The Great Human Statue of Liberty

The Human Statue of Liberty. 18000 men were used for this photo! Iowa, 1918. The day on which the photograph was taken was extremely hot and the heat was intensified by the mass formation of men. The dimensions of the platting for the picture seem astonishing. The camera was placed on a high tower. From the position nearest the camera occupied by Colonel Newman and his staff, to the last man at the top of the torch as platted on the ground was 1,235 feet, or approximately a quarter of a mile. The appended figures will give an adequate idea of the distorted proportions of the actual ground measurements for this photograph:

Base to shoulder: 150 feet.

Right arm: 340 feet.

Widest part of arm holding torch: 12-1/2 feet.

Right thumb: 35 feet.

Thickest part of body: 29 feet.

Left hand (length): 30 feet.

Tablet in left hand: 27 feet.

Face: 60 feet.

Nose: 21 feet.

Longest spike of head piece: 70 feet.

Flame on torch.: 600 feet.

Torch and flame combined: 980 feet.

Number of men in flame of torch: 12,000

Number of men in torch: 2,800

Number of men in right arm: 1,200

Number of men in body, head and balance of figure only: 2,000

Total: 18,000

Woodstock 1969

Aerial photo of Woodstock, 1969

History LGBT Tragedy

History LGBT Tragedy

The Stonewall Riots begin. Just after 3 a.m., police raided the Stonewall Inn—a gay club located on New York City’s Christopher Street. The incident turned violent as patrons and local sympathizers begin rioting against the police. Although the police were technically within their legal purview in raiding the club, which was serving liquor without a license, New York’s gay community had grown weary and wary of the police department frequently targeting gay clubs specifically because of their clientele. It is claimed that activist Marsha P Johnson yelled "I got my civil rights," and threw a shot glass at the wall, referred to as "the shot glass heard ‘round the world.” As the two groups faced off against each other, the protest spilled over into the neighboring streets, and order was not restored until the deployment of New York’s riot police. The Stonewall Riots were followed by several days of demonstrations in New York and was the impetus for the formation of the Gay Liberation Front as well as other gay, lesbian and bisexual civil rights organizations. It’s also regarded by many as history’s first major LGBT protest on behalf of equal rights.

Adolf Hitler Political Party 1934

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler orders a bloody purge of his own political party, assassinating hundreds of Nazis whom he believed had the potential to become political enemies in the future. The leadership of the Nazi Storm Troopers (SA), whose four million members had helped bring Hitler to power in the early 1930s, was especially targeted. Hitler feared that some of his followers had taken his early “National Socialism” propaganda too seriously and thus might compromise his plan to suppress workers’ rights in exchange for German industry making the country war-ready. It was referred to as "The Night of the Long Knives." Image Credit:  German Federal Archive.

Explorers Mount Everest

Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese Sherpa, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country’s future. Mount Everest sits on the crest of the Great Himalayas in Asia, lying on the border between Nepal and Tibet. Called Chomo-Lungma, or “Mother Goddess of the Land,” by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, a 19th-century British surveyor of South Asia. The first recorded attempt to climb Everest was made in 1921 by a British expedition that trekked 400 difficult miles across the Tibetan plateau to the foot of the great mountain. A raging storm forced them to abort their ascent, but the mountaineers, among them George Leigh Mallory, had seen what appeared to be a feasible route up the peak. It was Mallory who quipped when later asked by a journalist why he wanted to climb Everest, “Because it’s there.” Since Hillary and Norgay’s historic climb, numerous expeditions have made their way up to Everest’s summit. In 1960, a Chinese expedition was the first to conquer the mountain from the Tibetan side, and in 1963 James Whittaker became the first American to top Everest. In 1975, Tabei Junko of Japan became the first woman to reach the summit. Three years later, Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria achieved what had been previously thought impossible: climbing to the Everest summit without oxygen.

History Iwo Jima Flag

When six U.S. Marines raised a flag over Iwo Jima in February 1945, they were laying claim to the slopes of a mountain, part of a strategically important chain of volcanic islands south of Tokyo. The Ogasawara Islands, also known as the Bonin Islands, were largely uninhabited. But during World War II, they offered a place where the invasion of Japan could be staged. The islands themselves weren’t empty—they were home to thousands of Japanese people, many of them with British and American ancestry. And, the American victory turned most of them into refugees over the next 23 years of U.S. occupation. In 1962, the United State abruptly gave the islands back to Japan. As the islands once again fell under Japanese control, islanders reconnected with their long-lost friends and family members and refugees returned. Even years after the handover, some Ogasawara residents are ambivalent about the change. “There are people who are very sad about the handover,” Yoko Tahashi, who lives in Chichijima, told the Japan Times’ David McNeill. “They don’t think of themselves as either Japanese or American, and feel that they have been cast aside. I feel sympathy for both sides.”

Steve Jobs 1983

Steve Jobs giving IBM the finger in 1983!

Los Angeles 1926

Photo Legend History

Los Angeles, 1926 – Alerted by the smell of a broken bottle of liquor, Federal Agents inspect a “lumber truck”.