Queenie in training to become a Mercy dog during WW1. The dogs went out after large battles, where they would seek out wounded soldiers, they carried first-aid supplies that could then be used by wounded soldiers, and comforted dying soldiers who were mortally wounded.
During the First World War, armies on both sides experimented with an unusual kind of battlefield medic: trained dogs known as “Mercy Dogs” or “Red Cross Dogs.” These animals were taught to move quietly across shattered landscapes after major battles, searching for wounded soldiers who had been left behind in the chaos. In a war defined by artillery barrages and miles of muddy trenches, thousands of men lay injured in craters and shell holes, sometimes unable to crawl back to safety.
Dogs like Queenie were trained to locate those soldiers by scent and sound. Each carried a small pack containing first-aid supplies—bandages, water, and sometimes small medical kits. When the dog found a wounded man who could still help himself, he could use those supplies to treat his injuries while waiting for stretcher bearers.
If the soldier was too badly wounded to move, the dog had other ways to respond. Some were trained to return to their handlers and lead them back to the injured man. Others simply stayed beside the soldier, providing warmth and comfort in the final hours of life. In the cold, devastated terrain between trench lines, that presence could mean everything to a man who might otherwise die alone.
Training a mercy dog required patience and careful conditioning. The animals had to learn to ignore the noise of gunfire, explosions, and the smell of blood. They were trained to approach wounded soldiers calmly and to avoid reacting aggressively to unfamiliar men lying in pain.
Irma Grese was hanged aged 22 for her crimes against prisoners at Auschwitz. As one of the most sadistic guards Grese subjected prisoners to torture, including unleashing dogs on prisoners, raping them, and whipping them. She is photographed here with fellow Nazi, Josef Kramer.
Irma Grese was twenty-two years old when the British executed her in December 1945. In the strange hierarchy of the Nazi camp system, she had already become infamous. At Auschwitz and later at Bergen-Belsen, Grese served as an SS guard, part of a machinery designed not simply to imprison people but to grind them down physically and psychologically.
Survivor testimony painted a consistent picture. Grese carried a whip and used it freely. Prisoners described beatings carried out in front of others as a warning about what disobedience meant inside the camps. She was known to unleash trained dogs on inmates and to select prisoners for punishment or death with an almost casual indifference. Several witnesses later testified that sexual violence was also part of the abuse inflicted by certain guards, including Grese.
Photographs from the period show her standing beside Josef Kramer, the SS officer who commanded both Auschwitz-Birkenau and later Bergen-Belsen. Kramer himself earned the nickname “the Beast of Belsen.” In the images, Grese looks young—almost startlingly so—wearing the uniform of a regime that had elevated brutality into official policy.
When British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, they found tens of thousands of prisoners dead or dying from starvation and disease. Grese was arrested along with other camp personnel and tried during the Belsen Trial later that year. Survivors took the stand and described what they had seen. The court found her guilty of crimes against humanity.
On December 13, 1945, Irma Grese was hanged at Hamelin Prison. She remains one of the youngest people executed for Nazi war crimes, a reminder that the system of the camps did not rely only on high-ranking officials but also on ordinary individuals who chose to carry out its violence.
Students at Augustana College react to the not guilty verdict of O.J. Simpson’s trial, October 3rd, 1995
On October 3, 1995, a jury in Los Angeles delivered the verdict in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. The decision—“not guilty”—landed in a country that had already spent months arguing not just about the evidence, but about race, policing, and the credibility of the American justice system. For many Americans, the trial had come to symbolize something much larger than the fate of a single defendant.
At Augustana College in Illinois, students crowded around a television to hear the verdict read. The reactions in the room were immediate and sharply divided. Some students erupted in cheers, clapping and shouting. Others looked stunned or upset, sitting quietly with their heads down. The photograph captures that split second when the news hits and the emotional fault lines in the room become visible.
The Simpson trial had unfolded in the shadow of recent history. Just three years earlier, the 1992 Los Angeles riots erupted after the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King. For many Black Americans, that case reinforced a long-standing belief that the legal system treated them unfairly and rarely held police accountable. In that context, Simpson’s acquittal felt to some like a rare moment when the system failed to convict a Black defendant despite overwhelming public pressure.
For many white Americans, however, the verdict seemed inexplicable given the prosecution’s presentation of evidence. The result felt like a miscarriage of justice. Television coverage that day showed a country reacting in dramatically different ways depending on race, background, and personal experience with the justice system.
The students in the room represent that divide. Some celebrate openly. Others sit in disbelief. The trial had turned into a national mirror, reflecting back the unresolved tensions in American society. When the verdict arrived, the reaction was less about O.J. Simpson himself and more about what people believed the verdict meant about fairness, power, and race in America.
This is Peter Freuchen, a Danish explorer. He completed a 1000km dogsled journey and was trapped in an avalanche, he escaped with a knife made from his own frozen feaces. He killed a wolf with his bare hands, fought against the Nazis and escaped a POW camp.
Peter Freuchen looked like a character invented for adventure novels, but he was very real. Born in Denmark in 1886, he was nearly seven feet tall, bearded like a Norse myth, and built for a life that most people would consider impossible. As a young man he left behind the comforts of Europe and headed north, into Greenland and the Arctic, where survival depended on learning from the Inuit people who had lived there for generations.
Freuchen didn’t just visit the Arctic—he lived it. In 1910 he helped establish a remote trading post called Thule in northwest Greenland alongside explorer Knud Rasmussen. The post became a base for expeditions deeper into the polar world. Freuchen traveled thousands of miles by dog sled across frozen landscapes where a single mistake could mean death.
One of the stories that followed him involved being trapped beneath a blizzard while traveling by sled. According to Freuchen, he survived by digging himself out of the frozen snow using a dagger he fashioned from his own frozen feces. Whether the story grew in the telling or not, it captured the kind of brutal conditions explorers faced in the Arctic.
The environment eventually took its toll. After suffering severe frostbite, Freuchen lost a leg. It didn’t slow him down much. He continued traveling, writing, and speaking about his experiences. By the 1930s he had become a well-known writer and journalist, producing books about Arctic life that introduced readers to Inuit culture and the harsh realities of the polar regions.
When the Second World War arrived, Freuchen found himself in another kind of struggle. Denmark fell under Nazi occupation in 1940. Freuchen openly opposed the regime and became involved with the Danish resistance. He was arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to death but managed to escape and flee to Sweden.
Later in life he moved to the United States, wrote more books, appeared in films, and even won a television quiz show in the 1950s. By then he had already lived several lifetimes’ worth of experiences: Arctic explorer, writer, resistance fighter, and larger-than-life storyteller.
Freuchen died in 1957, but the legend around him never really faded. A man nearly seven feet tall who crossed the frozen Arctic by sled, fought Nazis, lost a leg, and kept going anyway tends to leave behind stories that sound almost too strange to be true.
Confirmed bachelor FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his longtime deputy and lifelong friend and companion, Clyde Tolson, fishing together in the 1930s.
For nearly half a century, J. Edgar Hoover sat at the center of American law enforcement. As director of the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972, Hoover built the bureau into one of the most powerful investigative organizations in the world. But behind the public image of the stern, disciplined crime fighter was a private life that remained tightly guarded.
One constant presence in that private world was Clyde Tolson. Tolson joined the FBI in its early years and quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Hoover’s deputy director. The two men worked side by side for decades, and their professional partnership was unusually close. They lunched together almost every day, traveled together, and attended social events as a pair. When Hoover went on vacation, Tolson often went too.
Photographs from the 1930s sometimes capture the two men away from Washington, like scenes of them fishing together—rare glimpses of Hoover outside the rigid formality of his public role. In an era when powerful public officials guarded their personal lives carefully, Hoover’s relationship with Tolson became a subject of quiet speculation among journalists and political insiders.
Neither man ever publicly addressed the nature of their bond. Hoover never married, and Tolson remained unmarried as well. What is certain is that their partnership lasted for more than four decades. When Hoover died in 1972, he left Tolson his estate and the American flag that had been draped over his coffin.
The photograph of the two men fishing in the 1930s shows something unusual for one of the most tightly controlled figures in American government: a moment of relaxation beside the person who remained at Hoover’s side for most of his life.
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