Category: History

Light It Up, But Don’t Inhale

LIFE Century of Change
LIFE Century of Change–Gordon Tenney

Nope, this isn’t like Clinton denying that he ever inhaled. If you can believe it, these business execs were gathered at a meeting to encourage lighting up. It was 1963, the year before the surgeon general’s warning against smoking, and heck, even the president did it.

http://www.substance.com/
http://www.substance.com/

The cigar manufacturer, Stephano Brothers, taught lessons on how to enjoy a stogie without inhaling, a means of career advancement by sophisticated habit. Sounds like pretense.

http://www.relique.com/
http://www.relique.com/

Even Ronald Reagan knew the score.

pinterest
pinterest

Isn’t it odd how it refers to the “satisfying fragrance” of cigars? Pipe smoke, now that’s a horse of a different color. That smell makes me happy. Cigar smoke, not so much. However, these ladies didn’t seem to mind.

www.famous-smoke.com
http://www.famous-smoke.com

Not What You Think

Corbis-LIFE
Corbis-LIFE

Why is Kerbey posting nipple-less breasts? That’s not like her. No, but WWII is totally like me! Did you know that over 60 million people were killed in WWII (about 3% of the 2.3 billion 1940 world population)? And 7 million of those casualties were in factories and defense plants in the U.S. Can you imagine?

In response to the casualties, a plant in Los Angeles mounted a safety campaign to protect its many female workers. On the left, you see the goggles. On the right is the protective bra. Cumbersome much? Did they make them in many sizes? I wonder how many chest injuries actually occurred. It makes you wonder how much training unskilled workers received before getting their feet wet, so to speak.

You Came To My Rescue

American Heritage WWII
American Heritage WWII

An American private receives a grateful welcome from an Italian woman after the Battle of Anzio.

On May 25, 1944, General Lucian King Truscott, Jr’s men captured Cisterna, and on June 4th, General Mark Clark led the American forces into Rome. Here the US tanks pass the Colosseum.

AmericanHeritageWWII003

Confederate Troops, Manassas, Virginia 1861

LIfe Book s Lincoln
Life Books – Lincoln

I don’t know about y’all, but I love jumping inside Civil War photos. Not that war is fun, but it’s so interesting to see images from when photography was in its infancy, 155 years ago.

By the late 1850s, most American artists had switched from taking mainly portraits made with the daguerreotype process to large glass-plate negatives (allowing them to capture entire scenes) that combined the clarity of the daguerreotype and the endless reproducibility of paper-print photography (metmuseum.org).

And aren’t those two little boys dressed as soldiers just precious? I bet that was a sight for them to see. I wonder if the taller one enlisted, a few years down the road.