Left: President Eisenhower fly fishing on the Magalloway River, near Oxford, ME, 1955. Right: President Eisenhower with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, at grandson David’s birthday party, 1956.
Left: Walt Whitman describes New York on the morning after Lincoln’s killing: “All Broadway is black with mourning — the facades of the houses are festooned with black — great flags with wide & heavy fringes of dead black, give a pensive effect — towards noon the sky darkened & it began to rain. Drip, drip, & heavy moist black weather — the stores are all closed — the rain sent the women from the street & black clothed men only remained.” Right: Lincoln’s funeral procession through New York, April 25, 1865.
Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein rehearse for their television performance of Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, 1955. Bernstein's earliest compositions, written while he was a student at Harvard, were classical pieces for small ensembles.
Left: A US Marine walks through a gully in South Vietnam that has been lined with punji stakes — an anti-personel weapon, sometimes dipped in poison and often hidden, made from sharpened bamboo. January 1966. Right: US troops on a ‘search-and-destroy’ mission near Xa Cam My, South Vietnam, move through a region that has been previously cleared by supporting artillery. April 1966.
President Grant embarked on a two-year round-the-world tour when he left the White House in 1877 which included a stop in Britain. There, thousands flocked to see ‘the great military general who had won the US civil war.’ Grant was formally received by Queen Victoria, shown above in her garden. She hosted a dinner in his honor and invited the Grant party to spend the night in Windsor Castle. On the right, Grant and his party visit Luxor, Egypt.
We are indebted to silent films for the development of physical comedy as a medium of expression. Among the early masters of this art form is Mabel Normand, who appeared in more than 130 films during her career, sometimes serving as director. Above, Normand tangles with Charlie Chaplin in the film, His Trysting Place (1914).
A look at Dr. Seuss’s delightful illustrations for the book, Boners, by Those Who Pulled Them (1931), one hundred pages of gaffes and bloopers taken from high school student exams and essays.
