime, where electors didn’t vote for individual parties (there wasn’t any but the Fascist one), neither for single candidates, but just voted “Yes” or “No” to a single list of candidates presented by the Duce himself....

An unusual piece of history, the last épée duel in France was fought in 1967, between the Mayor of Marseille and the Socialist Party candidate for president. You would think that dueling was an outdated ritual consigned to the 19th century, something that no longer had a place in the modern world. However, well into the 20th-century official duels were taking place, one of the last between French politicians Gaston Defferre and Rene Ribiere in 1967....

Harlem, one of New York City’s most iconic neighborhoods, has long been a cultural and historical cornerstone of Manhattan. Situated in the northern section of the borough, it has endured its share of challenges and triumphs over the decades. In the 1960s, Harlem faced a turbulent period marked by social unrest, including widespread school boycotts led by disillusioned youth and students protesting systemic inequality. To document these pivotal moments, French photographer Jack Garofalo was commissioned by Paris Match magazine to cover the neighborhood’s struggles....

The timber railroad bridge was once a common sight across the landscape of North America. For over a century, these wooden structures provided a crucial link in the transportation of goods and people, spanning rivers, canyons, and valleys to connect communities and industries. Although most of these structures have long since been replaced by modern steel or concrete bridges, the legacy of the timber trestle lives on through photographs and memories....

The five boys who came to illustrate the class divide of pre-war Britain, 1937. “Toffs and Toughs” is a 1937 photograph of five boys: two dressed in the Harrow School uniform including waistcoat, top hat, boutonnière, and cane; and three nearby wearing the plainclothes of pre-war working-class youths. The picture was taken by Jimmy Sime on 9 July 1937 outside the Grace Gates at Lord’s Cricket Ground during the Eton vs Harrow cricket match....

Germany, 1923: banknotes had lost so much value that they were used as wallpaper. Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914....

A cyclist on the Prinsengracht. Starting from the 1890s, the famous Dutch impressionist painter George Hendrik Breitner (1857 – 1923) used his camera to record the everyday life in the streets of Amsterdam. He found photographs to be a useful tool for capturing fleeting conditions of street life and atmospheric effects – rainy weather in particular – as reference materials for his paintings. Breitner was one of the first to explore hand-held cameras, which had only just been introduced....

ABBA, Swedish Europop band that was among the most commercially successful groups in the history of popular music. In the 1970s it dominated the European charts with its catchy pop songs. Members included songwriter and keyboard player Benny Andersson, songwriter and guitarist Björn Ulvaeus, and vocalists Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group’s name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names arranged as a palindrome. One of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, they became one of the best-selling music acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982....

After nearly 1,900 years at the bottom of Lake Nemi, the ships became visible again. Between 1928 and 1932, two enormous wooden ships, which once belonged to Emperor Caligula, and had lain on the bottom of the Lake Nemi for over nineteen hundred years, were salvaged in what was perhaps the greatest underwater archaeological recovery ever accomplished. The larger ship was essentially an elaborate floating palace, which contained quantities of marble, mosaic floors, heating, and plumbing such as baths among its amenities....

According to “Tesla – Master of Lightning” this is the last photograph taken of Tesla before his death. By the end of his brilliant and tortured life, the famous physicist, engineer, and inventor Nikola Tesla was penniless and living in a small New York City hotel room. He had become a vegetarian at that point in his life and lived on only milk, bread, honey, and vegetable juices. Tesla spent days in a park surrounded by the creatures that mattered most to him—pigeons—and his sleepless nights working over mathematical equations and scientific problems in his head....

“Mother and son.” 1890. These rare photographs from the National Library of Ireland capture gorgeous portraits of the people of old Ireland in magnificent detail. The last decades of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th were a period of colossal change that ended up with Ireland seceding from the United Kingdom. Ireland’s population had plummeted by more than three and a half million since the Famine and was still in decline....

The soldiers fed the polar bears with condensed milk tins. Soviet Union, 1950. Photo was taken during a routine military expedition in Chukchi Peninsula, Soviet Union. It isn’t sure if the Chukchi Peninsula has more people or white bears. The climate is very severe and sometimes weather can be so fierce in winter that the temperature falls 40 C degrees below zero (-40 Fahrenheit) so that poor white bears and their cubs start starving and freezing....