History In Pictures
Feb. 26, 2026
Time lapse.
Left: The Alamo Chapel in 1849.
This is said to be the oldest photo taken in Texas.
The Battle of the Alamo, with Mexican troops led by Santa Anna, took place in 1836.
Right: More than 1.6 million people visit the Alamo in San Antonio each year.
Girls.
Donald Trump was a judge in the 1991 Look of the Year competition.
Above, he poses with young contestants.
Boys.
Battle-hardened young Union soldiers, US Civil War.
My country ‘tis of thee.
Roger H.C. Donlon (1934-2024) was an Army special forces officer who led the defense of a jungle outpost in Vietnam against a Viet Cong battalion’s predawn attack and ensuing five-hour battle despite suffering wounds.
In 1964, Donlon was awarded the first Medal of Honor for service in the Vietnam War.
His actions that night are said to have inspired the final scene in the 1968 John Wayne film, “The Green Beret.”
Donlon’s recent death from Parkinson’s Disease has been attributed to Agent Orange exposure.
Home sweet home.
Third-class cabin aboard the Olympic, the sister ship of the Titanic, 1912.
[The ships were almost identical.]
The Titanic sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912.
What they did.
The Civil War battle in Petersburg, Virginia, in June 1864, was the first to result in large numbers of Black casualties.
As wounded soldiers poured in to Union hospital facilities at nearby City Point, Black men were sent to separate facilities which lacked resources to care for them.
Helen Gilsen, a staff nurse at the whites-only hospital, changed things.
Against the advice of co-workers, she went to work in the separate Black facility, bringing in supplies and equipment and upgrading standards to equal the care given to white soldiers.
Doing the hard work.
Men load supplies onto ships docked in the Tampa harbor which are bound for Cuba.
Spanish-American War, 1898.
Good eats, cheap.
“Plenty for Twenty” pizza slice joint, New York, 1956.
‘This land is your land.’
In the late 1800s, large, wood frame hotels sprung up in New York’s Catskill Mountains.
The Wellington Hotel, above, built in 1882 in Pine Hill, New York, is one of the few which survive.
It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A group of local people have purchased the property and are raising funds to restore the building.
You can read more about their efforts here.
Simpler times.
Street carnival, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, 1912.
American art.
Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927.
Today in World War II.
February 26, 1945: As more than one thousand US bombers struck industrial targets in Germany, the US First and Ninth Armies crossed Germany’s Roer River and formed a twenty-five-mile bridgehead fifteen miles from Cologne and twenty miles from Düsseldorf.
In the Pacific, two hundred US heavy bombers struck targets in Japan, including the Imperial Palace, as Marines report gains on Iwo Jima in the face of ‘bitter resistance.’
Relics.
Fish decoys made during the mid-twentieth century by Oscar “Pelee” Peterson, an outdoorsman from Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
Today’s daily dose…
*****
Onward.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda