FUCK YES HISTORY

A photo taken of John F. Kennedy’s limo after his...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 17:36:50 -0400

A photo taken of John F. Kennedy’s limo after his assassination.

amourbertie: (via Trudeau slides down a banister)

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:54:21 -0400

amourbertie:

(via Trudeau slides down a banister)

smithsonian: Helen Keller’s Watch, Late 1800s This week’s...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:25:04 -0400

smithsonian:

Helen Keller’s Watch, Late 1800s

This week’s Smithsonian Snapshot marks the June 27, 1880, birthday of Helen Keller, a prominent 20th-century advocate for women’s suffrage and workers’ rights.

As a child, Keller contracted an illness that left her deaf and blind. After years of frustrated isolation, she was introduced to Anne Sullivan, who taught Keller to communicate by spelling words into her hand. She eventually learned to read, write and speak, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904 as the first person who was deaf and blind to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

In 1892, Keller met John Hitz, superintendent of the Volta Bureau at Alexander Graham Bell’s institution for the deaf. Hitz presented this Swiss-made “touch watch” to Keller as a gift. It is specially designed with pins around the case edge to mark the hours.

Keller’s inspiring story made her an international celebrity, and she became a prominent spokesperson for disability rights, an important cause that she symbolizes to this day. The Smithsonian collected this watch in 1975.

To learn more about historic timepieces from the collection, visit the National Museum of American History’s “On Time” online exhibition website. To learn more about women’s suffrage, visit the museum’s “Treasures of American History” website.

This item is one of 137 million artifacts, works of art and specimens in the Smithsonian’s collection. It is not currently on display. For more information about this watch, visit the National Museum of American History website.

More from the Smithsonian Snapshot series

annielaurie: Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s son.

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:06:25 -0400

annielaurie:

Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s son.

collective-history: Polish children imprisoned in Auschwitz...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 12:36:30 -0400

collective-history:

Polish children imprisoned in Auschwitz look out from behind the barbed wire fence. (July 1944)

Photograph from the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.

jaymug: The World’s First Car Ad from 1898.

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 11:14:42 -0400

jaymug:

The World’s First Car Ad from 1898.

womenatwar: A WAAF tractor driver with a train of full bomb...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 09:51:31 -0400

womenatwar:

A WAAF tractor driver with a train of full bomb trolleys, RAF Mildenhall 1942

fuckyeahstrangeleaders: 5meodalt: Mussolini: Moral of the...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 04:07:00 -0400

fuckyeahstrangeleaders:

5meodalt:

Mussolini: Moral of the story, don’t be a dictator.

The desecrated remains of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci. After execution by firing squad, the bodies of the two above as well as other Fascist supporters were loaded into a moving van to Milan, where they were summarily spat upon, kicked, shot at, and eventually suspended upside down from meat hooks from the roof of a gas station in the Piazza Loreto.

Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, (Prime Minister of Canada) b. Nov....

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 02:44:00 -0400

Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, (Prime Minister of Canada) b. Nov. 20, 1841 - d. Feb. 17, 1919.

fuckyeahwwiipropaganda: United: The United Nations Fight for...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 01:21:01 -0400

fuckyeahwwiipropaganda:

United: The United Nations Fight for Freedom, Leslie Darrell Ragan, 1943

source

life: A half-century ago, on a spring night in New York City,...

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:33:01 -0400

life:

A half-century ago, on a spring night in New York City, 35-year-old Marilyn Monroe — literally sewn into a sparkling, jaw-droppingly tight dress — stood in a spotlight on a dark stage. She took a breath, began to sing — and 15,000 men and women who filled the old Madison Square Garden that night knew, simply knew, that they were seeing and hearing something that they would never, ever forget.

The song, of course, was “Happy Birthday,” and Marilyn’s breathy, intimate rendition — sung, as if the two of them were utterly alone, to President John F. Kennedy — has been celebrated, analyzed and lovingly parodied countless times in the five decades since that indelible performance.

LIFE’s Bill Ray was there — and now, we present a set of unpublished from that unforgettable night.

fyeah-history: Adolf Eichmann awaiting trial in Israel,...

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 21:02:24 -0400

fyeah-history:

Adolf Eichmann awaiting trial in Israel, 1961
Otto ‘Nawty’ Adolf Eichmann (March 19, 1906 – May 31, 1962)was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. Because of his organizational talents and ideological reliability, Eichmann was charged by Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich with the task of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe. After the war, he fled to Argentina using a fraudulently obtained laissez-passer issued by the International Red Cross. He lived in Argentina under a false identity, working for Mercedes-Benz until 1960. He was captured by Mossad operatives in Argentina and taken to Israel to face trial in an Israeli court on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962. He is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court.

memento—vivere: Seldom seen Art Deco “Skyscraper” wooden...

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 19:44:20 -0400

memento—vivere:

Seldom seen Art Deco “Skyscraper” wooden RCA model 115 tube radio made circa 1933 by RCA Victor Co.

ourpresidents: Happy Flag Day! On June 14, 1777, the...

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:19:26 -0400

ourpresidents:

Happy Flag Day!

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress declared “that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” Since then, the 13 stars have expanded to 50. The most recent design of the flag was adopted in 1960, and suggestions and new designs were submitted during the 1950s.

This letter to President Eisenhower from 8-year-old Sheryl Byland suggests moving the stars so that they spell out “USA.”

The White House wrote back to Sheryl, and you can read the response here.