The Brixton Zebra (via Retronaut)
life:
Ya know, just a few young flappers getting ahead on the whole ‘jaded, chain smoking New Yorker’ thing in 1925 outside of Madison Square Garden…
I kid, I kid! — But really, look at these photos: New York Smokes: A History in Photos
life:
It was a war many did not want to fight. In the North, an estimated 120,000 men evaded the draft, while some 380,000 soldiers deserted from both armies. Those who fought did so at close range, armed with knives and swords, handguns and rifles, as well as new weapons such as the grenade and machine gun. In the end, some 620,000 soldiers lost their lives in the Civil War.
Here, the faces of some of the soldiers, some famous, others whose names have been lost to time: Civil War Soldiers: Haunted Faces
life:
50 Photos That Brought the War Home. It’s Veterans Day and the least we can do.
No single picture from World War II — in fact, arguably, no single 20th-century photograph — is more famous than Alfred Eisenstaedt’s “VJ Day in Times Square.”
On August 14, 1945 — but when this photo appeared in LIFE, countless readers were drawn to the story it told: a man and a woman, both in uniform, both young, in the very heart of America’s greatest city, celebrating the end of a long, brutal conflict with that most unwarlike of gestures: a lingering, “Who cares who sees us?” kiss.
Bonnie and Clyde, two tragic (and handsome) young lovers who were with each other until the gruesome bullet-ridden end. Bonnie Parker was a poet, and Clyde Barrow was fiercely loyal to her, never leaving her side and even carrying her when a bullet wound had paralyzed her leg, rendering her unable to walk for an entire year before they were killed.
Forget the unsinkable ship; Violet Constance Jessop was the unsinkable woman. She was on board all three of the White Star Line’s sister ships during each of their disasters, and she survived all of them.
In 1910, when she was 22, Violet began working as a stewardess aboard the RMS Olympic. She was on board when it collided with the HMS Hawke in 1911. (The ship was able to be repaired and continue sailing until it was scrapped in 1935.)
In 1912 she was aboard the Titanic, still working as a stewardess, when the ship collided with the iceberg. She made it into lifeboat 16 and was later rescued by the RMS Carpathia.
Violet claimed that just before the lifeboat set sail, an officer handed her a baby and told her to look after it. She said that the day after they were rescued by the Carpathia, a woman took the baby from her arms and ran off. The baby has never been identified. Records show that only one baby was aboard Violet’s lifeboat, and that he was handed to Edwinda Troutt, then later given back to his mother. Because this story is so similar to the one Violet told, and because she never actually told anyone this until the 1970s, some people say that Violet made up the story entirely.
The third sister ship, the Britannic, was planned to be the grandest of the three ships, more lavish than even the Titanic, but because of WWI, it was transformed into a hospital ship and never actually carried passengers.
By 1916 Violet had become a nurse and was working aboard the HMHS Britannic when an explosion occurred on board and caused the ship to sink. It is unknown what caused the explosion, but the two most popular theories are that the ship hit a mine or that it was struck by a torpedo. Violet made it to a lifeboat, but it was sucked into the propellers. She jumped out into the ocean, but hit her head on the bottom of the boat. Fortunately, another lifeboat came around and pulled her out of the water. Before she went to the lifeboat, she made sure to bring her toothbrush; she said that it was the first thing she missed after the Titanic sank.
Violet continued to work for many shipping lines before retiring in 1950.
Years later, Violet received a phone call from a woman claiming to be the baby whom she rescued on the night of the Titanic’s sinking, but the woman hung up before saying anything else.
Violet Constance Jessop died in 1971 of congestive heart failure.
