Left: Leonardo Da Vinci's “helical air screw” measured around 15 feet in diameter and was to have been constructed from linen, reed and wire, 1493. Right: NASA's Perseverance rover and Ingenuity heicopter on Mars, where they have been at work since Feb. 2021.
Left: German soldiers leave the trenches to attack French lines near Verdun, France, 1916. 800,000 French and German soldiers were killed or wounded in an inconclusive WWI battle there involving more than one million men which raged for almost the entirety of 1916. Right: On September 22, 1984, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl (R) and French President François Mitterrand (L) stood at the Douaumont cemetery in Verdun in front of an ossuary containing the bones of 130,000 French and German men that had been recovered from the battlefield. The casket in the foreground is draped half in the French flag and half in the German flag.
Left: Fentanyl pills seized by US Custom and Border Protection officers on Nov. 6, 2023, at the Port of Mariposa in Nogales, AZ, an official US port of entry. The pills were concealed in the spare tire of a vehicle attempting to enter the US from Mexico. Most illegal drugs entering the US are smuggled through ports of entry, not across unfenced US borders. Right: An outbound shipment inspected at the Port of Savannah which contained a stolen car. CPB says most outbound stolen vehicles are destined for the Dominican Republic or Western African nations for use in international narcotics trafficking and terrorism.
Left: Lincoln conducts a private meeting with Gen. George McClellan at Antietam on Oct. 3, 1862, following McClellan’s refusal to obey Lincoln’s order to pursue Confederate Gen. Lee’s retreating forces as they traveled back across the Potomac River into the safety of northern Virginia. Lincoln dismissed McClellan from command in November. Right: President Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the commanding officer of UN forces fighting in Korea. Truman relieved MacArthur of command in April 1951 when MacArthur thwarted Truman’s attempt to negotiate a ceasefire in the Korean Conflict by ordering his troops to invade North Korea without consulting Washington.
In the last days of WWII, US soldiers liberated a train transporting Jews from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Theresienstadt, a transit camp for Jews bound for Auschwitz and other extermination camps, April 13th, 1945. On the left, the moment of liberation.
Left: Al Gore, age three, with his father, Rep. Albert Gore Sr., mother Pauline and sister Nancy, c. 1951. Right: Al Gore sworn in as Vice President, Jan. 20, 1993.
Left: Princess Elizabeth with her new diamond engagement ring, 1946. Right: Queen Elizabeth, on her ninetieth birthday, with her two youngest grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, 2016.
Left: President Trump speaks with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, January 28, 2017. Right: President Obama takes tea with then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and members of the American delegation at Putin's dacha in Moscow, July 7, 2009.
Left: Wood walking stick with carved ivory head used by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) during his second tour in America (1867-1868), now held in the Library of Congress. Right: Charlie Chaplin's walking stick was an integral aspect of his character, "The Tramp."
