History in Pictures

President Theodore Roosevelt greets former “Rough Riders,” whom he commanded in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, at a San Antonio reunion,1905.

US Army nurses in Normandy, June 1944.

The first group of nurses arrived four days after D-Day.

… commercially distributed motion pictures in America were from Thomas Edison.

He began his film work in his New Jersey studio in 1894, then moved to facilities in New York City.

Many of Edison’s films have been preserved in the Library of Congress.

These items, including a $5 Confederate note, were in President Lincoln’ pockets when he was assassinated.

These items, rosary beads and ‘commander-in-chief’ dog tags, were among the items in President Kennedy’s pockets when he was assassinated.

….. top television shows: All in the Family, The Flip Wilson Show, Marcus Welby, M.D.

….. M*A*S*H* premieres on CBS

….. top grossing films: Diamonds Are Forever, Dirty Harry, The French Connection

….. Grease opens on Broadway

….. HBO begins transmissions

….. top songs: Heart of Gold [Neil Young], Horse with No Name {America], The Lion Sleeps Tonight {Robert John]

….. most popular fiction books: The Winds of War [Herman Wouk], Wheels {Arthur Hailey]

….. best-selling car: VW Beetle — six thousand dollars

….. McDonalds’ quarter-pounder with cheese — seventy cents

….. and don’t forget mini-skirts, plaid pants for men, and platform shoes

In 1954, scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey invented the first practical device to turn sunlight directly into electricity.

Previous attempts had used selenium as the base layer of the solar cell, but these efforts converted less than 1% of sunlight into electrical current.

The Bell Lab guys used silicon as the base layer of the solar cell and added a little bit of boron and arsenic.

The result was a solar cell which converted 6% of sunlight into electrical current, which was enough to power a toy Ferris wheel and a small radio transmitter.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Glenda Farrell and Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1931).

Money's all right, but it ain't everything.
Be somebody.
Look hard at a bunch of guys and know that they'll do anything you tell them.
Have your own way or nothing.
Be somebody!

On this date in 1929, New York Yankee Babe Ruth becomes the first major league baseball player to hit 500 career home runs in a game played with the Cleveland Indians in League Park.

Jasper Johns, Alphabet, 1959.

August 11, 1940: Former President Herbert Hoover’s European Food Distribution Commission is negotiating with Britain and Germany to bring American food to 18 million war refugees in Northern Europe who face starvation this winter.

The RAF bombed German airfields on the occupied British Channel island of Guernsey which are said to be used as bases for German attacks on Channel shipping.

Mussolini’s Italian newspaper said Italy intends to conquer Egypt, gain control of the Suez Canal, and force Arab nations into the Axis alliance.

This is a close-up of a portion of a seven-foot long watercolor panorama of George Washington’s Continental Army encampment near West Point, New York, in August 1782.

The panorama was painted by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French-born military engineer and future planner of Washington, D.C.

It is the only known depiction of Washington’s camp tent made by an eye witness.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.
     -- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, verse 32.