The Time Russia Ran Out of Vodka
At 1:10 a.m. on May 9, 1945, night owls in the USSR heard a radio report that Nazi Germany had officially surrendered to the Soviet Union. Less than 24 hours later, they faced another crisis: a lack of vodka.
At 1:10 a.m. on May 9, 1945, night owls in the USSR heard a radio report that Nazi Germany had officially surrendered to the Soviet Union. Less than 24 hours later, they faced another crisis: a lack of vodka.
Hanging is a pretty simple way to kill someone. All you really need is a length of rope, someone who can tie a decent knot, and something from which to hang the victim. But how is it so effective?
In honor of National Doctor’s Day, here’s a look at all the ways the job has changed—but mostly stayed the same. Images all courtesy of The Library of Congress. Exams The long wait, examination bed, fluorescent lights, they're all the same today as they
The legal pad got its start in 1888, and it's still a best-seller at office supply stores. But why exactly did that yellow tint become popular?
In many ways, the Red Cross is still largely the same as it was throughout the past 150 years, performing blood drives, delivering care packages to prisoners of war, helping victims of natural disasters, and rescuing those injured on the battlefield. In h
Foosball image via Shutterstock Outside the U.S., the sport where two teams try to kick a ball into the other side's goal without using their hands is known as “football.” However, when it comes to the tabletop version of the game, it seems impossible t
Phone Booth Cramming was a late-1950s fad with a simple premise: cram a phone booth full of dudes (and/or ladies) and take a picture before the people on the bottom suffocate. As you can imagine, this pastime was most popular among college students, and
The Murphy Bed, also known as a wall bed, fold down bed or pull down bed, is a bed that’s hinged at one end so it can be folded up and stored vertically against a wall or in a closet.
March is Women's History Month, so it's a good time for the overdue followup to the previous post 11 Women Warriors of World War II. Here are eight more women who bravely contributed to the Allied victory in World War II. 1. Lise Børsum: Refugee
Child labor has never been a particularly pretty part of society, but during the industrial revolution, the practice became even uglier than its earlier incarnations. Children were often put in dangerous industrial jobs and paid menial wages. While free p
Vivid vintage pictures of Ireland taken between 1890 and 1900, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Okay, this actually happened. In 1959, a group of Sigma Chi brothers at the University of Arkansas elevated squatting to a sport -- and it went viral. They invented a supremely lame (but apparently popular) fad: hunkerin'. From the Scottish term "hunk
Reader Sarah wrote in to ask, “If you eat a person who has an infectious disease, will you get the disease too? A morbid question I thought of while sitting in a doctor’s office and was too shy to
While you’ve probably seen hundreds of images of women working in factories during World War II, that wasn’t the first time women joined the workforce to help fill in for the millions of men sent out to fight. In fact, many people credit the freedoms give
Point-blank is the range at which a given weapon/ammunition combination can be fired at the center or vital area of a given target and hit it without the shooter having to adjust the elevation of the weapon to account for the effect of gravity on the proj
Nope. The last immigrant to come through Ellis Island was Arne Peterssen, a 48-year-old merchant seaman from Narvik, Norway.
You know Amelia Earhart, but you've probably never heard of Harriet Quimby. It's quite likely that she inspired Earhart, who didn't start flying until a decade after Quimby. And while Amelia was famous for being the first solo female pilot to cross the At
On February 5, 1945, with World War II in its last desperate months, a German train made its way to the city of Linz. Suddenly, Allied planes swooped in, dropping bombs and derailing it. As the train’s cargo—mail bound for several northern Austrian towns—
Women have made great strides toward equality over the past century. But when it comes to marriage proposals, it’s still typically the men doing the asking ... unless it's February 29th.
Even Edgar Allan Poe, master of eerie twists and turns, would have been mystified by this mind-boggling coincidence created in part by one of his stories. But let's start from the beginning. In 1838, Poe's only novel was published - The Narrative of Arth
Installment #6: After his previous attempt was rebuffed, French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre (pictured) took the opportunity of a change in France’s civilian leadership to ask a second time to be allowed to violate Belgian neutrality in the event of w
Are you sick of attack ads, Super PAC ads, and even ads in color? Then let's turn to a cornier, gentler time -- the election of 1952, when the original "Egghead" Adlai Stevenson ran against Eisenhower, running a series of remarkably unremarkable TV ads.
There are only so many different ways you can ambush someone with a sharpshooter.
While the job of a mail carrier might be largely the same as it was 100 years ago, the postal system itself has drastically changed over the past century. Here are some vintage photos, courtesy of The Library of Congress, that show how your mail used to t