Left: cotton hoer, Clarksdale, MS, 1937. Right: young family in Early, AR, 1936. Dorothea Lange photos.
The “13 Flying Black Cats” was a professional aerial exhibition team based in Los Angeles which performed at air shows and in films in the 1920s. They advertised they’d do anything for a price. They’d jump from one airplane to another for $100, but if the jump was done from an airplane flying upside-down, it would cost you $500. One of their best tricks: faking an accident, with the ‘victim’ falling off the airplane and dropping 400 feet before a thin cable suddenly opened a hidden parachute. Left: jumping from one airplane to another. The jumper is said to have done this trick 300 times without an accident. Right: tennis on the wings.
In Nov. 1942, British and American troops conducted an amphibious invasion of North Africa called Operation Torch. The objective was to capture territory then controlled by the Vichy French. The effort, constituting the first large-scale commitment of US troops in Europe/Africa, was led by Eisenhower. Left: US troops in their transport vessel headed for the beach. Right: British and US troops on the beach in Algeria.
Explorer I, weighing 31 pounds and 80 inches long, was the first satellite launched by the US. It lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Feb. 1, 1958, following the Soviets’ launch of Sputnik I and Sputnik II. Trajectory calculations for Explorer I’s flight were done by hand by a group of two dozen women. The spacecraft carried a cosmic ray detector which detected the Van Allen Radiation Belt of charged particles held in place high above the Earth’s surface by Earth’s magnetic field. Explorer I returned data for 4 months, until its batteries died, but remained in orbit for a dozen years. Left: the launch. Right: mission control.
New Americans photographed at Ellis Island, c. 1906. Top left: a girl born in Alsace-Lorraine. Top right: a young woman born in Italy. Bottom left: a young man whose birth country was not identified. Bottom right: a mother and son from Poland. Notice the beauriful clothing each has worn on this special day.
In 1914, Britain’s Aldershot Training Centre, above, located 43 miles southwest of London, was the largest army camp in the country. When war broke out, units from Aldershot formed the core of the British Expeditionary Force sent to France in August 1914. Left: a practice march. Right: a cavalry unit. Britain lost 480,000 horses and mules during the war.
Vietnam, c. 1968. Top left: a US soldier with his M16. Top right: US artillery unit in action. Bottom left: a Viet Cong unit prepares to attack. Bottom right: a US advisor wades through a rice paddy with South Vietnamese troops.
Iowa 2024
“Huckleberry Finn: And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better.
“So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither.
“I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t …
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