44 Rarely Told Stories That Show A Different Side To History Than You Already Knew
By | April 28, 2020
Warning: These photos were handpicked by our team of editors that were instructed to find the most emotionally touching, spellbinding, riveting, and nostalgic stories that have been rarely told.
The beautiful thing about history is sometimes the things that really happen in real life are even more magical than what any artist could dream up with their own imagination. The truth is, every one of these pictures could be it's own movie, because they are all so touching in different ways.
These are real stories that you probably wouldn't believe are actually true if it weren't for these historical pictures and the trusted sources that verified every detail we are presenting to you.
Please take the time to lose yourself in these stories and imagine how you can relate to each slide. Take a closer look than normal, and you might discover a different side to history than you already knew...
In 1959, nine year old Ronald McNair was looking for science books at a public library in Lake City, South Carolina but the employees refused his request. His older brother Carl explained:
So, as he was walking in there, all these folks were staring at him — because they were white folk only — and they were looking at him and saying, you know, 'Who is this Negro? So, he politely positioned himself in line to check out his books. Well, this old librarian, she says, 'This library is not for coloreds.' He said, 'Well, I would like to check out these books.' She says, 'Young man, if you don't leave this library right now, I'm gonna call the police.' So he just propped himself up on the counter, and sat there, and said, 'I'll wait.'
Ronald McNair eventually went on to earn his PhD in Physics from MIT and when he was only 35 years old he was one of the seven astronauts onboard the space shuttle Challenger when it was destroyed in flight in 1986. Today, the library that threatened to have him arrested for trying to check out books is named after him.
This is a photo of Hachikō, the Akita dog who belonged to Professor Eizaburo Ueno. Ueno taught at Tokyo Imperial University in the 1920s but he lived in Shibuya. He traveled by train to Tokyo every day; and in the mornings he and Hachikō walked to the station in the morning and arrived at home at 3pm. Hachikō made sure to meet the Professor at the train station precisely at 3pm. Sadly, Professor Ueno passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage while giving a lecture in the year 1926. That day, just as the loyal dog did everyday, he waited for the Professor, but the Professor never showed up. For the next 9 years, Hachikō the dog continued looking for his master and best friend every day at 3pm. Not one day for the rest of the dogs life did he forget to show up precisely at 3pm hoping the Professor would come find him.
Local media picked up on the story of the dog who continued to wait for his best friend and in 1932 a Japanese newspaper ran an article on Hachikō, turning the faithful pet into a local celebrity overnight. The story of this dog's love for its master touched the nation, and became the subject of a gramophone record and a film.
Hachikō passed away in 1935, still waiting for his master. He was buried next to Ueno in Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo, Japan. Today a bronze statue of Hachikō stands in front of Shibuya Station. There is no doubt that the Professor and his loyal dog reunited again, but this time in heaven.
Taken on the day that the Berlin Wall was officially put up in August, 1961, this boy found himself on the wrong side of the barricade after a rule went out that kept anyone from crossing the partition.
In the dead of night between August 12 and 13 the East German Army tore up the streets running alongside the border, making it impossible for cars to travel near the newly placed barbed wire wall. Getting across the border took more than just an ability to evade capture, you needed stamina and nerves of steel... there's no way that this boy could have made it back to his loved ones on his own.
The strict orders by the East German government shouldn’t have applied to this child - he would have been left an orphan if this soldier didn’t do anything - and this soldier knew that so he helped the boy cross the barbwire to become one with his family.
This is a true act of selfless heroism...it's in moments like this that in a millisecond one's character is challenged and one has the opportunity to truly define himself. This soldier chose to protect a family he never met and risk the future of his life forever.
“Matrimonio Riparatore” is the sick Italian tradition of forcing a woman to marry her rapist. Franca Viola is the first woman to defy the rule and successfully prosecute her rapist. At the time Italians believed that it was bad form for a woman not to marry the man who took her virginity.
The rule at the time stipulated that a rapist wouldn’t be punished if the married their victim due to rape being considered an offense “public morality” and not a person. It wasn’t until 1981 that this was changed to being a crime against a person.
In spite of death threats following her decision, Viola married her childhood sweetheart in 1968. Following their wedding they received gifts from the Italian president and even got a private audience with the pope. Her rapist was sentenced to ten years in prison, two years after his release he was killed by the mafia.
Adam Rainer, the only human being in recorded history to have been both a dwarf and a giant. Look closer at the size of the giants foot compared to the guy next to him, wow!
Born in Graz, Austria in 1899, this big guy was only 4 ft 8 in tall by the time he was 19-years old. As Austria World War I he tried to volunteer for the military but he was deemed too short to serve. Rainer’s story gets even weirder from here. After a tumor grew in his pituitary gland he was flooded with an an overproduction of growth hormones causing him to have a growth spurt that increased his height to 7 ft 2 in by the time he was 33 years old. After spending much of his life as a dwarf he suddenly had a shoe size of 20 and his hands were 9.4 inches in length. When he passed away at the age of 51 he was 7 ft 8 in and weighed 241 pounds.
These 60 sets of iron shoes on the shore of the Danube are a memorial to victims of the Holocaust in Budapest, Hungary. From December 1944 to January 1945, Jewish people were ordered to this site by the Arrow Cross militiamen, a fascist group, and instructed to take off their shoes before they were shot into the river. This memorial was created by sculptor Gyula Pauer and placed on the shore on April 16, 2005. A commemorative plaque placed at three points along the monument reads in Hungarian, English and Hebrew:
To the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944–45. Erected 16 April 2005.
December 7, 1941, is a day that will forever live in infamy following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, however the fallout of that attack has been obscured the in understandably tumultuous time. 2,300 Americans perished in that attack and people of Japanese descent living in America were demonized by fearful citizens. On February 19th, 1942, FDR gave the order for nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry to be rounded up and put into internment camps. Approximately 80,000 of them were American-born Japanese with American citizenships. In order to let people know that she was of Chinese descent, Lee brought along the flag of Nationalist China which went into self-imposed exile to Taiwan after the Communist revolution. Today it is the official flag of Taiwan.
Famous for his umbrella, Major Tatham-Warter wasn’t making a fashion statement. Instead he was carrying it so he didn’t have to remember passwords. He figured that anyone who saw him running around Germany with an umbrella would know that he was a "bloody fool Englishman.” The umbrella wasn’t just something that he used to get out of work but it was also a tool that he used in battle.
The story goes that he lead a bayonet charge against a group of German tanks and used the umbrella to disable a driver by pushing it through the observational slit and poking the driver’s eyes out. He wasn’t just adept with an umbrella, he was extremely fast on his feet. When he was captured by German soldiers he escaped after building a compass from the buttons of his uniform and disguising himself as a deaf-mute son of a Dutch lawyer with the help of the Dutch resistance. The disguise worked and he was able to save 150 POWs and ride them to safety on bicycles.
Born in St Louis, Missouri in 1928, Marguerite Annie Johnson had a truly hard early life. When she was only eight years old she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He only went to jail for one night, and it’s believed that Johnson’s uncles murdered him four days after his release. Johnson didn’t know that, and for the next five years she didn’t speak a word. She later explained:
I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone.
It wasn’t until a family friend helped Johnson learn to read the work of Dickens and Poe that she once again began speaking. The Johnson family moved to Oakland, California when she was 16 and she found work as a cable car conductor before getting into modern dance and touring across Europe in the early ‘50s. In 1959, she met writer John Oliver Killens who encouraged her to move to New York City. There, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and began writing her heart out, becoming one of the most important voices in 20th century literature. In her 1969 autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Angelou writes, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
This gorgeous flight attendant became a hero in 1986 after Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked by terrorists. During the layover the terrorists executed an Indian-American passenger and tossed his body onto the tarmac. Bhanot was then forced to collect all of the passports onboard so the terrorists could figure out who the Americans on board were. Rather than hand them over to the terrorists she hid the passports around the plane.
17 hours into the hijacking the terrorists began setting off explosives and firing on passengers. Bhanot opened the airplane doors and started helping passengers off the plane. Her final action was to shield three American children from gunfire. One of the boys she saved went onto become a captain at a major airline because of her bravery.
When mass evacuations from Vietnam were required at the end of the Vietnam War, thousands of children were airlifted out of the area and sent to the United States Australia, France, West Germany, and Canada. On April 3, 1975, President Gerald Ford ordered the evacuation of children from Saigon, and Frederick M. "Skip" Burkle, Jr. worked as the medical director of what became known as Operation Babylift.
The doctor gathered the orphans in Saigon, brought them to Clark AFP in the Philippines, and continued to care for them on the Boeing 747 across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles and then Long Beach Naval Support Activity.
By the end of the campaign more than 3,300 infants and children were evacuated from the country although it’s unknown exactly how many children were saved.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919 was one of the most deadly diseases of the 20th century, wiping out millions of people across the planet in a small amount of time. Coming out of World War I, this pandemic nearly crushed Americans. At the time most people knew that the only way to stay safe and healthy was to stay indoors, keep sanitary, and wear a mask whenever you had to go outside. Many cities had a mandate in place about wearing masks - they were so important that the mask became the symbol of wartime patriotism. The Red Cross even released a public service announcement stating, “the man or woman or child who will not wear a mask now is a dangerous slacker.”
Léo Major, a Canadian soldier who singlehandedly captured 93 German soldiers during a battle in the southern Netherlands and then went on to liberate the Dutch town of Zwolle from German occupation—all by himself, in one single night
In the summer of 1944, Canadian soldier Léo Major took on an entire German garrison after taking out one soldier and using a second to draw out their commanding officer. With the officer came his entire troop and they laid down a heavy blanket of fire. Major didn’t pay any mind and continued his one man assault on the garrison. A few days later he lost an eye after he was attacked with a phosphorous grenade but he continued to work as a scout and sniper even though, as he put it, he “looked like a pirate.”
In February 1945, a truck in which Major was riding suffered a hit from a landmine and he suffered broken ribs, two broken ankles, and a broken back. Rather than be discharged he snuck out of the military hospital that housed him and crashed with a Dutch family who nursed him back to health. Once he was ready to rock Major volunteered for yet another reconnaissance mission, this time in the city of Zwolle in the Netherlands. His parter was taken out by enemy fire and rather than fall back Major took the city by himself.
That night he went around the town making as much noise as possible while burning down a gestapo station and tossing around grenades. During his one man assault the German Army believed that an entire Canadian force was coming down on them. Major captured soldier after soldier until the Canadian Army arrived in the morning and marched into the town without firing a single shot. Major received a street named after him in Zwolle.
Masks worn by plague doctors. The design is attributed to a French doctor by the name of Charles de Lorme (1584-1678)
Imagine being treated by a doctor wearing this horrifying mask, it can’t make your time with the plague any more comforting. These conical, bird like masks were thought to phase out “bad air,” with is why they have such a long nose. To keep things smelling nice the doctors placed pleasant smelling herbs inside the beak and lit it to make sure that they avoided breathing in “bad air,” but all this really did was make their masks smell good. Even though the “bad air” theory was incorrect, these suits worked like modern HAZMAT suits, protecting doctors from the fleas who were actually spreading the plague.
The Golden Gate bridge opens to the public for the first time, May 27, 1937
After years of construction, when the Golden Gate Bridge finally opened on May 27, 1937 it as flooded with foot traffic from excited San Franciscans. Charles Seim, the state transportation department supervising bridge engineer, was on the bridge that day and counted the number of attendees partying around him. The best he could put together there were approximately 40 people per linear foot of bridge (or approximately 6,000 pounds per linear foot), about 4,000 more pounds than during rush hour traffic. Seim explained:
I was jammed in there with everyone else during the bridge walk and I was making mental calculations. I knew we were exceeding design loads but I wasn't worried in the slightest. Even at the maximum design load of 5,700 pounds per foot the stress in the cables is only forty percent of their yielding stress, that‘s a large factor of safety.
Robert Liston (1794-1847) was a Scottish surgeon who is most famous for amputating a patient's leg in under 2.5 minutes
There’s something to be said for a doctor who can amputate a leg in less than five minutes and even though Robert Liston was famous for his speed he was less known for his accuracy. During this 25 minute amputation he also cut off the fingers of his assistant and slice through the coat tails of a spectator who dropped dead from the gruesome show. Liston’s patient and assistant both passed away from gangrene, making this the only operation on the books that had a 300% mortality rate. British surgeon and author Richard Gordon described Liston as the following:
He was six foot two, and operated in a bottle-green coat with Wellington boots. He sprung across the blood-stained boards upon his swooning, sweating, strapped-down patient like a duelist, calling, 'Time me gentlemen, time me!' to students craning with pocket watches from the iron-railinged galleries. Everyone swore that the first flash of his knife was followed so swiftly by the rasp of saw on bone that sight and sound seemed simultaneous. To free both hands, he would clasp the bloody knife between his teeth.
A group photo of the Night Witches, a Russian, all female bomber squad during World War 2
Is there any cooler name for a bomber squad than the Night Witches? No way. This consisted of 80 women who flew a total of 30,000 sorties and dropped 23 tons of bombs on German invaders over the course of four years. Most of the Night Witches were in the teens or early 20s, they earned their nickname from their penchant for shutting off their engines and gliding over enemy territory in the middle of the night as they silently dropped their bombs.
The woman standing and looking at the camera is Nadezhda Popova. Initially she was rejected from the military for being a woman, but in 1941 the Russian military was ordered to create regiments of female pilots. Popova jumped at the chance to join the military and get revenge for her brother who was killed in action by German soldiers. She flew 852 missions and went on to be a flight instructor in Moscow. In an interview before her death she said, “I sometimes stare into the blackness and close my eyes. I can still imagine myself as a young girl, up there in my little bomber. And I ask myself, ‘Nadia, how did you do it?’”
Anna Coleman Ladd was an American sculptor who created custom-made masks for British soldiers whose faces were disfigured during World War 1
Long before elective surgery was the norm, plastic surgeons and artists like Anna Coleman Ladd were working together in order to help soldiers who were disfigured during World War I. Soldiers were worried about how their families would react up upon seeing their faces so many men went to these artists to be fitted for masks that were similar to their former faces.
Soldiers had casts made of their faces and then Ladd would make a prosthetic based off the copper cast. Following that Ladd would paint the mask to make it close to the soldiers’ skin tone. If a solider liked they could have a mustache or beard added.
Danish Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen with his first wife, Navarana Mequpaluk in 1912. She would pass away from the Spanish Flu in 1921
There are interesting characters from history and then there’s Danish Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen. This Danish explorer travelled across the Arctic, including a 1,000 mile dogsled trip across Greenland. He wrote more than a dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction, and fought in the Danish resistance against Germany during World War II. During that time he was imprisoned by Nazis and sentenced to death, but he escaped to Sweden before traveling to Hollywood and working as a consultant and screenwriter. In 1956, he won $64,000 on The $64,000 Question. During one of his Arctic explorations he became trapped in a snow cave after the warmth generated by his own breath. He wrote of the experience:
What a way to die… I gave up once more and let the hours pass without another move. But I recovered my strength while I rested and my morale improved. I was alive after all. I had not eaten for hours, but my digestion felt all right. I got a new idea! I had often seen dog’s dung in the sled track and had noticed that it would freeze as solid as a rock. Would not the cold have the same effect on human discharge? Repulsive as the thought was, I decided to try the experiment. I moved my bowels and from the excrement I managed to fashion a chisel-like instrument which I left to freeze… I was patient. I did not want to risk breaking my new tool by using it too soon…At last I decided to try my chisel and it worked.
While Freuchen escaped he had to amputate several of his toes and eventually lost his left foot entirely to frostbite. He passed away of heart attack in 1957.
Face masks for every member of the family during the Spanish Flu including their cat, 1918
The early 20th century was one of the most deadly times to be alive in America. Not only was the country in the early stages of the Great Depression, but there was hooch out there that could make a man blind, and the Spanish Flu was laying waste to people of all ages.
Between 1918 and 1919 this flu infected 30 percent of the world population and killed 5 percent of people across the world. Weirdly, healthy adults were the among the highest rates of the people who passed away, where as children and middle-aged adults with weaker immune systems had fewer deaths.
23-year-old Bobbi Gibb in 1966, right after becoming the first woman to run the Boston marathon. She snuck into the marathon dressed as a man
Even in the radical ‘60s women were still deprived of many basic rights that men had enjoyed for centuries. At the time the guys in charge of the Boston Marathon believed that women weren’t physically able to run a marathon, and the Amateur Athletics Union made a rule against women running more than 1.5 miles. When Bobbi Gibb applied to run the marathon she was denied flat out because the Boston Marathon organizers didn’t want to deal with the “liability” of having her compete.
That rejection only made her want to compete harder. She showed up at the race dressed in a blue hoodie and Bermuda shirts so she could blend in with the guys. She hid in a bush and waited for the race to start. When the starting pistol fired she blended right in.
Many of the men in the race realized that they were running with a woman and didn’t care, they even encouraged her to push herself. Gibb finished the race in 3 hours and 21 minutes and 40 seconds, beating two-thirds of the runners.
However, it wasn't long before the men saw that she was a woman. To her surprise, she was not met with hostility, but with encouragement and support. She removed her sweatshirt and and finished the race in 3 hours and 21 minutes and 40 seconds, beating two-thirds of the runners.
A Korean sailor takes a break from transporting cargo and people by sitting under the shadow from the sail, smoking from his long bamboo pipe. He wears cool hemp clothes, 1904
This photo of a Korean sailor was taken six years before the country was colonized by Japan. The Japanese invaders tried to wipe out every bit of of Japanese culture - the people were forbidden from speaking their natural language or learning Korean history. More than 200,000 Korean historical documents were destroyed by the Japanese invasion.
As horrific as that is, the worst indignity came when Koreans were told to chop millions of trees and forced to plant non-native plants to make their country look more Japanese. By 1939 almost 80 percent of the Korean population had taken on Japanese surnames.
Korea was split in twain for good on June 25, 1950, North Korea - with the Soviet Union and China on their side - attacks South Korea and by the time the war ended three million people were dead, mostly civilians.
Archaeologists near the village of Mezhyrich, Ukraine, carefully excavate a hut made out of mammoth bones, 1966
We tend to think of prehistoric dig sites as being in Egypt or the deep deserts of Africa, but this mammoth finding happened in Eastern Europe... a long way from the pyramids.
When a farmer discovered the lower jaw bone of a mammoth while expanding his cellar in 1965 he unwittingly began one of the biggest discoveries of the 20th century. Archaeologists flocked to the site near Mezhyrich, Ukraine and started a dig that went on for an entire year. The further excavations uncovered 149 mammoth bones and four huts. One of the more interesting finds came in the form of a map of the local area that was carved onto bone and a drum made of a mammoth skull.
Jonas Salk creates the first polio vaccine, 1955
Look at the grin on Jonas Salk’s face, wouldn’t you be happy if you created the first polio vaccine? After creating the vaccine that saved millions of lives across the world and made iron lungs obsolete he did something even better - he refused to patent the vaccine in order to keep it affordable to people who needed it. Salk lost out on an estimated 7 billion dollars but what’s money compared to the knowledge that you saved the world? When asked why he didn’t chase the patent he responded, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
What the Grand Staircase looked like before and after the sinking of the RMS Titanic
While no photos of the actual Grand Staircase on the Titanic exists, we know what it looks like thanks to its sister ship the RMS Olympic. The designs for the two ships were nearly identical, giving researchers an unprecedented look at the insides of this monumental ship. When the Titanic went down the staircase was “ejected” which allowed the researchers to travel from deck to deck through the ship via the hole that this created. It was like going back in time. The White Star Line publicity brochure described the Grand Staircase as dignified and simple:
We leave the deck and pass through one of the doors which admit us to the interior of the vessel, and, as if by magic, we at once lose feeling that we are on board a ship, and seem instead to be entering the hall of some great house on shore. Dignified and simple oak panelling covers the walls, enriched in a few places by a bit of elaborate carved work...
In the middle of the hall rises a gracefully curving staircase, its balustrade supported by light scrollwork of iron with occasional touches of bronze, in the form of flowers and foliage. Above all a great dome of iron and glass throws a flood of light down the stairway, and on the landing beneath it a great carved panel gives its note of richness to the otherwise plain and massive construction of the wall.
The panel contains a clock, on either side of which is a female figure, the whole symbolizing Honour and Glory crowning Time. Looking over the balustrade, we see the stairs descending to many floors below, and on turning aside we find we may be spared the labour of mounting or descending by entering one of the smoothly-gliding elevators which bear us quickly to any other of the numerous floors of the ship we may wish to visit.
The staircase is one of the principal features of the ship, and will be greatly admired as being, without doubt, the finest piece of workmanship of its kind afloat.
Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust
Doctor Viktor E. Franks is the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, a memoir of his time in Aushwitz where he attempts to understand how everyday life affected the mind of an average prisoner. Released in 1946, just after the end of the war, he came to the conclusion that even in a concentration camp people were able to find meaning in their lives through helping one another He writes:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
This is Nintendo's first office in Kyoto, 1889
Before Mario was bopping through the Mushroom Kingdom Nintendo wasn’t in the video game business at all, they were producing and selling Japanese playing cards. The company was in the playing card industry for nearly 75 years before they branched out into a variety of businesses including taxi services, “love hotels,” and an instant rice company that all failed.
In the late ‘60s the company began manufacturing toys and their first hit was created by a maintenance engineer for the company named Gunpei Yokoi. His invention, the “Ultra Hand” sold more than one million units, bringing the company out of financial ruin.
The company continued down the route of producing games before moving to playable content and after they hooked up with a product developer named Shigeru Miyamoto in the early ‘80s things really got exciting.
The company wanted something as exciting as Pac-Man, and after realizing that they had to create a memorable character they found a strange bedfellow in an unnamed plumber in their Donkey Kong game. Initially nicknamed Jumpan, Nintendo officially named him Mario after an alleged run in with American warehouse owner Mario Segale. He confronted the company about unpaid warehouse space and after an especially tense meeting “Jumpman” was now Mario.
This is Captain Lewis Nixon of Easy Company, the morning after celebrating V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day) in 1945
Captain Nixon might look a little worse for wear, but for a guy with a hangover after celebrating winning a war in Europe he’s doing alright. Nixon was in Berchtesgaden, Germany when the Nazis relented to the Soviet Union and who lived in that area? Say it all together - Hermann Göring, a German World War I hero and one of the most powerful members of the Nazi Party. Göring had a massive wine collection so Nixon had a taste.
Even though he experienced intense front line battles throughout World War II, Nixon supposedly never fired a shot in combat. He was remembered for always having plenty of whisky on him, including Vat 69, a favorite of Sir Ernest Shackleton.
This is 8-year old Samuel Reshevsky defeating several chess masters at once in France, 1920
Samuel Reshevsky is one of the greatest chess players that ever lived. He was a child prodigy and by the age of nine it’s believed that he had 1,500 chess matches beneath his belt and word is that he only lost eight of them. In spite of winning the US Chess Championship eight times he never became a world champion. When he wasn’t trouncing guys at chess he was working as an accountant to pay his bills.
Reshevsky never won a world championship but he did win matches against seven world champions: Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, and Bobby Fischer.
Easter eggs for Hitler, 1945
This seriously cool photo shows Sergeant William E. Thomas and Private First Class Joseph Jackson of the 969th Artillery Battalio posing next to a couple of bombs that they planned on dropping over Germany. These two soldiers were originally a part of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion but they suffered huge casualties at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, many of the survivors moved to the 969th Artillery Battalion, providing support for the 101st Airborne Division during the siege of Bastogne.
One of the most unfortunate parts of fighting for America during World War II is the racism that these brave men faced from their colleagues. At the time the US Army was segregated with many black soldiers working non-combat roles. Of the 125,000 black Americans who served, only 708 were killed in combat.
Charlie Chaplin on Wall Street, NYC, 1918
During World War I the United States was in dire need of cash in order to keep the war effort up and running. At the time the easiest way to do this was to sell bonds to the American people, unfortunately not everyone knew exactly how to buy a bond so the military brought in celebrities to help market the items. At the time just as many movie stars were in New York City as there were in Hollywood so it was a cinch to get Charlie Chaplin to stop by Wall Street. While in front of a crowd of 20,000 people at the foot of the United States Sub Treasury building Chaplin instructed people on how to make their purchases - even though it was the first time they were hearing his voice.
Mustache cups from the Victorian era (1837-1901) in the United Kingdom
Do you fancy yourself a classy gent? Do you keep your mustache trimmed nice and neat? Is the last thing you want is a bunch of tea spilling in it? In the Victorian era a well to do mustachioed gentleman drank tea out of a mustache cup. In the 1860s British potter Harvey Adams created the device allowed someone to drink from a tea cup. In the 19h century men were serious about their mustaches so these babies sold like hot cakes. Following the outbreak of World War I soldiers tired of trimming their mustaches in the trenches and shaved completely. That pretty much took these mustache cups out of circulation.
How much public space we've given up to cars over the years
The Swedish Road Administration commissioned artist Karl Jilg to paint this illustration that shows all of the public space that people have given up to automobiles over the years. Even urban areas that are meant to be more friendly to people are woefully lacking in space for regular people. By showing roads as deep gorges and crosswalks as rickety planks barely laid across them, Jilg shows exactly how dire this situation really is. Even more unsettling than this visual, many of the places that have been set aside for cars isn’t even used by them. Hopefully one day we can reclaim some of this space.
The RMS Queen Elizabeth pulling into New York with service men returning home after the end of World War 2, 1945
Following the end of World War II the RMS Queen Elizabeth shipped home thousands of troops. She had a capacity to carry 15,000 people at a time, including her 900 crew members. The trip from The British isles to New York City took between five to seven days. During her service in World War II, the RMS Queen Elizabeth transported more than 750,000 troops, and sailed a total of 500,000 miles. During the war the Queen Elizabeth was used not just because of its size but because of its speed. She was as adept at outrunning German U-Boats as she was bringing boys home.
This is a photo of Dr. Eugene Lazowski, a Polish doctor who saved 8,000 Jews by creating a fake typhus epidemic in Stalowa Wola (Nazi occupied Poland), 1943
Many people put their lives on the line to save the Jewish people during World War II, but doctor Eugene Lazowski is the only one who created a fake epidemic to keep thousands of people out of concentration camps. When Nazis were taking over Poland during the war Lazowski wanted to do something so he preyed on the German army’s fear of disease.
Lazowsky used his medical knowledge to convince the Nazis that thousands of Jews and Poles living in 12 villages were suffering from this terrible disease and had to be quarantined. Poland lost one-fifth of its population but these 8,000 people were spared because of Lazowski's work.
The young victim of a family of pranksters, he luckily grew up to be a bit more handsome
This poor young man in Kokomo, Indiana was clearly on the receiving end of some family teasing. Even so, this little guy looks like a good sport, you have to be to sit still after someone shoves a monkey mask on you and makes you sit still for a photograph. According to the owner of the photo this boy grew up to be quite handsome. Even if this story is true, there’s no way that his family ever let him live this photograph down. Or maybe he made a rule to never talk about it again. Yeah, that’s probably more accurate.
Love in the Time of the Flu: A Hollywood couple films a kiss with protective masks during a flu epidemic in 1937
As strange as this photo of a Hollywood couple kissing with masks on is, even stranger is the coincidence that 1937 was the first year that coronavirus was discovered in chicken embryos. However, it wasn’t until the emergence of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in China 2002/2003 that coronavirus became more of a worry amongst researchers of viral diseases. Even though the novel coronavirus has been around for close to 100 years we’ve only recently had to do battle with it. The best way to handle it is self isolating so there’s not possibility of coming into contact with someone who’s infected. Kissing probably isn’t a good idea either.
Residents of San Francisco celebrate the end of World War 1 on November 11, 1918
By the end of World War I Americans were ready to cut loose and party. The war was not only a strain on the country’s finances but the population. Look closely and you’ll see people wearing masks, a few weeks prior to the end of the war masks became mandatory for anyone going outside to stop the spread of Spanish flu. Clearly people were complying, but there were protestors as well.
There were influential businessmen across the country who fought back against wearing masks, and some people even formed an “Anti-Mask League,” that was, you guessed it, again wearing masks and let the government known in huge get togethers. Mayor Rolph of San Francisco relented and let people go without masks and by the winter of 1919 there were 45,000 cases of the killer flu in San Francisco.
A large crowd in Times Square, NYC celebrates the surrender of Nazi Germany, May 7th, 1945
World War II helped pull America out of the economic tail spin of the Great Depression, but it also illuminated the horrors of Europe to regular Americans. When Nazi Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, word came in around one in the morning and Americans flooded the streets to celebrate good triumphing over evil. This wasn’t the last time that Americans took to Time Square, on August 14th crowds filled the area and parties after Japan surrendered to American forces.
Before Japan had called it quits, the U.S. military had put in an order for more than 1.5 million Purple Heart medals to prepare for what they thought would be an extremely difficult land invasion: Operation Downfall. That stock of Purple Hearts is still being used today.
Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802) was a successful French painter who was known for his unorthodox self-portraits
These super fly paintings come from portraitist Joseph Ducreux, famous in his time for painting Marie Antoinette for Louis XVI of France so the heir to the throne could see his bride before they actually met. Prior to the French Revolution in 1789 Ducreux painted the final portrait of Louis XVI before the king was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution in 1793 at age 38.
After the king’s death Ducreux returned to Paris and continued his celebrated painting career. Ducreux never signed his paintings, which is why so much of his work has been attributed to various artists.
Prisoners Exercising (1890) by Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh is one of the world’s most beloved artists, but in 1888 he was dealing with severe depression and living hand to mouth. His art was unappreciated and his head was a jumble of ideas. After getting in a fight with fellow artist Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off one of his ears and gave it to a prostitute named Rachel as a thank you for being his friend.
Months after cutting off his ear the artist committed himself to an asylum where he wrote, “Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant."
Since he mostly painted things found in nature, Van Gogh turned to painting copies of works made by other artists, one of them being a piece by Gustave Dore of Newgate prison yard in London. The painting shows a group of prisoners walking in a circle around a prison yard, likely with Van Gogh in the center looking toward the viewer.
Salvador Dali cutlery set design from 1957
The consummate surrealist, even when he was creating cutlery Salvador Dalí wanted to take things to the extreme. This six piece silver-gilt dining set includes two forks, two knives and two enameled spoons, and they all have some seriously weird names.
- Fourchette-éléphant 3 dents (Elephant fork with three teeth)
- Cuillère-artichaut (artichoke spoon)
- Cocteau feuille (leaf knife)
- Fourchette 4 dents à manche poisson (Four tooth fork with a fish handle)
- Petite cuillère-artichaut (small artichoke spoon)
- Couteau escargot aux larmes (Snail knife with tears)
The set sold at auction in 2004 for $28,125. Hopefully whoever owns it only uses it when extremely weird company comes over.
A surgery in progress at the Boston City Hospital operating theater, circa 1890
These 19th century doctors may have been at the height of medical science at the time but it’s clear that they’re not exactly being sanitary. None of them are wearing masks or gloves and they all have facial hair.
The patient is receiving ether as an anesthetic from a bag that’s being held against their face, which isn’t exactly the best way to keep them knocked out. Still, these guys are doing intense work, likely by sunlight through a glass dome on the top of the building since there was no artificial light at the time. It's a minor miracle that anyone survived these surgeries.
Office life before the invention of AutoCAD and other drafting softwares
AutoCAD is a computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application that was released in December 1982 as a way for engineers to design and create drawings for use in construction. Before AutoCAD came around all engineering drawings were hand drawn with different grade pencils, erasers, T-squares, and set squares. It was time consuming work that took skill, finesse, and patience.
After all of that work, if a change was needed the engineers had to go back to square one and make the drawing all over again. Today, engineers and architects can make changes on their computers rather than breaking their backs by hunching over a massive desk.