1. The original Adams Family in Colour (and their pink living room)
This iconic show would have been totally different were it not in black-and-white…
2. Battery, Baghdad, 250 BCE
The Baghdad Battery is believed to be about 2000 years old (from the Parthian period, roughly 250 BCE to CE 250). The jar was found in Khujut Rabu just outside Baghdad and is composed of a clay jar with a stopper made of asphalt. Sticking through the asphalt is an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder. When filled with vinegar – or any other electrolytic solution – the jar produces about 1.1 volts. More info on Wikipedia
3. The Last Brownstone
“Construction in NYC, 1959, land being cleared for 20 story building in East 60s- still occupied brownstone is soon to go.” Changing New York photographed by Dmitri Kessel.
4. Illuminated Tires, 1961
These illuminated tires were developed by Goodyear in 1961. They were made from a single piece of synthetic rubber and are brightly lit by bulbs mounted inside the wheel rim.
5. The French Zebra cruiser Gloire in dazzle camouflage
The patterns were not intended to hide the ship, but rather to disrupt the outline so that size, range, speed and heading would be difficult to determine – preventing the enemy from accurately targeting the vessel.
6. That time a Pilot Landed on an Uptown Street in NYC, because that’s where the bar was.
Pictured on 191st Street in 1956:
The remarkable drunken landings of Tommy Fitz have all but slipped into oblivion. The pilot, Thomas Fitzpatrick, turned a barroom bet into a feat of aeronautic wonder by stealing a plane from a New Jersey airport and landing it on St. Nicholas Avenue in northern Manhattan, in front of the bar where he had been drinking… “It landed on a street with lampposts and cars parked on both sides … It was a wonder – you had to be a great flier to put that thing down so close to everything.” As if that were not stupefying enough, the man did nearly the exact same thing two years later. Both landings were pulled off in incredibly narrow landing areas, in the dark – and after a night of drinking in Washington Heights taverns and with a well-lubricated pilot at the controls. Both times ended with Mr. Fitzpatrick charged with wrongdoing.
7. In the Archive, France 1937
8. Getting to work nearly a century ago …
“Lady Florence Norman, a suffragette, on her motor-scooter in 1916, traveling to work at offices in London where she was a supervisor.”
9. Central Park, 1930
10. The Fishing Saucer
The Evinrude Fishing Saucer concept boat designed by Brooks Stevens and made for the 1957 New York Boat Show
