July 1948. Berlin. Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen walks the Templehof airfield of West Berlin, embarking upon a Cold War confrontation with the Soviets. The rattling of a wire fence catches his ear. He turns his head and is greeted by the sight of 30 German children dressed in tattered, dirty clothes. […]
Author: Ella Bougher
Victorian Photoshop: The Truth Behind Those Tiny Waists
Of course, everyone has heard of the horrors of historical corsetry in modern media, especially corsets of the Victorian era. All too famous scenes of Elizabeth Swann dramatically fainting from her restrictive 18th century stays in Pirates of the Caribbean or Scarlett O’Hara gripping her bedpost as Mammy yanks the […]
The Fearless Dogsledding Teams of the Serum Run
January 1925. Alaska. Norwegian musher Leonhard Seppala and his team of sled dogs led by a 12-year-old Siberian Husky, Togo, dash through a relentless Alaskan blizzard on the Iditarod Trail. The temperature reaches down to a bone-chilling -85° F (-65° C). Their cargo, precious glass vials of Diphtheria antitoxin, […]
Katherine Johnson, A Space Race Hero
February 1962. NASA Langley Research Center. The sounds of clacking typewriters, mumbling mathematicians and engineers, and scribbling pens fill the ears of astronaut John Glenn. Days away from leaving Earth in a space shuttle on the Friendship 7 mission, he paces the floor, anxious. A network of international tracking stations […]
The Sun King and His Palace
King Louis XIV of France strolls through the famous Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Sparkling crystal chandeliers tower above his wigged head, as well as the vaulted ceiling, 40 feet in height and covered in extravagant murals idolizing him as the Sun King. Seventeen giant mirrors, the height of luxury […]