I came across this amazing collection of photographs on Flickr yesterday and was totally captivated by them. The photographer was Costică Acsinte, a Polish Romanian war photographer during WW1 and afterwards. These photos all seem to have been taken around 1940 and are a real mixture: some are of military personnel, some are posed photo(…)
Pin up girls have been around for a lot longer than you think. Since as early as the 1890s girls have been drawn, painted and photographed and presented to the world as the ideal of beauty and sexuality. Like fashions in beauty and body shape, the pin up has changed enormously over the last century.(…)
Did you realize Sherlock Holmes was inspired by a real person? Nope, me neither! Apparently Arthur Conan Doyle (above right) based the fictional character of Sherlock on a doctor he knew called Joseph Bell (above left). Bell was known for his powers of deduction and even helped police with investigations in Scotland. Doyle met Bell,(…)
Miss Fernande was arguably the very first photographic pin up star. Born during the 1890s in Paris, the lovely Fernande was a model and prostitute who posed for nude and semi-nude photographs for photographer Jean Agelou during the 1910s and 20s. Her exact identity remains a mystery. Only ever known by the moniker ‘Miss Fernande’(…)
Frankly, an artistic arrangement of dead snakes doesn’t really say Happy Christmas to me, but clearly it did to somebody. This photos if from a Christmas card back in 1910. I don’t have much information about it except that it was Harry Dewey’s Christmas card and the photo was taken in Big Cypress Swamp, Florida.(…)
So, it’s Boxing Day and I’m sitting here (eating chocolates) waiting for it to snow. Apparently we are due to get snow tonight, but I fully expect to wake up in the morning and see cold grey drizzle rather than a beautiful white blanket covering everything. We didn’t have any snow last winter at all,(…)
Did you realize Dinosaurs had syphilis? Not only that but you mustn’t kiss your baby because it’s unhygienic and whatever you do DON’T mix whiskey with gas (I’m assuming they mean as a cocktail). I’m being facetious of course, but public health notices certainly told very different messages in the past compared to now. We(…)
Everything I’ve head about the Klu Klux Klan and their history has just served to reinforce what a vile and hateful organization they are which is why I find these photos so shocking. Not only because of the sheer number of people who were proudly parading as part of this group through the center of(…)
To try to reduce the number of criminals being sentenced to death the Victorians introduced Hard Labour as an alternative. It involved backbreaking pointless work which was designed to be soul-destroying and painful. This sentence was handed out to children and women as well as men. It could involve anything from walking for up to(…)
It’s Armistice and Remembrance day today, something which has had a particularly raised profile this year because 2014 marks the centenary of the start of the First World War. We went to London yesterday to see the spectacular and moving exhibition of poppies at the Tower of London “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red”,(…)
I love the different Hallowe’en costumes in these photos, although being British I always find it strange to see people dressing in ‘regular’ fancy dress during Hallowe’en. Here we just wear spooky costumes (ghosts, skeletons etc) whereas in America any kind of fancy dress seems fine. Anyone know why? I have no idea but I’d(…)
It was with total delight that I discovered Kevin Weir’s macabre gifs. He created them using old photos from the flickr photo archive from The Library of Congress, and I thought they were perfect for getting everyone in the Hallowe’en mood! Some are creepy, some dreamy but all delightful. I particularly love Countess Minto who(…)
It was rather of a relief when I found these photos to realise that 1940s women didn’t all look as impossibly movie-star-ish as we tend to think. Far from the easy ‘glamour on a shoe-string‘ that we read about so often, these photos show the hard-working ordinary women of wartime Britain during their daily lives.(…)
Boy have there been some strange beauty contests over the years! These photos include the contestants for ‘Miss Psywar’ (doesn’t that stand for Phsychological Warfare…?), ‘Miss War Worker’ and ‘Miss Bobbed Hair 1925’…
Most of the children pictured here lived in the Surrey Hills slum of Sydney, Australia which was a notorious den of organized crime, drug dealing and prostitution. As an area it fell into decline and poverty during the Depression of the late 1890s and despite undergoing some regeneration in the 1930s, an influx of American(…)
Alfred Cheney Johnston is most well-known for his photographs of the girls who performed in the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1910s and 20s. Here are some of his more risqué photos of the girls, including one of Gloria Swanson. They probably aren’t particularly suitable for viewing at work, depending on how open-minded your boss is(…)
There’s a lot to be said for the time when we weren’t all glued to our smartphones, but not everything people did to relieve their boredom was a good thing. After WW2 lots of young men with flying experience and a desire for adrenalin-fueled excitement had limited ways to enjoy themselves. So there came about(…)
You’ll never guess what I discovered today! Well, you probably don’t need to guess if you’ve read the title of this article… ANYWAY Clint Eastwood narrowly escaped death in a plane crash when he hitched a ride in the cargo compartment of a plane in 1951. And you thought he was just a tough guy(…)