This photo was given to Kaisa Kaer by her grandmother Aino, the girl on the far right in the second row, lighting her ciggie on another ciggie. “She was about 15 when this picture was taken and these are her friends,” Kaisa said. “However, I have no more specific info on who they are. They used to do amateur theatre, and as far as I know, this picture was taken when they were messing around with a production or some such. My grandmother never smoked but she did have a wicked sense of humor, which was all the more striking because it stood in such a contrast with her very poised and polished appearance (among other things, she left me a pair of lace gloves).” Kaisa said her grandmother married a pharmacist, her grandfather Nikolai. They lived and worked in a small town in Estonia during the Second World War and a German officer, who was billeted at their house, got along so well with them that when the Soviets started advancing, he asked them to go to his family home in Germany (somewhere near Frankfurt) to get away from the war. “My grandparents refused and well,” she added, “my grandfather was deported to Siberia, was released with Khrushchev’s amnesty and returned home, but died only four years later because his health had been ruined.” “The most distinct memory I have of my grandmother is going to visit her with my parents and brother, and we sitting around her kitchen table, playing Mahjong for hours on an intricate set which my grandfather had made by himself.” Aino passed away in 2009

When unused the bed is straight like every other bed. However, one pull on a chain at the side of the bed immediately changes it to a V-shape. Another advantage claimed for the bed is that the covers are held substantially away from the person, thereby allowing the free circulation of air to the body.

Billings made his desire known while the two were still at school by writing Kennedy a love note on a piece of toilet paper. A startled Kennedy responded to the note by saying, “Please don’t write to me on toilet paper anymore. I'm not that kind of boy.” Although Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch, was reportedly suspicious of Billings’ close relationship with his son, the Kennedy family welcomed Billings into their exclusive family circle. Lem Billings would later confide in friends that his relationship with Kennedy was sexual, to a point, and “included oral sex, with Jack always on the receiving end.” Their arrangement, Quirk says, “enabled Jack to sustain his self-delusion that straight men who received oral sex from other males were really only straights looking for sexual release,” and, “Jack was in love with Lem being in love with him and considered him the ideal follower adorer.” According to Billings’ biographer David Pitts, “Once JFK decided that Billings was his best friend – like it or leave, everybody in the family sort of fell in line with that. The Kennedys were a liberal family and one that tolerated a lot of heterosexual promiscuity as well.” In her memoir, Times To Remember, published eleven years after JFK’s assassination in Dallas in 1963, matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy wrote that Billings had “remained Jack’s lifelong close friend, confidant, sharer in old memories and new experiences…He has really been part of ‘our family’ since that first time he showed up at our house as one of ‘Jack’s surprises.’” JFK even gave him his own room at The White House. Jackie was reportedly upset that her husband spent so much time with Billings and that he often spent the night at the White House. After Kennedy’s assassination, Billings was devastated. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith referred to Billings as “probably the saddest of the Kennedy widows.”

At His Master’s Voice (HMV), customers could buy records and record players, but also listen to the latest songs. In the 1950s, HMV introduced special sound-isolating booths where customers could sample new sounds without having to wear headphones. They also had enough room to squeeze in a close friend or two.

As 1970s as prog rock, fondue and woodchip wallpaper, and mad as a lift full of wolves, it’s a film full of intriguing ideas, pretentious chatter and incongruous images. Set in the year 2293 on a post-apocalyptic Earth, Zardoz is a science fiction film written, produced and directed by John Boorman. The film starring Sean Connery as Zed, who dressed in a scarlet mankini, his plaited ponytail flowing in the breeze, escapes the thrall of the Eternals and smashes their regime with sex and death

The sea his favorite subject, he captured the shipwreck Arden Craig, a three-masted wheat ship that slammed into rocks in nine feet of water after the captain became disoriented in a heavy fog. An article from The Barrier Miner (New South Wales). Tue 10 Jan 1911 reads: “The wheat ship, Arden Craig, from Melbourne, which foundered in a fog at the Scilly Isles, off the English coast, called at Queenstown, and was ordered to proceed to Calais. Distress guns fired from the ship were heard at Bishop Lighthouse, and led" to tho launching" of the St. Mark and St. Agnes lifeboats. The fog lifted, for half an hour, and afterwards the ship struck. The watchers on the Scilly Isles saw tho Arden Craig drifting, with its foreyard aback. An hour later it rolled to port and foundered. A sensation was created ashore until the boats were seen alongside. Captain Dunning, of the Arden Craig, states that he thought he was 20 miles south off the Scilly Isles, when he was really only three miles away. When the ship came off the rocks there was nine feet of water in the hold. It was ubandoned, as it was impossible to save it.” The Arden Craig was a British cargo ship built in 1886. She was used to transport wheat from Melbourne, Australia to ports o the coast the United Kingdom. Her captain was Thomas Dunning. It was 277.7 feet long and 40 feet wide. Her draft when loaded was 24.9 feet. She weighed 2,153 tons. She was built by Russell & Co. of Port Glasgow on the Clyde river in Scotland. The Arden Craig was propelled by 149 square yards of sail on three masts. Her hull was iron/steel

Taking poorly made bike jumps without a helmet was the norm

The photograph was taken by Terry O’Neill in August 1975. The house burned down later that month, while he was away in New York. The woman in the image is Cindy Lang. She and Alice separated in 1975 at which time Alice began a relationship with dancer Sheryl Goddard. Cindy never had any children. The kid is Micky Dolenz’s daughter Ami whom Alice used to babysit

On June 10, 1990, the BAC One-Eleven 528FL suffered explosive decompression resulting in no loss of life. While the aircraft was flying over Didcot, Oxfordshire, an improperly installed windscreen panel separated from its frame causing the captain to be sucked out of the aircraft. The captain, Tim Lancaster, was partially held through the window frame for twenty minutes until the first officer landed at Southampton Airport

The reason for this accessory was that pubic hair was considered popular and attractive, but sex workers shaved their lower parts to avoid pubic lice and used merkin to cover up STD’s from their clients.

The jack-o’-lantern tradition dates back centuries, when people in Ireland decorated turnips, beets, and potatoes to frighten away a mythical character named Stingy Jack. Irish immigrants brought the tradition to America, home of the pumpkin, and the popular fruit became an integral part of Halloween. According to the folktale, Stingy Jack was having a drink with the Devil but didn’t want to pay for his drink. To fix this problem, he persuaded Satan to transform into a coin that Jack could use. However, Jack decided to put the coin in his pocket, next to a silver cross. This silver cross prevented the Devil from changing back. Jack made a deal that the Devil would not bother him for a year and is not allowed to take his soul if Jack dies. A year later, Jack meets the Devil again. Jack convinced the Devil to climb a tree and pick fruit. Whilst the Devil was up in the tree, Jack carved a cross into the bark of the tree so the Devil could not come down. Jack then made another deal, which stated that the Devil could not bother him for 10 years. Jack died a while after this. He was going to go to Heaven but God did not want him there, so he was to be sent to hell. However, the Devil was not allowed to claim his soul and didn’t want him anyway, and so he was forced to wander the Earth. The Devil gave him a lump of burning coal, which Jack put into a hollowed-out turnip. The Irish people who saw him would refer to him as “Jack of the lantern”, which was eventually shortened to “Jack O’Lantern”. People in Ireland and Scotland would start carving faces into turnips and potatoes, to frighten Stingy Jack away and repel other wicked spirits. Immigrants from the British Isles who came to the United States of America bought the story with them. Except they started using pumpkins instead of turnips and potatoes, hence why carved pumpkins are called Jack O’Lanterns

But her pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. She is often nude or semi-nude and usually seen half hidden or obscured – sometimes by furniture, sometimes by slow exposures that blur her figure into a ghostly presence. These beautiful and yet unsettling images seem fleeting but also suggest a sense of timelessness.

A sick or injured person from the mountains would many times be placed in a “flume boat” and sent to the valley, sometimes alone and sometimes with family or friends in attendance, for medical treatment. It was the fastest way to get them help. A very ‘trendy’ date night would include asking your date to walk with you along the flumes, especially at 100 feet above ground at the highest trestle points (which have no railing, but you are in a shallow flume), to show how much you cared for her and how bold and courageous you were. Including lunch or dinner only made the date that much more special. Loggers liked the flumes since it got them to town much faster for one of their few nights off. (Remember many logging towns did not allow drinking.) The loggers would build small boats to fit the flume with which they could ride down to town. But for the early loggers the most fun was the sport of flume riding. This daring sport gained popularity in 1865–1895 starting out as log-riding and then becoming the more ‘refined’ sport of flume riding. Some of the more interesting rides would have the ‘logger boat’ flying off the flume endpoint at an exorbitant height and speed where the passengers needed to make sure they ejected from the log before the log hit the water and they were safe and far from where the log would land. No one knows where flume riding started – probably in ancient Roman aquaducts – which more closely resembled the box flumes with large volumes of water moving at slow speeds. V-flumes changed the sport.

During World War II, Veronica Lake (1919–1973) changed her trademark peek-a-boo hairstyle at the urging of the Government to encourage women working in war industry factories to adopt more practical, safer hairstyles. Although the change helped to decrease accidents involving women getting their hair caught in machinery, doing so may have damaged Lake’s career. She also became a popular pin-up girl for soldiers during World War II and traveled throughout the United States to raise money for war bonds

Jay Ohrberg is Hollywood’s favorite car designer, having built hundreds of experimental vehicles with an incredible range of features. His creations have appeared in more than 100 movies, TV shows and videos, earning him the title “The King of Show Cars.” The “wide limousine” was just one of longtime custom car impresario Jay Ohrberg’s crazy concoctions, which spanned 2.5 cars wide and 30 feet long. Powered by two ’75 Cadillac FWD engines with eight wheels per side, the limo had to be disassembled to be transported from show to show. Amazingly, each half could be driven separately

The rotor is an amusement park ride, designed and patented by German engineer Ernst Hoffmeister in 1948. The ride was first demonstrated at Oktoberfest 1949, and was exhibited at fairs and events throughout Europe, during the 1950s and 1960s. The ride still appears in numerous amusement parks, although traveling variants have been surpassed by the Gravitron. The ride itself was a scientific experience as riders felt the force of centripetal acceleration seemingly sticking them to the wall. What is happening on the rotor falls in line with Newtonian physics in that a body in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by a resisting force. A rider traveling around the drum of a rotor is constantly changing the direction of their motion but at any given point Newtonian laws state that they would prefer, if unhindered, to continue traveling in the direction they are traveling at that particular moment in time. However, every split second whilst the ride spins the planar vector that defines what is perpendicular keeps changing, thus the rider feels that they are being pushed outwards against the wall of the drum. The sequence of the ride varied in the early machines. Some loaded at the top with the floor dropping as the riders are pinned to the wall and as the ride slows the riders slip ungraciously down to the floor and exit in the pit of the drum. Others saw the floor lower and then return to allow riders a bit more dignity as they left via the top of the drum. Finally some machines loaded at the bottom, pushed the riders up with an elevating floor, which then descended and re-ascended to pick up the riders.

As the story goes, a vagrant wandering the streets of Goldfield, Nevada in 1908 was rummaging through the trash outside the local library, looking for something to eat. The best sustenance he came across was a jar of book paste. He would have found the paste surprisingly sweet, because in addition to flour and water, it was 60% alum. Unfortunately, the concentration was deadly. The legend continues to say that when the townspeople found the deceased drifter, he was buried in Pioneer Cemetery, which was little more than a dirt patch. The grave was topped with a headstone that stated what little they knew about him. It reads, “UNKNOWN MAN DIED EATING LIBRARY PASTE JULY 14 1908.” Skeptics point to the fact that the grave’s red paint is very bright for being more than a century old. That being said, some ascribe the fresh paint to sympathetic cemetery-goers who regularly paint over the epitaph so that the unknown man can be remembered for years to come. Others say the whole thing is just a local prank. Whatever the case, the grave serves as a cautionary tale: don’t eat glue.

But as window tents have proven both convenient and economical, they are now used by many healthy persons who wish to sleep in the fresh air during the winter months without cooling off their houses. Window tents are all constructed practically on the same principle, the difference between them being largely in their shape and the manner of their manipulation. A frame, usually of steel, supports a canvas cover, and this canopy encloses a space inside the room connected with the window. The tent frame is either attached to the window casing or the head of the bed, and projects over the bed, covering the head and shoulders of the person lying on it