History in Pics

Princess Elizabeth

Colorized photo of Princess Elizabeth reading at Windsor Castle 1940, nearly a year into the World War 2.


Battle of Saipan

An American soldier cradles a wounded Japanese boy and shelters him from the rain in the cockpit of an airplane during the Battle of Saipan, while waiting to transport the youngster to a field hospital. July 1944.

Japan considered Saipan as part of the last line of defenses for the Japanese homeland and thus had strongly committed to defending it. The Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy garrisoned Saipan heavily from the late 1930s, building numerous coastal artillery batteries, shore defenses, underground fortifications and an airstrip. In mid-1944, nearly 30,000 troops were based on the island.

The Battle of Saipan from 15 June to 9 July 1944 was one of the major campaigns of World War II. The United States Marines and United States Army landed on the beaches of the southwestern side of the island and spent more than three weeks in heavy fighting to secure the island from the Japanese. The battle cost the Americans 3,426 killed and 10,364 wounded, whereas of the estimated 30,000 Japanese defenders, only 921 were taken, prisoner. Weapons and the tactics of close quarter fighting also resulted in high civilian casualties. Some 20,000 Japanese civilians perished during the battle, including over 1,000 who committed suicide by jumping from “Suicide Cliff” and “Banzai Cliff” rather than be taken, prisoner.

Seabees of the U.S. Navy also landed to participate in construction projects. With the capture of Saipan, the American military was now only 1,300 miles away from the Japanese home islands, which placed most Japanese cities within striking distance of United States’ B-29 Superfortress bombers. The loss of Saipan was a heavy blow to both the military and civilian administration of Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō, who was forced to resign.


Coal miners


Belgian coal miners crammed into a coal mine elevator, coming up after a day of work, circa 1900.

These people actually didn’t wash themselves after such a workday. Maybe just a quick face wash and hand wash. Bath time was usually measured by the week so generally most people didn’t do much washing at all. Laundry was also done by the week and it was a brutal affair for the women doing it by hand. The washing machine as an invention saved days of a house wife’s time. In fact, women of that generation consider washing machine as the greatest invention in their lifetime. This then opened up a whole new labor market because women could spend less time doing household chores.


Addams Family


The Addams Family in 1964.

John Astin, the actor who played Gomez Addams, is the adopted father of Sean Astin, whose mother is Patty Duke.
Jackie Coogan, the actor who played Uncle Fester, costarred with Charlie Chaplin in the Kid (1921). Coogan’s mother spent all his money from the movies he starred in as a child, which was the catalyst for the first laws protecting the money made by child actors.


New York City blackout


“Lots of Liquor” – New York City Blackout, July 13, 1977.

The blackout occurred when the city was facing a severe financial crisis and its residents were fretting over the Son of Sam murders. The nation as a whole was suffering from a protracted economic downturn. Some pointed to the financial crisis as a root cause of the disorder, others noted the hot July weather, as the Northeast at the time was in the middle of a brutal heat wave. Still, others pointed out that the 1977 blackout came after businesses had closed and their owners went home. However, the 1977 looters continued their damage into the daylight hours, with police on alert.

Looting and vandalism were widespread, hitting 31 neighborhoods, including most poor neighborhoods in the city. Possibly the hardest hit were Crown Heights, where 75 stores on a five-block stretch were looted, and Bushwick, where arson was rampant with some 25 fires still burning the next morning. At one point two blocks of Broadway, which separates Bushwick from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, were on fire. Thirty-five blocks of Broadway were destroyed: 134 stores looted, 45 of them set ablaze. Thieves stole 50 new Pontiacs from a Bronx car dealership. In Brooklyn, youths were seen backing up cars to targeted stores, tying ropes around the stores’ grates, and using their cars to pull the grates away before looting the store. While 550 police officers were injured in the mayhem, 4,500 looters were arrested.

In all, 1,616 stores were damaged in looting and rioting. A total of 1,037 fires were responded to, including 14 multiple-alarm fires. In the largest mass arrest in city history, 3,776 people were arrested. Many had to be stuffed into overcrowded cells, precinct basements, and other makeshift holding pens. A congressional study estimated that the cost of damages amounted to a little over $300 million.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. I find it amusing how people talk about the Nazi’s like the christians haven’t done the same thing during the Inquisition and the crusades. Nazi’s are still reviled, yet christians are popular? Make a choice, hypocrites, or shut the he!! up.

    1
    • You clearly know nothing about the Crusades or the Inquisition.

      The Spanish Inquisition, though draconian by our standards, was actually more lenient, and ended in more not guilty verdicts, than the civil courts run by the King and his government. Most of the Inquisition’s horrors were played up by English Protestants as propaganda, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I when a Spanish invasion seemed imminent.

      And the Crusades were a response to several centuries of Islamic incursions into Christian lands. The First Crusade began because Seljuq Turks conquered half the Byzantine Empire and began slaughtering Christian pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. Infamous battles, like the Massacre of Jerusalem, were indeed brutal, but were, in fact, entirely common in the warfare of the Middle Ages. Everyone acted the same way. Not two hundred years later, Muslim armies would commit atrocities in Georgia and Turkey that were far greater than the deaths at the hands of Crusaders, and razed the city of Jerusalem to the ground so no one would want it.

      Also, look at you, edgelord. You can say Hell, your mom’s not going to find out.

      11
      • Thank you for this information! I wish people would research thing for themselves and there would be a lot fewer problems in this world. People still believe in propaganda still today. Just turn on the TV, it is everywhere. And also, Christianity has been under constant attack since it’s inception, so it’s no surprise that evil will show it’s face in this thread:(

        986
      • Muslim armies still commit atrocities against Christians still to this day. And I’m not saying all Muslims are bad people, because they are not. There are radicals in most every religion and always will be sadly.

        887
    • Really, how far back you want to go? It is true that crimes of this nature have been committed since the dawn of time. However, this does not justify the crimes committed by the Nazis and their allies. Those criminals earned their fate. And, those who support their ideals will also get their appropriate Justice.
      BTW, the Spanish Inquisition executed 39 person at the pyre, 2 of them in effigy. Lord Calvin executed 6,000, including the Jesuit priest that discovered our circulatory system.

      788
    • The ability for humans to inflilct suffering on others is born out of weakness and lack of insight in the individual, and fostered by the flaw in all of us as a group, in our inability to create a society which is a product of the finest of our knowledge, in justice, equity, compassion, creative will, and love for each other. Our tragedy is that we are lost in a sea of competing ideologies, political contests, hidden schemes to control wealth, religious traditions, and power struggles, while the simple truth blunders on waiting for catastrophe to shape us, while the gift of choice is ignored.

      4
    • The thing is, Nazis were Christians and German Christian Democratic party with the help of a Vatican and the German Pope of the time helped elect Hitler to power.

      781
      • Yes, The whole world mostly approved of hitler until they didn’t. Big difference. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And then he pounced!:( The ultimate deceiver and devil incarnate!

        797
    • The Christian’s held inquisitions a 1000+ years ago and the Germans 80 years ago. There is no moral equivalence. Who do be blame for the 100,000 + fentanyl deaths every year in America? The human race is very flawed but no as flawed as our Government!👎🆘🤯

      0
  2. Having just looked up the total deaths during the inquisition, it seems to vary from 30,000 up to the millions. Though we cannot arrive at accuracy, we do know that 50,000,000 people died in the world wars recently, and no one was a victor! German fascism rose out of a frustrated Germany burdened with debt after the first world war. We are now burdened with debt once again, and the arms makers are itching for excuses to use them, so lets be careful eh? As to Arabs and terrorism, the school kids recently blowing off their immaturity are catching up to terrorist executions of innocents as we speak, but few are seeing the real ill behind all this. Since our churches are proving to be little more than international pedophilia rings, where are the moral arbiters of the modern age? You certainly cannot look to the governments, muslims, christians or fascists for that can you??

    2
    • Hitler’s ideology is very much still alive. There are direct ties with Margaret Sanger Associates having direct ties to Nazi figures who served directly under Hitler and where involved in the creation of Planned Parenthood . So, technically, Hitler is still very much so still murdering innocent human beings. If you don’t believe me it is documented and confirmed.

      818
  3. Easier said than done folks.
    From a ‘Black-Op’s point of view…while attached to a 12 man Force Recon team, we were attracted by a slight buzzing noise that as we got closer, it, of course, got louder.
    Being attracted by the sound of over a billion flies surrounding the strung up corpses of over 300 people that were tied to cross-post in an ‘X’ fashion and skinned alive from the neck to their crotch with the skin hanging down past their calves…pretty much says it all.

    843
  4. People don’t understand how horrifying it can be up front and personal. I respect everything about what your job is and was if that’s the case. I wish more people knew what it takes to keep us all free and from being slaughtered by our enemies.

    1047

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