Louis Armstrong atop a camel at the Giza Necropolis, January 1961. He and his wife, Lucille (pictured far left with camera) embarked on a tour of Africa and the Middle East in 1961.
AP Photo
Louis Armstrong atop a camel at the Giza Necropolis, January...
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Isidor and Ida Straus were both born on February 6 in 1845 and...
Isidor and Ida Straus were both born on February 6 in 1845 and 1849, respectively. The co-owner of Macy’s and his wife not only shared a birth date but also, famously, a death date. When Isidor refused to board a lifeboat off the sinking Titanic, his wife declined a seat as well and said to her husband when he urged her to save herself ”We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go.”
One of Isidor’s cousins wrote soon after the disaster: “it is possible she refused to realize the gravity of the situation, but even if she did understand it, I doubt if she could have been induced to leave him.”
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17th-18th century Kabuto helmets. Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Bertha Gilbert, a 22-year-old civil rights activist, is led away...
Bertha Gilbert, a 22-year-old civil rights activist, is led away by policemen after attempting to sit at a segregated lunch counter, Nashville - May 1964.
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February 7, 1984: Bruce McCandless and Robert L. Stewart perform...
February 7, 1984: Bruce McCandless and Robert L. Stewart perform the first ever untethered space walk.
On February 3, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying five men, including two Mission Specialists who would test NASA’s new Manned Maneuvering Unit, an Astronaut Propulsion Unit that would allow them to perform “spacewalks” without the use of any cables. The two astronauts, with the help of the MMU, would be able to travel farther from their spacecraft and for longer periods of time than any previous spacewalks. The article that appeared in the New York Times detailing the event described it as “a spectacle of bravery and beauty”.
The first spacewalk ever performed was conducted by cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, who remained outside (but within fifty meters of) his spacecraft for around twelve minutes.The first American to perform a spacewalk was Ed White, who spent twenty-one minutes outside his spacecraft, and he did not venture far from his craft either. McCandless’ and Stewarts’ spacewalk, which took place on the fourth day post launch, lasted nearly six hours, and they traveled over 300 feet away from their orbiter without ever losing sight of it. When Bruce McCandless left the craft, it was orbiting over Florida, from where the shuttle had launched (at the sight, McCandless remarked: “It really is beautiful”.); when he returned, he was floating (actually traveling at over 17,000 miles an hour) over Africa. The photograph of McCandless floating free and untethered in space has since become one of the most widely-distributed, well-known images of the American space program. Of the MMU itself, McCandless and Stewart reported that, for the most part, the device had functioned flawlessly, although its use was discontinued after 1984.
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dangerousmeta: unhistorical: February 7, 1984: Bruce...
February 7, 1984: Bruce McCandless and Robert L. Stewart perform the first ever untethered space walk.
On February 3, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying five men, including two Mission Specialists who would test NASA’s new Manned Maneuvering Unit, an Astronaut Propulsion Unit that would allow them to perform “spacewalks” without the use of any cables. The two astronauts, with the help of the MMU, would be able to travel farther from their spacecraft and for longer periods of time than any previous spacewalks. The article that appeared in the New York Times detailing the event described it as “a spectacle of bravery and beauty”.
The first spacewalk ever performed was conducted by cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, who remained outside (but within fifty meters of) his spacecraft for around twelve minutes.The first American to perform a spacewalk was Ed White, who spent twenty-one minutes outside his spacecraft, and he did not venture far from his craft either. McCandless’ and Stewarts’ spacewalk, which took place on the fourth day post launch, lasted nearly six hours, and they traveled over 300 feet away from their orbiter without ever losing sight of it. When Bruce McCandless left the craft, it was orbiting over Florida, from where the shuttle had launched (at the sight, McCandless remarked: “It really is beautiful”.); when he returned, he was floating (actually traveling at over 17,000 miles an hour) over Africa. The photograph of McCandless floating free and untethered in space has since become one of the most widely-distributed, well-known images of the American space program. Of the MMU itself, McCandless and Stewart reported that, for the most part, the device had functioned flawlessly, although its use was discontinued after 1984.In one of my previous jobs, I had the opportunity to scan some of this film direct from NASA (imagine the insurance we had to carry!) in order to illustrate a special event for the United Nations. The administrator who dropped off the films told me these particular images are constantly mis-oriented - he was concerned that I got orientation correct. The photos were actually taken with the Earth on the right, not the bottom.
I’ve never heard that before, but that’s very interesting. So it would look like this, then.
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Thanks for being here! I really appreciate history tumblrs!
Thank you :)
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Didn't mean to be a butt-insky ... thought adding that detail (the orientation switch) would give some extra interest to your post!
Oh, no, you weren’t butting in at all. I love it when people add extra details and their own anecdotes, and things like that. Plus, it was very interesting.
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February 8, 1968: The Orangeburg massacre takes place. Like the...
February 8, 1968: The Orangeburg massacre takes place.
Like the later Kent State and Jackson State shootings, the violence in Orangeburg, South Carolina, began as a student protest. Around two hundred students gathered at South Carolina State University on February 6 to protest the segregation of a local bowling alley, which admitted only white customers. By this time, the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed the segregation of “public accommodations”, and Heart of Atlanta Motel Incv. United States, which upheld its constitutionality with regard to private businesses, were already four years old; All Star Bowling Lane’s owner claimed that the act did not apply to his bowling alley, but local students disagreed.
Two nights of protest marked by arrests, vandalism, and confrontations between students and policemen passed before the massacre took place. By February 8, law enforcement officials from local policemen all the way up to members of the National Guard had arrived at the campus to prevent any more violence and destruction - although it was their presence that incited it. Firemen, protected by state troopers, arrived to put out a bonfire the students had lit just outside their school’s campus. One state trooper was reportedly hit in the head by a heavy wooden object, whereupon the startled law enforcement officials took up their firearms in a panic and began to shoot indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed students. The shooting lasted some ten seconds, killed three men, and injured twenty-eight other people, most of whom had been shot in the back or sides. Two of the victims were students at the university, and the third was a high school student whose mother worked on campus as a cleaner. Injuries were horrific as well; one pregnant and married student was beaten at the scene by policemen, and she suffered a miscarriage shortly afterward as a result of the beatings.
Although Governor Robert E. McNair condemned the violence that transpired that night, he also pinned blame for the incident on “black power advocates” rather than the shooters themselves. The exact events that led up to the massacre remain unclear and uncertain, thanks to a lack of accurate media coverage and the governor’s one-sided explanation, which was easily accepted as truth by most South Carolinians, so the case made against law enforcement officials was flimsy. Nine patrolmen were eventually brought to court for their actions, but they were all acquitted of all charges. In fact, the only man who was convicted of any crime related to the Orangeburg Massacre was Cleveland Sellers, an SNCC leader who the police claimed was an “outside agitator”. Sellers served seven months in prison for supposedly instigating the riot.
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February 8, 1931: James Dean is born. Being an actor is the...
February 8, 1931: James Dean is born.
Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.
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Hi. I really love your blog, you always post the most interesting tid-bits of history. I'm taking an AP European History course, and we have just been assigned a research paper (1815-present) and my teacher said to pick interesting topics, "sex, drugs, and rock&roll" as he put it. Any ideas? Thanks.
Thanks!! And… I don’t know, could you be more specific? Just anything interesting? Because there’s a lot that falls under “interesting”.
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Have you ever checked out the history of coffee?
One of the passages in the reading comprehension section of a version of the SAT (or ACT?) I took was about English coffeehouses of the 1600s - that is the extent of my knowledge on the history of coffee. Super interesting stuff, though.
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February 9, 1944: Alice Walker is born. Alice Walker, best known...
February 9, 1944: Alice Walker is born.
Alice Walker, best known for her 1982 novel The Color Purple, was born in Georgia - the youngest of eight children - to a sharecropper and a maid. She began writing at age eight and, despite living in an area where Jim Crow laws existed until the mid-1960s, she attended Spelman College and later Sarah Lawrence College; at Spelman, she met Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States) and Martin Luther King, Jr, who inspired her to take part in the Civil Rights movement; she participated in the 1963 March on Washington and, after graduating, Walker volunteered to help disenfranchised black voters in her home state register to vote.
In a 1975 essay, Walker helped revive interest in an overlooked black, female author of the Harlem Renaissance - one who, liked herself, wrote on the experiences of black women in the South - Zora Neale Hurston. In 1982, she published The Color Purple, and, like many of her other novels, short stories, and poems, it explored the double barrier of prejudice faced by women of color. In 1983 The Color Purple won its author the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. Walker has also received an O. Henry Award and several awards from humanist organizations, and she was inducted into the California Museum’s Hall of Fame for both her literary accomplishments and for her “advocacy on behalf of the dispossessed”.
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The Grable shot of Operation Upshot-Knothole - the first and...
The Grable shot of Operation Upshot-Knothole - the first and only nuclear artillery shell ever fired as part of the United States’ nuclear weapons testing program. Its yield was just under that of the Little Boy atomic bomb. May 1953
National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office Photo Library
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thorthescienceguy replied to your photo: The Grable shot of Operation Upshot-Knothole -...
thorthescienceguy replied to your photo: The Grable shot of Operation Upshot-Knothole - the…
Is that lightning?
Actually I was wondering what those little white streams are. I thought the ground was sizzling because of the heat, or something. I found this picture online labelled “Smiling Buddha”, but it looks similar to (or… exactly like) the Grable explosion, and you can see the streams more clearly in this one.
nuclearweaponarchive.or…
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Victorian era women and flappers Flappers - The Roaring...
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Am I too late on this one? Perhaps the smoke trails on the Grable shot are caused by evenly spaced flares designed to shoot off when the concussion and/or heat reached them. Just a guess.
Someone beat you to it!
liketotallyme reblogged this from unhistorical and added:
Here, I found a website with another grable shot. They mentioned what they were: “Smoke trails to the left are from rockets carrying photographic devices used to measure the shock waves created by the blast.”
More info: http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/SmokeTrails.html
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Over 3 million Eastern Front Medals (Winterschlacht Im Osten)...
Over 3 million Eastern Front Medals (Winterschlacht ImOsten) were awarded to personnel of Axis military forces and the Waffen-SS who served on the Eastern Front during the first winter of Operation Barbarossa. The colors of the medal and ribbon - black, red, and white - were meant to symbolize, respectively, death, blood, and snow. To receive the medal, certain criteria would have to be met; besides having to serve in the freezing conditions of the harsh Russian winter of 1941-42, a recipient would also have to have been wounded, or injured from frostbite.
Because of these criteria, the medal was sometimes referred to as the “Frozen Flesh Medal” (Gefrierfleischorden).
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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"Frozen Meat Medal" not flesh! :)
I’ve seen it referred to as both of them, and the words are interchangeable… (plus, “frozen flesh” is alliterative, so I prefer that translation, haha.)
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rykemasters: ladyhistory: unhistorical: Victorian era women...
Victorian era women and flappers
haha OH MY GOSH I LOVE THIS CLASH OF AGES
That’s more like Edwardian era though, get that shit in order
I mean strictly speaking by the 20’s it wasn’t even the Edwardian era anymore, but at that point there were world wars so they started using those to mark eras instead of royals or their families
Yeah, the point is that they grew up in or were young adults during the Victorian era, not that this interaction took place in the Victorian era. Strictly and loosely speaking, it’s not the Edwardian era at all.
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