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Picture of the Day

chinese foot binding

A Chinese woman whose feet, known as lotus feet, were bound in the late 1800’s – Foot binding was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls in order to change the shape and size of their feet, considered a status symbol and a mark of beauty

Foot-binding is said to have been inspired by a tenth-century court dancer named Yao Niang who bound her feet into the shape of a new moon. She entranced Emperor Li Yu by dancing on her toes inside a six-foot golden lotus festooned with ribbons and precious stones. In addition to altering the shape of the foot, the practice also produced a particular sort of gait that relied on the thigh and buttock muscles for support. From the start, foot-binding was imbued with erotic overtones. Gradually, other court ladies—with money, time and a void to fill—took up foot-binding, making it a status symbol among the elite.

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Picture of the Day

wa77ddclswy51

By 1942 the FBI was adding 400,000 file cards a month to its archives, and were receiving 110,000 requests for “name checks” per month. By 1944 the agency contained some 23 million card records, as well as 10 million fingerprint records. Around the war, the federal government invested huge resources into the FBI to investigate potential defectors and spies. President Roosevelt, for one, was concerned about the lure of Communism and the subsequent threat to democracy. By the end of 1943, the FBI employed around 13,000 people.

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Picture of the Day

The letter George H.W. Bush wrote Bill Clinton as he left office

Jan. 20, 1993

Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.

I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.

There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course

You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.

Good Luck — George

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Picture of the Day

teddy roosevelt shot

Theodore Roosevelt was shot mid-speech in an assassination attempt in 1912. He refused to have medical treatment until he delivered his 90 minute speech, in which he showed off the bullet wound to the crowd.

He was wearing his Army overcoat and carrying a 50-page speech – folded double to fit into the breast pocket where he had also tucked his metal spectacles case and that saved his life that day. The bullet was slowed and didn’t reach his lungs or heart.

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Picture of the Day

Mussolini headquarters

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 representatives 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.

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Picture of the Day

(photo: Tristan Surtel)

Dummy head used by John Anglin to fool prison guards during his escape from Alcatraz Prison. Him and his 2 companions whereabouts are still unknown. The head was made of cloth, soap, toothpaste, concrete-dust and human hair.

While John and Clarence Anglin, 2 of the 3 men who ever escaped from Alcatraz, were officially reported to have drowned in the bay, their mother received flowers anonymously every Mother’s Day until she died, and two very tall unknown women were reported to have attended her funeral. 

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Picture of the Day

dina sanichar

The Real-Life Mowgli, The Boy Who In 1872 Was Found Living In Jungle. They found him hunting alongside the wolves and noted that he was walking on all four of his limbs.

Dina Sanichar was first discovered in 1867, after a band of hunters spied what they initially thought was a wild animal sleeping in the mouth of a cave in Bulandshahr district, India.

When the men finally smoked the creature out its hiding place, they were astonished to find it was actually a boy of around 6 years old. The child appeared to have been living in the wilderness for most of his life, and had allegedly survived by scampering on all fours with a pack of wolves.

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Picture of the Day

In 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke was sucked out of an airplane after it was struck by a bolt of lightning. She fell two miles to the ground strapped to her seat and survived. She spent the next 11 days alone in the Amazon jungle before being rescued by a logging team.

On Christmas Eve, 1971, Koepcke boarded LANSA Flight 508 (a Lockheed L-188A Electra turboprop plane) with her mother and 84 other passengers. The flight left from Lima, Peru, and was scheduled to land in Pucallpa, Peru, but was struck by a bolt of lighting. The plane went into a nose dive, broke into pieces, and Koepcke, who was still strapped to her seat, soon found herself outside of the plane plummeting approximately 9,000 feet (about 1.7 miles) into the Amazon jungle.

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Picture of the Day

Sketches used by the Soviet police to identify suspects based on ethnicity, 1960s

This card was used by police in the Soviet Union to identify different nationalities by facial phenotypes. Originally it was developed by a group of Soviet criminologists based on various mugshot collections. The exact date is unknown, however, based on few Soviet sources, these typical faces sketches were made in 1960-1965. In the nomenclature of the USSR people weren’t classified based on their race or ethnicity.

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