History
Picture of the Day
This photographic series from 1860-1865 shows how quickly Abraham Lincoln aged while in office
Abraham Lincoln’s physical appearance changed dramatically during his tenure as President of the United States, from March 4, 1861 to April 14, 1865. The magnitude of his apparent aging is often demonstrated by showing a photograph from the start of his first term compared to one taken a few months before his death.
Picture of the Day
German Gen. Erwin Rommel earned mutual respect with the Allies in WWII from his genius and humane tactics. He refused to kill Jewish prisoners, paid POWs for their labor, punished troops for killing civilians, fought alongside his troops, and even plotted to remove Hitler from power.
His tactical prowess and consistent decency in the treatment of allied prisoners earned him the respect of many opponents, including Claude Auchinleck, Winston Churchill, George S. Patton, and Bernard Montgomery.
Rommel is regarded as having been a humane and professional officer. His Afrika Korps was never accused of war crimes, and soldiers captured during his Africa campaign were reported to have been treated humanely. Orders to kill Jewish soldiers, civilians and captured commandos were ignored by Rommel.
Picture of the Day
Vintage mugshots from Australia, 1920s; William Stanley Moore: Opium dealer./ Operates with large quantities of faked opium and cocaine./ A wharf labourer; associates with water front thieves and drug traders
This picture is one of a series of around 2500 “special photographs” taken by New South Wales Police Department photographers between 1910 and 1930. These “special photographs” were mostly taken in the cells at the Central Police Station, Sydney and are, as curator Peter Doyle explains, of “men and women recently plucked from the street, often still animated by the dramas surrounding their apprehension”. Doyle suggests that, compared with the subjects of prison mug shots, “the subjects of the Special Photographs seem to have been allowed – perhaps invited – to position and compose themselves for the camera as they liked. Their photographic identity thus seems constructed out of a potent alchemy of inborn disposition, personal history, learned habits and idiosyncrasies, chosen personal style (haircut, clothing, accessories) and physical characteristics.”
(article)
Picture of the Day
“Little Boy on trailer cradle in pit on Tinian island, before being loaded into Enola Gay’s bomb bay”, 1945
“Little Boy” weighed as much as a car and exploded with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 80,000 people almost instantly.
Picture of the Day
Two sailors get fresh ink from Tattoo Jack in Copenhagen, 1942.
The tattoo parlor that Hans Hansen opened in 1884 when he was about 17 is now known as Tattoo Ole and is located at Nyhavn 17. It is purported to be the oldest functioning tattoo parlor in the world. After Hans Hansen the parlor was operated by Peter Severinsen in the 1920’s, Tattoo Holger was there during the 1930’s and Tattoo Jack ran the parlor in the 1940s.
Picture of the Day
‘Radium Girls’ who worked in a factory where they worked with luminescent radium. Not knowing it was dangerous, they often painted it on their lips and teeth for fun. They began to develop radium necrosis, causing their jaws to rot and develop disfiguring tumors, and eventually died
The Radium Girls were so contaminated that if you stood over their graves today with a Geiger counter, the radiation levels would still cause the needles to jump more than 80 years later. They were small-town girls from New Jersey who had been hired by a local factory to paint the clock faces of luminous watches, the latest new army gadget used by American soldiers. The women were told that the glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint was harmless, and so they painted 250 dials a day, licking their brushes every few strokes with their lips and tongue to give them a fine point.
Picture of The Day
A soldier’s face after four years of war, 1941-1945
These two pictures are shown side by side in the Andrei Pozdeev museum. The museum caption reads: “(Left) The artist Eugen Stepanovich Kobytev the day he went to the front in 1941. (Right) In 1945 when he returned”. This the human face after four years of war. The first picture looks at you, the second one looks through you.
Picture of the Day
Mary Mallon aka ‘Typhoid Mary’ is the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever. She refused to believe she was a typhoid carrier, despite the fact that each family she worked for suffered an outbreak.
Picture of the Day
Adam Rainer, the only man in recorded history to have been both a dwarf and a giant. At 19, he was just 4’8” . Because of a pituitary tumor, by age 33 he reached a height of 7’2” , and upon his death at 51 he grew to be 7’8”
Rainer was born in Austria in 1899 and by the time he was 19 years old, he was 4 ft 8 in tall. He tried to enlist in the military to fight in World War 1, but was told that he was too short.
