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Picture of the Day

Franz Reichelt

The last image of Franz Reichelt, an Austrian-born French tailor who is remembered for jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design.

Like all parachutes, Reichelt’s idea relied on the increasing the surface area of a falling person in an attempt to slow their descent, but instead of being attached to an overhead canopy, his parachute would be integrated into the flight suit itself.

Reichelt’s suit had a number of extra panels and flaps that would deploy as a person was in freefall. Or at least that was the idea.

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Picture of the Day

safety coffin

Before days of modern medicine, many feared being buried alive. As a result, safety coffins were invented in case the living were mispronounced dead. A string attached to a bell allowed the victim to alert those above

In 17th century England, it is documented that a woman by the name of Alice Blunden was buried alive. As the story goes, she was so knocked out after having imbibed a large quantity of poppy tea that a doctor holding a mirror to her nose and mouth pronounced her dead. (Tea made from dried, unwashed seed pods would have contained morphine and codeine, which are sedatives.)

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Picture of the Day

WannseeList

List of Jewish populations by country used at the Wannsee Conference attended by Nazi Party and government officials in January 1942

In preparation for the conference, Eichmann drafted a list of the numbers of Jews in the various European countries. Countries were listed in two groups, “A” and “B”. “A” countries were those under direct Reich control or occupation (or partially occupied and quiescent, in the case of Vichy France); “B” countries were allied or client states, neutral, or at war with Germany. The numbers reflect the estimated Jewish population within each country; for example, Estonia is listed as Judenfrei (free of Jews), since the 4,500 Jews who remained in Estonia after the German occupation had been exterminated by the end of 1941. Occupied Poland was not on the list because by 1939 the country was split three ways among Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in the west, the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union in the east, and the General Government where many Polish and Jewish expellees had already been resettled.

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Picture of the Day

Joan Trumpauer

Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland arrested June 8, 1961, Mississippi

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, a recipient of the 2015 National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, is a Civil Rights Icon who participated in over 50 sit-ins and demonstrations by the time she was 23 years old. She was a Freedom Rider, participant in the Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-in, the March on Washington, the Meredith March and the Selma to Montgomery March.

For her actions she was disowned by her family, attacked, shot at, cursed at, put on death row and hunted down by the Klan for execution. Her path has crossed with some of the biggest names in the Civil Rights Movement: Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Diane Nash and Julian Bond.

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Picture of the Day

joan of arc

19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by an English tribunal. May 30, 1431

Joan of Arc, a peasant girl living in medieval France, believed that God had chosen her to lead France to victory in its long-running war with England.

With no military training, Joan convinced the embattled crown prince Charles of Valois to allow her to lead a French army to the besieged city of Orléans, where it achieved a momentous victory over the English and their French allies, the Burgundians.

After seeing the prince crowned King Charles VII, Joan was captured by Anglo-Burgundian forces, tried for witchcraft and heresy and burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of 19.

By the time she was officially canonized in 1920, the Maid of Orléans (as she was known) had long been considered one of history’s greatest saints, and an enduring symbol of French unity and nationalism.

Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse?

The biggest factor was nationalism. The USSR was one large super-state made up of many smaller states that had been independent countries in the past; sort of like the United States, if Texas, California, and Idaho had all spoken separate languages for centuries and considered themselves, to varying extents, different races before being united under one federal government.

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Picture of the Day

U.S. soldiers examine a famous painting, “Wintergarden,” by French Impressionist Edouard Manet, part of a collection of Reichbank wealth, SS loot and paintings removed by the Nazis from Berlin to a salt mine vault.

The courageous individuals known as the Monuments Men put their lives on the line to protect invaluable works of art from falling into the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Through their unwavering commitment to the preservation of cultural heritage, they made an indelible impact on the world of art and culture, safeguarding precious masterpieces for future generations to appreciate and cherish.

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Picture of the Day

A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936.

Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men—to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men’s faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break. The children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes.

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Picture of the Day

bandits roost

Bandit’s Roost, at 59½ Mulberry Street (Mulberry Bend), was the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of all New York City.

The investigative journalist and self-taught photographer, Jacob August Riis, used the newly-invented flashgun to illuminate the darkest corners in and around Mulberry Street, one of the worst slums in Manhattan.

His images, which highlighted the plight of poor immigrants in the area, were published in his landmark work; How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York

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