A Female Mason Perched High above Berlin; ca. 1910
Gravity had not yet been invented at that time.
With the rise of industrialization, the number of German women who worked outside the home also increased. This usually meant factory work. But in some families with their own businesses, daughters also learned a trade so that they could help out: here, we see a master-mason’s daughter during the renovation work on the old city hall tower in Berlin.
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“Tired of shoveling snow?” Sergt. Robert G. Evraets uses a flame thrower to clear a path through the frozen Governors Island; ca.1947
Studying the effects of weightlessness on a living mammal at 25,000′; ca. 1958
I feel like that is the worst animal to bring on an experimental trip in a jet cockpit. I wonder if that pilot got peed on after this…
From The Times Magazine, a “Portrait of the Ideal Space Man,” if not the ideal space cat, from February 1958. As experts were contemplating the medical specifics of what weightlessness in space would do to a living, breathing human being, an unlucky kitten was volunteered as a stand-in, floating from the hand of Capt. Druey P. Parks inside an F-94C jet at 25,000 feet. The article, by Donald G. Cooley, characterized the cat’s reaction as “bewilderment.”
(I think “bewilderment” is the understatement of the century. More like vicious, claws-bared, wild-eyed, “HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT I’M GONNA CLAW MY WAY OUT OF THIS HELLHOLE, FLYBOY!” Grade-A homicidal panic.)
Parking at the Grand Canyon; ca.1914
Did our ancestors have balls of steel or were they just stupid?
“It took a lot of grit to drive the car right towards that fearful plunge, but Mr. Wing, who handled the wheel, had every confidence in the car and its control, and did not put on the breaks until the front wheels were right at the very edge of the precipice.”
“I confess that it made me shudder with apprehension, as I watched him, so cool and confident, driving where one little slip would mean a plunge of two thousand feet into the gorge below; and when he finally said, ” that will do, let’s chuck block her,” I was only too glad to slip a good sized rock in front of the rear wheel, so we could leave the car and size up the situation for a photograph.”
(Source)
Elephant using giant typewriter- New York World’s Fair, 1940.
An elephant using an oversized typewriter is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
Annual midnight swearing-in of Nazi SS troops, Feldherrnhalle, Munich, 1938.
Most people give me dirty looks when I say this, but in WWII, Germany’s soldiers had the better looking uniforms. Just look how intimidating those trench coats and helmets are. They look like a formidable enemy.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 