History in Pictures

Calvin Washburn poses with a 76-pound salmon in San Juan Island, Washington, 1913.

Students in a Washington, D.C., public school learn how to cook on a wood stove, 1899.

The Queen of the Wisconsin (Sauer)Kraut Festival presents an award to the champion kraut eater, 1981.

Shoe shine boys at work in Times Square, 1943.

1979.

On August 28, 1862, Union forces suffered their second defeat at Bull Run (Manassas) when General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia defeated General Pope’s Army of the Potomac.

President Lincoln tells his Cabinet:

We are at the bottom of the outhouse...
if there is any worse place than this, I do not know of it.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial:

We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

First day of school, Los Angeles, 1958.

Boys play marbles in Seattle, 1935.

[You get a gold star if you still have your steelies.]

A 1960s treat!

Don’t forget the dab of mayo on top!

Jane Darwell, Dorris Bowdon and Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out.
But we keep a'comin'.
We're the people that live.
They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us.
We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.

Clare Leighton, Breaking Up the Old Barge, 1925.

August 28, 1940: As fighting broke out between Russian and Romanian troops, new reports claim Hitler has increased his troop strength in Eastern Europe to 1,500,000 men.

The Luftwaffe struck twenty cities across Britain today.

In the Mediterranean, the British navy bombarded Italian naval installations in Libya.

In Tokyo, the US ambassador has been engaged in discussions with the new, totalitarian Japanese government, to make clear the US position on matters in Asia.

Unconfirmed reports claim the US has delivered a note to the Japanese government warning that conflict is inevitable if Japan continues on its present course.

In Washington, the Senate voted down an amendment to the selective service bill which would have delayed the draft until an official US declaration of war, virtually assuring passage of the bill tomorrow.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, the wealthy loyalist who owned this house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, fled.

General George Washington then used the vacated house as his headquarters during the initial months of the war.

In the mid-1800s, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow became the house’s owner and he lived there for five decades.

The National Park Service now operates the house as a museum.

The morrow was a bright September morn;
The earth was beautiful as if new-born;
There was that nameless splendor everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air,
Which makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet.
     -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Tales of a Wayside Inn," 1863.