Fascinating Vintage Photos From 1970s Reveal Amtrak's Early Days

As the result of the nation’s reliance on automobiles and increasing popularity of airplane travel that led to the declining use of passenger trains, Congress passed the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970. This legislation established the National Railroad Passenger Corporation to take over the intercity passenger rail service that had been operated by private railroads. Amtrak began service on May 1, 1971 serving 43 states with a total of 21 routes.

In late 1973, Amtrak ordered the first of 492 single-level cars, known as Amfleet I, that were based on the design of the popular Metroliner. With tubular bodies and ridged stainless steel fluting, they could reach speeds of up to 125 mph.

The Amfleet cars came in five configurations, including the Amcoach that was intended for use on short-distance routes. Weighing in at 106,000 pounds, it had 84 seats in a 2x2 configuration versus coaches with 60 seats used on long-distance trains. The coach interiors incorporated bold color choices such as red striped upholstery for the seats.

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Delahaye Type 165: The Most Beautiful French Car of the 1930s

1939 Delahaye Type 165 is viewed by many as the most beautiful French car of the 1930s, only 5 of them were ever made with this one having been fatefully chosen by the French government to represent France at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Shortly after the car arrived at New York customs, Germany invaded Poland and set off World War II, thus the Delahaye became stranded in no-mans land where it sat for 8 long years before being acquired by a Beverly Hills car dealer for the staggering (at the time) sum of $12,000 USD.

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33 Cool Snaps Capture People in Their Homes From the 1950s

The 1950s was a decade that brought massive changes into the homes. The post-World War II era was a prosperous time for most middle-class families. They experienced an evolution in everyday life, replacing their apartments and their lifestyles in the city for a cozy home in the suburbs.

Dynamic and vibrant designs started to appear, influenced by science, space exploration, and innovations in technology. The colors, furnishings, and designs were modern and futuristic combined with the classic appeal.

These snapshots from Photos from the 1950s that shows what house interiors looked like in the 1950s.

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Lovely Photos of Farrah Fawcett and Her Future Husband Lee Majors Before Their Marriage

Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors started dating in 1968. The latter spotted a photo of Fawcett in his agent’s office, and asked to be introduced to her. “I remember thinking she was quite beautiful and had a beautiful name,” he told People magazine.

Given that Majors was already famous as the star of the western series The Big Valley, he took it upon himself to mentor Fawcett and help her career.

“She was just a little girl from Corpus Christi,” he recalled. “All the mistakes I had made and the lessons I had learned the hard way, I tried to use to help Farrah.” Majors used his clout to get Fawcett guest roles on TV, including her breakout part on the Owen Marshall series.

They married in 1973, but by the end of the decade, the celebrity couple had drifted apart. They finalized their divorce in 1982, after Fawcett had fallen for Majors’ close friend Ryan O’Neal.

Before their marriage, these photos captured lovely moments of Farrah Fawcett and her future husband Lee Majors in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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The Story of László Bíró, the Man Who Invented the Modern Ballpoint Pen

László Bíró was a Hungarian-Argentine inventor who patented the first commercially successful modern ballpoint pen. The first ballpoint pen was invented roughly 50 years earlier by John J. Loud, but it did not attain commercial success.

Bíró was born to a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, on 29 September 1899 to Mózes Mátyás Schweiger and Janka née Ullmann. After leaving school, he began work as a journalist in Hungary.

While working as a journalist Bíró noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He tried using the same ink in a fountain pen, but found that it would not flow into the tip, as it was too viscous.

László Bíró’s ballpoint pen patent, 1945.

László Bíró’s ballpoint pen patent, 1945.

Bíró presented the first production of the ballpoint pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931. Working with his brother György, a chemist, he developed a new tip consisting of a ball that was free to turn in a socket, and as it turned it would pick up ink from a cartridge and then roll to deposit it on the paper. Bíró patented the invention in Paris in 1938.

During World War II, Bíró fled the Nazis with his brother, moving to Argentina, in 1943. On 17 June 1943, they filed another patent, issued in the USA as 2,390,636 Writing Instrument, and formed Biro Pens of Argentina (in Argentina the ballpoint pen is known as birome). This new design was supposedly licensed for production in the United Kingdom for supply to Royal Air Force aircrew.

Bíró’s invention Birome.

Birome’s advertising in Argentine magazine Leoplán, 1945.

In 1945, Marcel Bich bought the patent from Bíró for the pen, which soon became the main product of his BIC company. Bic has sold more than 100 billion ballpoint pens worldwide. In November of that same year, promoter Milton Reynolds introduced a gravity-fed pen to the U.S. market, to try to get around Biro’s patent, which was based on capillary action, where fresh ink is drawn out of the reservoir of the pen as ink is deposited on the paper. Because the Reynolds workaround depended on a gravity feed, it did not infringe, but required thinner ink and a larger barrel. The Reynolds Pen was a sensation for a few years, until its reputation for leaking and competition from established pen manufacturers overtook it.

László Bíró died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 24 October 1985.

Argentina’s Inventors’ Day is celebrated on Bíró’s birthday, 29 September. A ballpoint pen is widely referred to as a “biro” in many countries, including the UK, Ireland, Australia and Italy.

Jack Nicholson During the ‘70s

The 1970s was a busy and successful decade for Jack Nicholson. After a lucky break from Easy Rider, which earned the actor his first Oscar nomination, Nicholson’s career skyrocketed with his persona-defining role in Five Ease Pieces; the film’s success made him “the new American anti-hero” and got him another Academy Awards nomination. During the filming of the comedy-drama Carnal Knowledge in 1971, Nicholson struck up a lifelong friendship with co-star Art Garfunkel. In 1973, for his performance in Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, Nicholson won the Cannes Best Actor Award and received his third Oscar nomination.

Nicholson starred in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown in 1974, once again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor; Polanski, whom Nicholson had long been friends with, would later get arrested at the actor’s home for the sexual assault of a minor in 1977. One of Nicholson’s greatest successes came in 1975 with the comedy-drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which was the first film in 41 years to sweep the major Oscar categories, including the first Best Actor win for Nicholson himself.

January 1970. Contact sheet of various portraits of Jack Nicholson, New York. Photo by Jack Robinson.

The actor continued to take more unusual roles after his success. “I like to play people that haven’t existed yet, a ‘cusp character,’ I have that creative yearning.” Nicholson once said. In 1976, he played an unsympathetic role in Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks, particularly to work with Marlon Brando, whom Nicholson had long idolized. In Marc Eliot’s Nicholson: A Biography, the actor said, “Marlon Brando influenced me strongly. Today, it’s hard for people who weren’t there to realize the impact that Brando had on an audience… He’s always been the patron saint of actors.”

Below are 26 photographs capturing Nicholson both on and off set during the 1970s

April 1970. Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper talk at an Academy Awards after party, Los Angeles, California. Michelle Phillips stands in the foreground. Photo by Max Miller.

1971. Jack Nicholson and Michelle Phillips at the 43rd Annual Academy Awards' Governer's Ball. Photo by Ron Galella.

1971. Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel in 'Carnal Knowledge.' Photo by Corbis.

1973. Jack Nicholson on the set of 'The Last Detail,' directed by Hal Ashby. Photo by Corbis.

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Glamorous Photos of Leslie Parrish in the 1950s and '60s

Born 1935 as Marjorie Hellen in Melrose, Massachusetts, American actress Leslie Parrish was a talented and promising piano and composition student at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music at the age of 14.

At the age of 16, Parrish earned money for her tuition by working as a maid and a waitress, and by teaching piano. At the age of 18, to earn enough money to be able to continue her education at the Conservatory, her mother persuaded her to become a model for one year, so that she could continue her studies.

Parrish co-starred/guest-starred in numerous films and television shows throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She first gained wide attention in the movie version of Li'l Abner (1959), where she changed her name from Marjorie Hellen to Leslie Parrish at the director's request.

Parrish then appeared in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Other film credits include For Love or Money (1963) and Three on a Couch (1966).

Parrish is also an activist, an environmentalist, a writer, and a producer.

These glamorous photos that captured portrait of young Leslie Parrish in the 1950s and 1960s.

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40 Fascinating Color Pics Capture Everyday Life of a Michigan Family in the 1950s and ‘60s

These fascinating color pics from Joel Dinda were taken by his father Roger Dinda that show everyday life of his family in the 1950s and 1960s.

Dinda family picnic, 1954

Hatti and Rog, 1954

Me and mom with my baby brother, January 1954

On my fifth birthday, February 1954

Debbie with baby Richard at Grandma and Grandpa's house, 1305 Palmer Avenue in Kalamazoo, January 1954

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Twiggy’s DO’s and DON’Ts List for Girls From the 1960s

Twiggy was the face of London’s Swinging Sixties mod scene and later became one of the most iconic models worldwide.

In 1967, Twiggy published her own magazine in the US called Twiggy: Her Mod Mod Teen World. The magazine was published by Beauty Secrets, Inc and featured an article of everyday advice directed towards young women.

And here are Twiggy’s do’s and don’ts as a lady, even though they are from the 1960s, they seem pretty timeless!

DOs

1. Always be natural. Putting on airs will only make a giggle out of you. Be yourself and if you don’t know something say so.

2. If you like bright and pastel colors, wear them. They lift your spirits to the skies. And you look much prettier, especially when it’s a dark, foggy day, and people are in the dumps.

3. Take your problems to your Mum. She’s your best friend in the world really, and she’ll help you figure everything out just right. She’ll love having you turn to her because that’s what she’s there for.

4. Take your vitamins and eat the right food. If you live at home, your mum sees you do, but if you’re away traveling, a good but, then it’s more difficult and you have to manage for yourself.

5. Always have girl friends. They’re a comfort and fun to be with. Girls need to have other girls so they can compare notes on clothes and boys and things.

A smart career girl, even a teen-age one, has to have a set of rules to live by –– if she wants to stay happy. If Twiggy were to tell you what her own special behavior code is, it would be like the following, which our reporter finally managed to gather by fairly following her from morning to night.

DONTs

1. Don’t go around being a femme fatale and trying to take all the boys away from girls you know. Before you know it, everybody, boys and girls alike, will hate you. You’ll even hate yourself.

2. Don’t wear too much make-up so you look like a clown. You need much less than older girls. Bring out your own beauty subtly.

3. Don’t have elaborate sophisticated hairdos. You should wear your hair simply, in a style fitting to your face. And the simpler it is, the easier it will be for you to take care for it.

4. Don’t let your clothes go to wreck and ruin. If a button is loose, sew it on. And don’t just throw your clothes around everywhere when you undress. Hang them up.

5. Don’t be a nasty old gossip. You can do a great deal of harm and absolutely no good. And other girls and boys would stay away from you. If you can’t say something decent about another person, then don’t say anything at all.

The magazine’s cover

Cool Pics That Capture People Posing With Their Fiat Cars in the 1920s and ‘30s

Fiat Automobiles is the largest automobile manufacturer in Italy. During its more than century-long history, it remained the largest automobile manufacturer in Europe and the third in the world after General Motors and Ford for over 20 years, until the car industry crisis in the late 1980s.

The first Fiat automobile, the Fiat 4 HP, was produced in 1899. In 1970, Fiat Automobiles reached the highest number, 1.4 million cars, in Italy. As of 2002, it built more than 1 million vehicles at six plants in Italy and the country accounted for more than a third of the company's revenue.

Fiat has also manufactured railway engines, military vehicles, farm tractors, aircraft, and weapons such as the Fiat–Revelli Modello 1914.

These cool pics from Vintage Cars & People that captured people posing with their Fiat cars in the 1920s and 1930s.

A cheerful lady posing with a Fiat 501 Saloon in summertime, circa 1924

A fashionable lady wearing a cloche hat and a fur-collared coat posing with a right-hand drive Fiat 509 Berlina, circa 1928

A woman and a boy posing with a Fiat 521, circa 1928

Mother and her three daughters posing with a Fiat 509 Torpedo in an overgrown garden in summertime, circa 1928

Two girls dressed in the fashion of the 1920s with a Fiat 521, circa 1929

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