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The origins of some of the world’s most iconic companies are often shrouded in myth and legend, with stories of innovation, perseverance, and luck. But what did these companies really look like in their early days? Thanks to the power of photography, we can now glimpse into the past and explore the early days of some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Whether you’re a business enthusiast or a history buff, these vintage photos are sure to captivate and inspire....

The Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, an American single-engine helicopter, was designed by Igor Sikorsky. Its original design featured a single three-blade rotor that was powered by a 75 horsepower (56 kW) engine. On May 13, 1940, the VS-300 completed its inaugural “free” flight. Recognized as the inaugural American single main rotor helicopter, it lifted to a height of 15-20 feet and traversed 200 feet forward before hovering, reversing, and then safely landing....

Teenage girls in the 1940s experienced a surprising degree of independence, a lifestyle that might inspire envy in many modern teens. Raised in a time when societal norms emphasized dressing well to attract a future husband and working part-time jobs to afford items like fine wedding china, their upbringing was rooted in tradition. Yet, as they grew older, the world around them changed dramatically. With young men away fighting in World War II and both parents often working outside the home, these girls found themselves navigating a new, less supervised reality with more disposable income than ever before....

In the days before video games, amusement arcades were filled with a panoply of analog entertainment, from shooting galleries to skeeball to mechanical fortune tellers to endless varieties of pinball. These photographs of a conspicuously empty Wonderland Arcade (located in Missouri) were created as exhibit evidence in a federal case brought against the arcade related to taxation of its penny bingo games. The Golden Age of arcade games is commonly referred to as the peak of the arcade game industry, due to the advances in technology and rapid popularity....

Imagine cruising down the highway with a turntable spinning your favorite tunes right in the car. While it sounds like a scene from a sci-fi movie or an eccentric retro fantasy, in-car record players were a very real innovation during the mid-20th century. Inspired by the success of car radios, automakers in the 1950s sought to bring another home entertainment staple into the automobile: the record player. Though short-lived, these in-car phonographs marked the automotive industry’s first attempt to let drivers and passengers curate their own music playlists on the go—a groundbreaking idea in an era before cassette tapes, CDs, or digital streaming....

King George V and Queen Mary on the ship to India. George V (1865-1936), King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1910, went to India in 1911 to be crowned Emperor of India in a great durbar in Delhi on 12 December 1911. The site for the durbar was in northwest Delhi and a city of tents came up across 25 square miles. At the center of the camp was the King’s pavilion, spread over 85 acres....

Stalin at age 23. 1901. On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (later known as Joseph Stalin) was born. The son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman, Joseph was a frail child. At age 7, he contracted smallpox, leaving his face scarred. A few years later he was injured in a carriage accident which left his arm slightly deformed (some accounts state his arm trouble was a result of blood poisoning from the injury)....

A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations. A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations and private sport. A single shot could kill over 50 waterfowl resting on the water’s surface....

The cangue, a wooden collar used to publicly shame and restrain prisoners, was a common form of punishment in China during the late Qing dynasty and into the early 20th century. This practice served not only to immobilize those accused of crimes but also to humiliate them in front of their communities. These unsettling photos offer a rare glimpse into the harsh realities of justice in a time of social and political upheaval, showing the burdens—both physical and psychological—that these individuals were forced to carry....

A woman jumps over a barrier to kiss Adolf Hitler,1936. Just before the finish of the men’s 1500-meter freestyle swimming event, a woman in a red hat, who had been repeatedly stopped by the Black Guards from photographing Adolf Hitler up close, managed to break through the cordon. Seizing the moment in the excitement of the race, she shook Hitler’s hand and boldly kissed him, while the crowd of 20,000 erupted in laughter....

Rat-catchers would often hunt inside the sewers. Rat-catchers were employed in Europe to control rat populations. Keeping the rat population under control was practiced in Europe to prevent the spread of diseases to man, most notoriously the Black Plague and to prevent damage to food supplies. Today this job no longer exists. Anecdotal reports suggest that some rat-catchers would raise rats instead of catching them in order to increase their eventual payment from the town or city they were employed by....

Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States seemed to be just about the safest place in the world to live. The nation hadn’t been attacked on its own soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor six decades before. War seemed like something that happened elsewhere. Perhaps, that, more than anything, is what made the massive terror attacks of that day so shocking. The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was unprecedented in the scale of its destruction and the immediacy of its visual impact....

The future once looked like a promise of endless possibilities, with flying cars humming above neon-lit cities and meals arriving in pill form at the push of a button. This vision, known as retrofuturism, captures how people of the past imagined the world we now live in. Their predictions, a mix of naive optimism and uncanny foresight, continue to inspire artists, designers, filmmakers, and musicians today, drawing on the technological dreams of a bygone era to reimagine what tomorrow could look like....

The aftermath of the Hyde Park bombing which killed four soldiers, 1982. The Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings were one of the worst IRA atrocities on the British mainland, killing 11 soldiers and seven horses and leaving dozens injured. The bombs were detonated just a couple of hours apart on July 20, 1982, and timed to cause maximum casualties. The military casualties were quickly removed. But long-range camera lenses captured, in dreadful detail, the aftermath with the shattered remains of the car bomb surrounded by dead horses....

Born on October 16, 1946, in San Bruno, California, Suzanne Somers gained fame for her role as Chrissy Snow on the popular television series “Three’s Company” in the late 1970s. Her career began in entertainment with small roles in television shows and movies before she gained widespread recognition. However, it was her role on “Three’s Company” that propelled her to stardom. The series co-starred John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt in a comedy about two single women living with a single man who pretended to be gay in order to bypass the landlord’s policy of prohibiting single men sharing an apartment with single women....

A man stands in one of the canal locks. 1912. The Panama Canal idea goes back to the 16th century. After understanding the riches of Peru, Ecuador, and Asia, and evaluating the time it took the gold to reach the ports of Spain, it was suggested in 1524 to Charles V, that by cutting out a piece of land somewhere in Panama, the trips would be made shorter and the danger of taking the treasures through the cape would rationalize such an enterprise....

Lithuanian nationalists clubbing Jewish Lithuanians to death. Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, June 27, 1941. In June and July 1941, detachments of German Einsatzgruppen, together with Lithuanian auxiliaries, began murdering the Jews of Lithuania. Groups of partisans, civil units of nationalist-rightist anti-Soviet affiliation, initiated contact with the Germans as soon as they entered the Lithuanian territories. A rogue unit of insurgents headed by Algirdas Klimaitis and encouraged by Germans from the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst , started anti-Jewish pogroms in Kaunas (Polish: Kovno) on the night of 25–27 June 1941....

Health cure in the Institut Finsen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Patients getting treatment with electric light. 1900s. The first therapeutic uses of light (so-called light therapy) date back to the end of the twentieth century, when a Danish researcher, Niels Ryberg Finsen, showed that light stimulates the immune defenses and enables the fight against infections. The treatment had two branches: heliotherapy (natural sun therapy) and phototherapy (artificial light therapy). These progressive therapies presented and sold light as curative and transformative....

A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing’s Cangan Boulevard in Tiananmen Square, on June 5, 1989. The man, calling for an end to violence and bloodshed against pro-democracy demonstrators, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on their way. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the Tiananmen Square Massacre were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) between April 15 and June 4, 1989....

From the earliest recognition that a more deadly form of influenza was spreading quickly in fall 1918, US public health authorities recommended masks for doctors, nurses, and anyone taking care of influenza patients. Newspapers provided instructions on “How to Make Masks at Home” and published photographs of masked nurses. Masks were just one of the “non-pharmaceutical interventions” or “social distancing” policies, to use modern terms, adopted to contain the epidemic, along with closing schools, prohibiting public gatherings, and advising changes in personal behavior....