Jay Ohrberg’s Double-Wide Limousine From the 1980s

You may not know his name, but you know his cars. 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.

Lamb Approaching Navajo Baby, ca. 1930s

A lamb approaching a Navajo baby in traditional cradleboard, ca. 1930s.

Cradleboards are traditional protective baby-carriers used by many indigenous cultures in North America and throughout northern Scandinavia amongst the Sámi. There are a variety of styles of cradleboard, reflecting the diverse artisan practices of indigenous cultures. Some indigenous communities in North America still use cradleboards.

Cradleboards are used for the first few months of an infant’s life, when a portable carrier for the baby is a necessity. Some cradleboards are woven, as with the Apache. Woven cradleboards are made of willow, dogwood, tule, or cattail fibres. Wooden cradleboards are made by the Iroquois and Penobscot. Navajo cradleboards are made with a Ponderosa pine frame with buckskin laces looped through the frame.

Whatever materials are used to make cradleboards, they share certain structural elements. Cradleboards are built with a broad, firm protective frame for the infant’s spine. A footrest is incorporated into the bottom of the cradleboard, as well as a rounded cover over the infant’s head that arcs out from the cradleboard, similar to a canopy or a modern-day baby carriage hood. The purpose of this headpiece is to provide shade for the infant, since it could be covered with an animal skin, or a blanket in winter to protect against the elements in colder climates. The headpiece also provides extra head protection in case anything bumps against the cradleboard. Ornaments and sacred amulets are often attached to the headpiece as well, for example “beaded umbilical cord cases, and dream catchers or medicine wheels”, to amuse and help the infant develop his or her eyesight.

The inside of the cradleboard is padded with a lining of fresh plant fibres, such as sphagnum moss, cattail down, or shredded bark from juniper or cliffrose. The lining serves as a disposable diaper, although the Navajo could clean and reuse the lining made of shredded juniper or cliffrose bark. These plant fibres have antiseptic properties, and thus nurture healthy skin in the infant. The Chippewa tradition was to make a lining for the cradleboard usually from moss growing in cranberry marshes, which is smoked over a fire to kill insects, then rubbed and pulled to soften it. In cold weather, the infant’s feet may be wrapped in rabbit skin with the fur facing inward. The moss lining is surrounded by a birch bark tray insert placed into the cradleboard, which could be removed for cleaning.

Romantic Photos of John Lennon and Yoko Ono at Home at Tittenhurst Park, Ascot, 1970

These photographs of John Lennon and Yoko Ono were taken at Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, Berkshire by Richard DiLello on January 31, 1970. John and Yoko had recently returned from a trip to Sweden where they had cut off their hair as a symbolic gesture of a new phase in their lives. And collectively they had a lot of hair. There was an immediate request from the media to get pictures of the Lennons sporting their new art school, boho look.

DiLello was working in the Apple Press Office with Derek Taylor. Sometime in 1968  traded a Vox amplifier for a friend’s Nikon F with a 50 millimeter lens and taught himself how to use it, after a fashion.

“I had a natural eye but I didn’t have a great deal of technical knowledge under my belt. Nonetheless, as the requests for a photo session with the Lennons continued to come in, I asked Derek Taylor, “Do you think John & Yoko would let me photograph them?”

“He thought about it for two seconds. Then he rummaged around on his desk, held up a press clipping and said, “Go downstairs and give them (John & Yoko) this. As you’re on the way out, with your hand on the doorknob, turn around and ask them ‘Can I photograph you?’”

He followed the script. And they said, “Yes.”

A few days later one of the Apple chauffeurs drove Richard DiLello down to Tittenhurst Park on a frigid, grey day and he started snapping away.

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Post-War Germany Through a U.S. Army Photographer’s Lens

At the end of the war, there were some eight million foreign displaced persons in Germany; mainly forced laborers and prisoners; including around 400,000 from the concentration camp system, survivors from a much larger number who had died from starvation, harsh conditions, murder, or being worked to death.

Germany in 1946-47

12-14 million German-speaking refugees and expellees arrived in western and central Germany from the eastern provinces and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1950; an estimated 2 million of them died on the way there.

Some 9 million Germans were POWs, many of whom were kept as forced laborers for several years to provide restitution to the countries Germany had devastated in the war, and some industrial equipment was removed as reparations.

After Nazi Germany surrendered, the Allies partitioned Berlin and Germany's remaining territory into four occupation zones. The western sectors, controlled by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, were merged on 23 May 1949 to form the Federal Republic of Germany; on 7 October 1949, the Soviet Zone became the German Democratic Republic. They were informally known as West Germany and East Germany. East Germany selected East Berlin as its capital, while West Germany chose Bonn as a provisional capital, to emphasise its stance that the two-state solution was temporary.

These fascinating photos from Ann Longmore-Etheridge were taken by her father, James Arthur Longmore, that show street scenes of Germany in 1946 and 1947 when he spent his late teens in Germany and France as a U.S. Army photographer.

Germany. Niederwald Lodge, a rest hotel for allied troops, 1946

Germany. Ruins of Frankfurt, 1946

Germany in 1946

Germany in 1946

Germany in 1946

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Pictures of Barbara Stanwyck During the Filming of ‘Ball of Fire’ (1941)

Ball of Fire is a 1941 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. This Samuel Goldwyn Productions film (originally distributed by RKO) concerns a group of professors laboring to write an encyclopedia and their encounter with a nightclub performer who provides her own unique knowledge.

The supporting cast includes Oscar Homolka, S. Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, Dana Andrews, and Dan Duryea. In 1948, Hawks recycled the plot for a musical film, A Song Is Born, this time starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. The film is also known as The Professor and the Burlesque Queen.

In 2016, the film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.

These vintage photos captured portraits of Barbara Stanwyck during the filming of Ball of Fire in 1941.

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Chevalier Jackson Demonstrating Michelle the Choking Doll, 1937

Pictures of Dr. Chevalier Jackson “operating” on Michelle the Choking Doll, used to demonstrate his techniques in laryngeal surgery for the removal of foreign bodies. The images taken from his 1937 text The Larynx and Its Diseases.

Pioneering otolaryngologist Chevalier Jackson (1865–1958) used this doll, named “Michelle,” to demonstrate his non-surgical techniques for removing foreign objects from the throats of children. Jackson’s longtime French assistant Angele Piquenais sewed Michelle, who simulates a small patient with a child-sized trachea and esophagus. Jackson also once demonstrated an emergency tracheotomy on Michelle, an event documented on home movie film; her throat still shows the scar.

Jackson was world-renowned for his skill in the rapid use of endoscopic instruments to remove inhaled and swallowed foreign bodies without anesthesia, which greatly reduced the risks of the procedure. He combined his technical skill with a bedside manner that could keep distressed young patients calm. Jackson developed many specialized instruments and techniques for removing swallowed or inhaled objects, and could extract safety pins, nails, broken glass, and other dangerous objects without injuring the patient. His advanced techniques also enabled him to perform surgery to repair damage, such as removing scar tissue from accidental swallowing of caustic materials.

Jackson wrote that his father’s advice to “educate the eye and the fingers” spurred him to “continuous effort” in refining and improving the techniques of laryngoscopy. As a professor at medical schools including the University of Pittsburgh, Jefferson Medical College, and Temple University, Jackson also sought to educate the eyes and fingers of many medical students. By one estimate, the students he trained saved as many as half a million lives using his techniques.

(via The College of Physicians of Philadelphia)

Rain Goggles for Race Drivers From the 1930s

Invented by Mr L. A. C Davoran in the 1930s, the goggles are equipped with wipers powered by an external fan. In an open car, the fan would start moving at about 15 miles per hour, putting the tiny wipers in motion and clearing the water from the lenses.

Racing driver Paddy Naismith wearing ‘rain goggles’, ca. 1933. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)