86 years ago, on September 22, 1940, Witold Pilecki arrived at Auschwitz after intentionally getting himself arrested.
A Polish army officer and resistance fighter, Pilecki had volunteered for an extraordinarily dangerous mission: to infiltrate the Nazi concentration camp, organize a resistance network among the prisoners, and secretly report what was happening inside. During nearly three years at Auschwitz, he helped build an underground organization and smuggled reports about the camp’s atrocities to the Polish resistance and the Allies. Pilecki eventually escaped from Auschwitz in April 1943 and later fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
Marine PFC Francis “Bud” Kenney died from his wounds on a hospital ship off of Peleliu after being wounded on September 20, 1944, he was 20 years old.
U.S. Senate subway circa 1915
Woman at a charging station for her Columbia Mark 68 Victoria automobile, model from 1906. Photo circa 1917.
This is a picture of what Las Vegas looked like in the 1800s.
Red Army soldiers in a trench near the corpse of a German soldier, still wearing an Iron Cross, 1942
An exhausted Mao Zedong at the end of the “The Long March,” the Chinese Communist Party’s historic 1935 retreat from the Kuomintang that lasted just over a year & saw CCP forces travel over 6,000 miles. They left Jiangxi with over 100,000 men & arrived in Yan’an with less than 8,000
Group of Polish children after leaving work in Henin-Lietard mine, France, 1930s.
Russian survivor liberated by U.S. Army in Buchenwald camp in Germany identified a former guard from SS who was brutally beating prisoners and was probably involved in the crime of the Holocaust. (April 14th, 1945)
Picture found in Honkawa Elementary School in 2013 of the Hiroshima atom bomb cloud, said to have been taken about 20 to 30 minutes after detonation of about 10 km (6 miles) east of the epicenter.
Engineer checks the union points of a corner of the Empire state building, Manhattan, New York City, circa (1930)
Eartha Kitt talks to President Lyndon B. Johnson during the White house lunch about the ongoing Vietnam war, she was blacklisted for years after that. January 1968
On January 18, 1968, singer and actress Eartha Kitt attended a White House luncheon hosted by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. The event brought together a group of women to discuss issues including juvenile crime and conditions affecting young people in America.
During the luncheon, Kitt openly criticized the Vietnam War in front of President Lyndon B. Johnson and the First Lady. She argued that young Americans were becoming angry and rebellious because they were being sent to fight and die in Vietnam.
Her remarks caused considerable controversy and received widespread press coverage. Kitt later said that her career in the United States suffered badly afterward, with work opportunities becoming scarce. She spent much of the following years performing overseas before eventually rebuilding her American career.
Quarterdeck scene during the commissioning ceremony of USS North Carolina (BB-55) at the New York Navy Yard, Apr 09, 1941.
5-year-old after day’s work, was tired and refused to be photographed, Biloxi, Mississippi, 1911. Photo by Lewis Hine for National Child Labor Committee.
The inventor of the helicopter, Igor Sikorsky, in the Sikorsky H-5 helicopter, 1945.
A New Guinea tribesman sees a white man for the first time, believing he was the spirit of a dead ancestor, 1930s
American soldiers of the US Army escort German civilians through a site where camp prisoners were massacred during a death march from Buchenwald. Such tours forced Germans to recognize the crimes committed by the SS. Near Nammering, Germany, 1945.
German soldiers walk across a precarious platform spanning a ruined bridge over the Elbe River to surrender to American forces, rather than the Soviets. May 1, 1945.
Brooklyn Supreme – one of the biggest horses in history, 1930. He was 6‘ 6” and 3200 Pounds
A third class ticket of Titanic in 1912
The discovery of an ancient Maya statue deep within the jungles of Honduras, 1885. It stands over 11 feet tall and features a high-relief portrait of a Maya ruler framed by complex divine regalia, sacred symbols, and detailed hieroglyphic text.
