Harriet Tubman with rescued slaves – Auburn, NY, circa 1887
Tubman also carried a revolver, and was not afraid to use it. The gun afforded some protection from the ever-present slave catchers and their dogs, however she also purportedly threatened to shoot any escaped slave who tried to turn back on the journey since that would threaten the safety of the remaining group.Tubman told the tale of one man who insisted he was going to go back to the plantation when morale got low among a group of fugitive slaves. She pointed the gun at his head and said, “You go on or die.” Several days later, he was with the group as they entered the United Province of Canada
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Young women in Kabul, Afghanistan, 1970s.
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Air hostess and steward serving Scandinavian Country Style Buffet, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, 1969
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The house that Donald Trump couldn’t buy. circa 1991 (article)
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In Coking’s telling, Trump first tried to charm her, then tried to stomp her.
“He’d come over to the house, probably thinking, ‘If I butter her up now, I’ll get her house for a good price,’ ” Coking told the New York Daily News in 1998. “Once, he gave me Neil Diamond tickets. I didn’t even know who Neil Diamond was.”
Coking, who is now more than 90 years old and was not available to be interviewed, was having none of it. This was her “dream house,” said Dana Berliner, an attorney with the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm that represented Coking in her case against Trump and Atlantic City’s casino development authority.
“She was a very determined person,” Berliner said.
Coking held firm, even as the 22-story Trump Plaza soared outside her windows with its ever-flashing lights. The house was deteriorating, but Coking’s will wasn’t. Demolition crews had set fire to her roof, broken windows and smashed up much of the third floor, according to her attorneys. Still, she didn’t move.
Female Snipers of the 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front – 775 confirmed kills in one photograph (1945)
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Dr. Leonid Rogozov operating himself to remove his appendix in Antarctica 1961
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In 1961, Rogozov was stationed at a newly constructed Russian base in Antarctica. The 12 men inside were cut off from the outside world by the polar winter by March of that year. On the morning of 29 April 1961, Rogozov experienced general weakness, nausea, and moderate fever, and later pain in the lower right portion of the abdomen. His symptoms were classic: he had acute appendicitis. “He knew that if he was to survive he had to undergo an operation”, the British Medical Journal recounted. “But he was in the frontier conditions of a newly founded Antarctic colony on the brink of the polar night. Transportation was impossible. Flying was out of the question, because of the snowstorms. And there was one further problem: he was the only physician on the base”. Rogozov wrote in his diary:
“It seems that I have appendicitis. I am keeping quiet about it, even smiling. Why frighten my friends? Who could be of help? A polar explorer’s only encounter with medicine is likely to have been in a dentist’s chair”.
All the available conservative treatment was applied (antibiotics, local cooling), but the patient’s general condition was getting worse: his body temperature rose, vomiting became more frequent.
“I did not sleep at all last night. It hurts like the devil! A snowstorm whipping through my soul, wailing like a hundred jackals. Still no obvious symptoms that perforation is imminent, but an oppressive feeling of foreboding hangs over me… This is it… I have to think through the only possible way out: to operate on myself…It’s almost impossible…but I can’t just fold my arms and give up”.
Rogozov had no option but to perform the operation on himself. The operation started at 02:00 local time on the first day of May with the help of a driver and meteorologist, who were providing instruments and holding a mirror to observe areas not directly visible, while Rogozov was in a semi-reclining position, half-turned to his left side. After 30-40 minutes Rogozov started to take short breaks because of general weakness and vertigo. Finally he removed the severely affected appendix. He applied antibiotics in the peritoneal cavity and closed the wound. The operation itself lasted an hour and 45 minutes. Partway through, the helping team took photographs of the operation.
“I worked without gloves. It was hard to see. The mirror helps, but it also hinders—after all, it’s showing things backwards. I work mainly by touch. The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time—I try to work surely. Opening the peritoneum, I injured the blind gut and had to sew it up. Suddenly it flashed through my mind: there are more injuries here and I didn’t notice them… I grow weaker and weaker, my head starts to spin. Every 4-5 minutes I rest for 20-25 seconds. Finally, here it is, the cursed appendage! With horror I notice the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst and… At the worst moment of removing the appendix I flagged: my heart seized up and noticeably slowed; my hands felt like rubber. Well, I thought, it’s going to end badly. And all that was left was removing the appendix… And then I realized that, basically, I was already saved”.
After the operation gradual improvement occurred in the signs of peritonitis and in the general condition of Rogozov. Body temperature returned to normal after five days, and the stitches were removed seven days after the operation. He resumed his regular duties in about two weeks.The self-surgery captured the imagination of the Soviet public at the time. In 1961 he was awarded Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
The Obama’s on their wedding day, 1992.
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The Hell of Serra Pelada Mines (1980s)
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A lone man refusing to do the “Sieg Heil” salute at the launching of the Horst Wessel in Nazi Germany 1936
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The photo was taken at the launch of a German army vessel in 1936, during a ceremony that was attended by Adolf Hitler himself. Within the picture a lone man stood with arms crossed as hundreds of men and women around him held up their arms in salute and allegiance to the Nazi Party and its leader, Adolph Hitler. Everyone in attendance is showing their undying support for Der Fuhrer by throwing out their very best “Sieg Heil.” August Landmesser, grimacing with arms crossed, stood strong and defiant as he showed his disapproval by not displaying support for the Nazi Party. What made this photo and Landmesser’s defiance unique is that it represented the protest of one man, in its most sincere and pure form. The source of Landmesser’s protest, like many great tragedies, starts with a love story.
The story of August Landmesser’s anti-gesture begins, ironically enough, with the Nazi Party. Believing that having the right connections would help land him a job in the pulseless economy, Landmesser joined the Nazi Party in 1931. Little did he know that his heart would soon ruin any progress that his superficial political affiliation might have made. In 1934, Landmesser met Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman, and the two fell deeply in love. Their engagement a year later got him expelled from the party, and their marriage application was denied under the newly enacted racial Nuremberg Laws. They had a baby girl, Ingrid, in October of the same year, and two years later in 1937, the family made a failed attempt to flee to Denmark, where they were apprehended at the border. August was arrested and charged for “dishonoring the race” under Nazi racial law. He argued that neither he nor Eckler knew that she was fully Jewish, and was acquitted on 27 May 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence.
The couple publicly continued their relationship and a month later August Landmesser would be arrested again and sentenced to hard labor for two years in a concentration camp. He would never see his beloved wife again. Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to a second daughter Irene. Their children were initially taken to the city orphanage. Ingrid was later allowed to live with her maternal grandmother; Irene went to the home of foster parents in 1941. Later, after her grandmother’s death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster parents. A few letters came from Irma Eckler until January 1942. It is believed that she was taken to the so-called Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed. In the course of post-war documentation, in 1949 she was pronounced legally dead, with a date of 28 April 1942.
August would be released in 1941 and began work as a foreman. Two years later, as the German army became increasingly mired by its desperate circumstances, Landmesser would be drafted into a penal infantry along with thousands of other men. He would go missing in Croatia where it is presumed he died, six months before Germany would officially surrender. His body was never recovered. Like Eckler, he was declared legally dead in 1949.
Gregori Rasputin with his admirers 1914
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Who was Rasputin and what was his influence?
Rasputin was a religious mystic and faith healer. The heir to the Russian thrown had hemophilia, which at the time was poorly understood and potentially very dangerous. Rasputin was able to stop his bleeding, either by using hypnosis or giving him aspirin. This gave him access to the royal family and influence with the Russian Empress.
During WWI Rasputin prophesied that Russian forces would not be victorious until the Emperor personally led them. This did not go well. Rasputin was later assassinated for unclear reason. He famously took a long time to die and survived through several methods of murder.
High school girls learn the art of automobile mechanics
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Goering and other Nazi officials look across the English Channel at the Cliffs of Dover, the closest they would ever get to invading Britain July 1, 1940
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The legendary Harry Houdini before performing his famous escape act, 1899
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President Nixon meets with China’s Communist Party Leader, Mao Tse-Tung, 1972
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What was Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ and ‘The Cultural Revolution’ all about?
When Mao came to power in China, he had big plans to change his country. For all of it’s history, China was an agrarian nation. Mao wanted to change this. He envisioned the poor farmers of China uniting to remake the country into a vast, modern industrial superpower, similar to the rise of the neighboring Soviets, whom Mao drew inspiration.
His program, called the great leap forward, involved taking millions of farmers off their fields into industrial collectives. Farmers where told to melt their ploughs and steel scrap into the tools of industry to make steel.
But obviously there is a problem, as a lifetime farmer doesn’t know anything about making steel. And when you take everyone off of farming and turn them into workers in a field they know nothing about, both farming and steel making fail.
Since he diverted so many peasants to this industrial flop, there were not as many to working on the fields. China was always on the edge of famine, and this gave them firm push over.
As for the Cultural Revolution, he was trying to purge China of The Four Olds as these were seen to only further the exploitation of the classes. The Four Olds are old customs, old habits, old culture, and old ideas.
A lot of teachers were executed publicly, monks were humiliated in the streets, a great number of Kung Fu masters took to the hills or left China altogether. These were all seen as part of the Old China that the Cultural Revolution was meant to be burning off.
The atomic bomb that detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. Fat Man is seen on a transport carriage after assembly on Tinian Island, 1945
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Neil A. Armstrong greeted by his son Mark upon his return from the Moon while still in the Mobile Quarantine Facility. The three Apollo 11 astronauts were confined for 21 days to prevent the spread of any contagions from the Moon. (27 July, 1969)
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Using a traditional Japanese blade, 17-year-old Yamaguchi assassinates socialist politician Asanuma in Tokyo 1960
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The photo was taken directly after Yamaguchi stabbed Asanuma and is seen here attempting a second stab though he is restrained before that happens. Otoya Yamaguchi was member of a right-wing ultranationalist Japanese group. Inejiro Asanuma was leader of the socialist party in Japan. He was unusual in postwar Japan for his forceful advocacy of socialism, and his support of the Chinese Communist Party was particularly controversial. Asanuma was assassinated during a televised political debate for the coming elections for the House of Representatives. While Asanuma spoke from the lectern at Tokyo’s Hibiya Hall, Yamaguchi rushed onstage and ran his wakizashi through Asanuma’s abdomen, killing him.
Otoya Yamaguchi was a member of a group which, among other things, wished to rid Japan of Western influence and restore Japan’s traditional culture. He chose a weapon that was fitting his purpose, and that meant getting up close and attacking with complete conviction, knowing full well that there was no way he would be getting away.
Less than three weeks after the assassination, while being held in a juvenile detention facility, Yamaguchi mixed a small amount of tooth paste with water and wrote on his cell wall: “Seven lives for my country. Long live His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor!” Yamaguchi then knotted strips of his bedsheet into a makeshift rope and used it to hang himself from a light fixture. The phrase “seven lives for my country” was a reference to the last words of 14th century samurai Kusunoki Masashige.
Miss Universe contestants continue to pose for pictures despite Miss New Zealand having passed out from heat exhaustion. Long Beach, California 1954
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