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The rising mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, a few minutes after the nuclear bomb was detonated, August 9, 1945. Picture taken from Koyagi-jima, 5 miles from the center of Nagasaki. This is believed to be the earliest photograph from the ground, 15 minutes after the plutonium bomb detonated over Nagasaki. The destruction was so incredible that there is no count on how many people died that day. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will forever live in the pages of history as two of the most significant turning points in modern history, initiating the world into the nuclear age....

Tourists pose on Glacier Point above the Yosemite Valley. 1887. The process that led up to the national park idea is complex. From arts and literature came the Romantic movement, which encouraged the experience of the mountains and wilderness. Authors like Henry Davia Thoreau and Washington Irving exhorted Americans to pursue nature even as the frontier rolled away from them. Landscape artists culminating with Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt presented awesome spectacles that received huge public interest....

U.S. Marshals escorted Bridges to and from school. On the road to Civil Rights, even children became public figures, such as six-year-old Ruby Bridges, who integrated an all-white elementary school in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. Ruby was born in Tylertown, Mississippi, to Abon and Lucille Bridges. When she was 4 years old, her parents, Abon and Lucille Bridges, moved to New Orleans, hoping for a better life in a bigger city....

Dolly Parton is a name that has transcended time and continues to captivate hearts with her unmistakable voice, infectious spirit, and timeless beauty. As one of the most iconic and influential country music stars of all time, Dolly’s journey from humble beginnings in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to becoming a global sensation is nothing short of remarkable. Her music has touched the souls of millions, and her infectious personality and authentic charm have won over countless more....

In September 1977, CBS debuted Stan Lee’s Spider-Man on television as a two-hour movie, later evolving into The Amazing Spider-Man series. This marked Spider-Man’s first live-action TV appearance, airing on CBS in the United States from September 14, 1977, to July 6, 1979. Australian actor Nicholas Hammond, known for his role as the young Friedrich von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Unlike the original comic books, the TV series took a different direction by featuring more grounded and realistic adversaries, such as mind-controlling New Age gurus, cultists, and Latin American politicians, instead of the traditional villains like the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus....

Soldiers celebrating the news of the Armistice. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in the First World War, then known as “the Great War.” Though the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, marked the official end of the war, the public still viewed November 11th as the date that marked the end of the Great War....

Thomas Edison poses with his first electric car, the Edison Baker, and one of its batteries. 1895. Early electric cars found a lucrative market for driving around cities. Rechargeable batteries that provided a viable means for storing electricity on board a vehicle did not come into being until 1859, with the invention of the lead–acid battery by French physicist Gaston Planté. What is likely the first human-carrying electric vehicle with its own power source was tested along a Paris street in April 1881 by French inventor Gustave Trouvé....

The sun rises on the darkened Manhattan skyline during a citywide blackout. 1977. The 1977 blackout that hit New York was a crisis that came amidst a sweltering heatwave, a financial downturn, rising poverty and inequality, and an atmosphere of gloom that had already settled on the city. The 25-hour outage began around 9:30 p.m. on July 13th, after a bolt of lightning struck an electrical substation in Westchester....

Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin. Vasily Blokhin is recorded as having executed tens of thousands of prisoners by his own hand, including his killing of about 7,000 Polish prisoners of war during the Katyn massacre in spring 1940, making him the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history. He was the NKVD major in charge of executing the Polish officers from the Ostashkov camp, and he believed in personally doing the killing that his superiors had ordered him to supervise....

In Queen Victoria’s reign, England reigned as the world’s undisputed superpower. London, its beating heart, pulsed with the energy of a thriving metropolis. Magnificent palaces and towering structures stood as a testament to the wealth amassed from a vast colonial empire. However, beneath this glittering facade lay a stark reality. Poverty gnawed at the city’s underbelly, a harsh contrast to the opulence above. This establishment was frequented by convicts and “ticket-of-leave” men, who were recently released from jail and given a “ticket” as proof of their trustworthiness, for food and sometimes shelter....

Bruce Lee (Chinese name Li Jun Fan, born in 1940) was a Hong Kong and American martial artist, martial arts instructor, actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do , a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts. Lee is considered by critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West....

German students taking part in race education classes, 1943. The three groups displayed on the poster are, from top to bottom, “ostbaltische Rasse” (“East Baltic race”), “ostische Rasse” (“Alpine race”), and “dinarische Rasse” (“Dinaric race”). All these three groups were considered part of the sub-races of the Caucasian race, others including the Nordic and Mediterranean. The Nazis went to great extents on teaching the German youth to be proud of their race through biology teaching, the National Socialist Teachers League (NSLB) in particular taught in schools that they should be proud of their race and not to race mix....

More than twenty thousand attend a meeting of the German American Bund, which included banners such as “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian Americans”. February 20, 1939. Supposedly 22,000 Nazi supporters attended a German American Bund rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in February 1939, under police guard. Demonstrators protested outside. Aside from its admiration for Adolf Hitler and the achievements of Nazi Germany, the German American Bund program included antisemitism, strong anti-Communist sentiments, and the demand that the United States remain neutral in the approaching European conflict....

These haunting before-and-after photographs reveal the devastating impact of lobotomy, a controversial procedure championed by a notorious physician, Walter Freeman. The practice, once heralded as a breakthrough in treating mental disorders, involved severing parts of the prefrontal cortex while patients remained conscious. Though initially celebrated as a cure, lobotomy left many lives irreparably damaged. Walter Freeman, who lacked formal surgical training, performed over 3,400 lobotomies between the 1930s and 1960s....

Captured Soviet soldier dressed in SN-42 body armor. Karelia, 1944. Portrait of a young Soviet prisoner of war in a steel breastplate SN-42, made of 2mm steel (.08″) and weighing 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs), captured by Finnish troops during the Finnish-Soviet Continuation War. A testament to the breastplate’s effectiveness, the young soldier had been shot three times in the chest and left unharmed. Image taken near Syskyjärvi, Karelia, Finland (now, Syuskyuyarvi, Republic of Karelia, Russia), July 15, 1944....

Many Japanese were extremely offended by this picture because of how casual MacArthur is looking and standing while next to the Emperor, who was supposed to be a god. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Americans took on the task of occupying Japan and reforming the militaristic nation into a modern country that would never again threaten its neighbors. On 29 August 1945, MacArthur was ordered to exercise authority through the Japanese government machinery, including Emperor Hirohito....

Liberation of Paris – August 1944. On August 25, French General Philippe Leclerc entered the free French capital triumphantly. Pockets of German intransigence remained, but Paris was free from German control. Two days earlier, a French armored division had begun advancing on the capital. Members of the Resistance, now called the French Forces of the Interior, proceeded to free all French civilian prisoners in Paris. The Germans were still counterattacking, setting fire to the Grand Palais, which had been taken over by the Resistance, and killing small groups of Resistance fighters as they encountered them in the city....

In 2020, grocery stores became quiet stages for a global emergency, each aisle lined with people navigating a world that felt suddenly unfamiliar. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, a simple trip to buy milk or vegetables turned into a cautious mission, and the sight of shoppers in homemade masks—crafted from whatever was on hand—became part of the landscape. These photos capture that strange period when bandanas, cut-up t-shirts, coffee filters, and even plastic bottles were transformed into protective gear for a quick run to the store....

President Nixon greets the returning Apollo 11 astronauts, 1969. The astronauts were trapped inside a NASA trailer as part of a quarantine effort just in case they brought back any germs or disease from the moon. In the picture: (left to right) Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, command module pilot; and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. Lunar module pilot. Apollo 11 splashed down at 11:49 a.m. (CDT), July 24, 1969, about 812 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii and only 12 nautical miles from the USS Hornet....

Tina Turner (born November 26, 1939, Brownsville, Tennessee, U.S.), was an American-born singer who found success in the rhythm-and-blues, soul, and rock genres in a career that spanned five decades. Widely referred to as the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue before launching a successful career as a solo performer. Turner was born into a sharecropping family in rural Tennessee....