Photos taken at the McConnell Air Hostess School which trained air hostesses for TWA in the 1940s. The training included learning the correct way to serve drinks, dealing with inebriated passengers and even learning how to change nappies (did Air Hostesses used to do that?). Even more surprisingly they are also pictured having chewing gum(…)
Curious photos from a Beautiful Legs Contest from 1949. The pictures raise lots of questions in my mind – aside from why you’d want to enter a ‘beautiful legs contest’ in the first place.
You must have heard people say that the 1950s was a time of simpler pleasures, and these pictures of Disneyland in the 50s show that perfectly. This was a much more low-tech world of stagecoaches and steam paddle boats and serious people riding on carousel horses wearing suits (if these pictures are anything to go(…)
These beautiful Victorian portraits are a type of early photograph called daguerreotypes. Invented by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in the 1830s the photographic image is imprinted onto a silvered copper plate, making each portrait unique.
The airship industry effectively died with the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, but for 80 or so years previously the dream of lighter-than-air travel had gradually been becoming a reality. The sight of airships were becoming less of a novelty and were seen in the sky’s across Europe and North America. In truth though, by the(…)
I stumbled across this photograph this morning and I’m ghoulishly intrigued by it. The only information I have about it is that it’s captioned ‘Air Suicide Attempt‘, 1929.
More and more smokers are becoming social pariahs. They have to stand on the street in the rain outside restaurants, bars, pubs and even their own cars (if their kids are inside). And while I don’t mind this, being a non-smoker, it does strike me as strange that in years gone by smoking was seen(…)
I’ve often wondered how enormous monuments such as Mount Rushmore are created. Having said that, even having seen these photos I’m not sure how teams of people suspended in wooden crates chiselled perfect faces out of a mountainside, especially back in the 1920s. Building work took place from 1927 until 1941 with some 400 workers(…)
You thought zumba and ashtanga yoga were torture enough in the pursuit of youth and fitness? Be grateful you didn’t live in the 1940s when young women were encouraged to visit slenderizing salons in the pursuit of perfection. These photos show poor Pat Ogden being pummeled by a Wooden Barrel Massager and a Roaler Massager(…)
It was the lovely Armi Kuusela from Finland who won the first ever Miss Universe contest in 1952*, with Miss Hawaii, Miss Greece, Miss Hong Kong and Miss Germany in the runner up positions. Interestingly Miss United Kingdom, Aileen P. Chase, who was a runner up in Miss World the previous year didn’t even make(…)
I love this series of photos. Some of them could have been taken anywhere during the Sixties: the Mary Quant fashions and girls with their heavy eye-makeup and bouffant hair (even on the ballerinas). But then there are some uniquely Parisian photos too: the street scenes, the elderly couple snoozing in the Louve, the stamp(…)
Tomorrow Queen Elizabeth II overtakes Queen Victoria as the longest serving monarch in British History. I was born in the 1970s so she’s always seemed very much an older woman to me, so I thought it might be nice to see some photos of her as a young woman. I particularly love the photos of(…)
London was a very different city in 1941. Alongside the landmarks we all recognize there were clear signs of the Blitz and the toll that war was taking on the city. From schools, to Trafalgar Square to bomb shelters and shop fronts, these photos give you an insight into the way London had to change(…)
I love the idea of collating images which give a real flavour of what a place was like at a point in time. All of the photos below were taken in Paris in 1926. They range from Josephine Baker dancing at the Folies-Bergère, to photos of buildings, shop windows, fashions and bridges along with some(…)
Wow, you’d certainly need a head for heights to do this job! Back in 1908-9 when the Manhattan bridge was under construction there was no such thing as health and safety. You could wander the boards of the half-built bridge with your camera snapping photos of the workers without any questions being asked at all…(…)
During the 1850s British physician Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond took a series of haunting photographs of mentally ill patients under his care. He was one of the pioneers of early photography, starting in 1839 shortly after the medium was invented, and was one of the founding members of the Photographic Society. Diamond (pictured below) had(…)
I visited the Wedding Dresses (1775-2014) exhibition at the V&A last week. It was a fantastic display of bridal fashions ranging from incredibly wide 1700s dresses which would make you turn sideways to get through doorways (I explained that really badly, I mean this kind type of thing), to modern day celebrity wedding dresses. The(…)
Olga Spessivtseva was one of the foremost Russian ballerinas of the early 20th Century. She traveled the world to rave reviews in a career which spanned from 1913 to 1939 before succumbing to mental illness and becoming an inmate of the Hudson River Asylum for the Insane. Often billed as Olga Spessiva (her name was(…)