History in Pictures

The US Army sent two engineering regiments comprised of professional lumbermen to France during WWI to cut timber in French forests for military use.

Performers at the “girlie show.”

Vermont State Fair, Rutland, 1941.

Left: the ship’s galley in the mid-1930s.

Right: a recent picture of a portion of the galley’s floor taken by an underwater robot.

Franklin Roosevelt is sworn in for his 4th term as president, January 20, 1945.

After the ceremony, Roosevelt’s 2,000 invited guests were served an uninspired lunch of cold chicken salad, dinner rolls (no butter), cake without frosting and coffee (no sugar).

He will be gone in 89 days.

On this date in 1961, East German officials closed the border between East and West Berlin and began construction of the Berlin Wall.

“It is absolutely impossible for a republic long to endure if it becomes either corrupt or cowardly;
“[or] if its public men, no less than its private men, lose the indispensable virtue of honesty.”
      — Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural address as New York Governor, Jan. 2, 1899

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941).

You don't care about anything except you.
You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back.
Only you want love on your own terms.
Something to be played your way, according to your rules.

The massive need for lumber during World War II propelled the development of workable, two-man mechanical chainsaws.

They ran on gasoline.

They replaced two-man crosscut saws which were sometimes called “misery whips” because using them to fell a large tree required hours of hard labor.

Francis Alexander, Leete Farm, West Claremont, New Hampshire, c. 1822.

August 13, 1940: The German bombing campaign over Britain escalated yesterday, with 500 aircraft, coming in waves, striking targets along England’s southern coast.

Long-range bombardment from German cannon positioned on the occupied French coast added to the damage.

The German air attacks of the past two days have exceeded all others in numbers of aircraft involved, and most observers expect the worst is yet to come.

Berlin claims to have achieved air supremacy over Britain, with British resistance so feeble, they say, that German pilots have been given permission to pick their dogfights at will.

Officials responsible for defending US military installations in Hawaii are said to be heartened by the difficulty Germany is having in trying to conquer Britain, an island just 30 miles from German-occupied territory, noting that an attack on Hawaii would obligate an enemy to cross 3,000 miles of ocean.

Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1755, by Ben Franklin:

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbours, and let every new year find you a better man.”

I'm now an old man and nature is cruel.
Tis jest to make old age look like a fool.
But inside this old carcass, a young guy still dwells,
And now and again my battered heart swells.
     -- David Griffith, "A Crabby Old Man," 1966.