March 31, 1889: The Eiffel Tower Is Opened

The Eiffel Tower was built to be the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Construction was started by Gustave Eiffel’s company in January 1887 and completed in March 1889.

On March 31, 1889, the Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers.

At the opening of the World’s Fair, the elevators were not completed, however, so Gustave Eiffel ascended the tower’s stairs with a few hardy companions and raised an enormous French tricolor on the structure’s flagpole. Fireworks were then set off from the second platform. Eiffel and his party descended, and the architect addressed the guests and about 200 workers. In early May, the Paris International Exposition opened, and the tower served as the entrance gateway to the giant fair.

The Eiffel Tower remained the world’s tallest man-made structure until the completion of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930. Incredibly, the Eiffel Tower was almost demolished when the International Exposition’s 20-year lease on the land expired in 1909, but its value as an antenna for radio transmission saved it. It remains largely unchanged today and is one of the world’s premier tourist attractions.

Crowds walking under the base of the Eiffel Tower while attending the Universal Expostion in Paris, 1889, looking toward the Central Dome.

Black and white photograph taken during the Exposition Universelle (1889) from the Champ-de-Mars towards the Trocadero palace (1878) showing the Monumental fountain (1889) in the foreground, the Eiffel Tower arch and, on the right hand, the main entrance of thePalace of Fine-Arts. The striped tents on both sides of the Champ-de-Mars, typical for the 1889 exposition and the Palace of Fine Arts were destroyed after the event.

View from the Eiffel Tower on the central dome on the Champ de Mars, 1889.

March 31, 1889: Eiffel Tower is opened in Paris. Built for the Exposition Universelle, at 300m high it retained the record for the tallest man made structure for 41 years.

40 Stunning Photos of Marilyn Maxwell in the 1940s and ’50s

Born 1921 in Clarinda, Iowa, American actress and entertainer Marilyn Maxwell started her professional entertaining career as a radio singer and a singer on stage with Ted Weems’ big band while still a teenager, then she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1942 as a contract player.

Among the radio programs in which Maxwell appeared were Beat the Band and The Abbott and Costello Show. Some of her film roles included Lost in a Harem (1944) with Abbott and Costello, Champion (1949) with Kirk Douglas, The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) with Bob Hope, New York Confidential (1955) with Broderick Crawford, and Rock-A-Bye Baby (1958) with Jerry Lewis. The popular Christmas song “Silver Bells” made its debut in The Lemon Drop Kid, sung by Maxwell and Hope.

Maxwell appeared twice as a singer in the second season (1955–1956) of The Jimmy Durante Show. She appeared as the mystery guest of ‘What’s My Line’ 10th of May 1953. At one point, a blind-folded panelist asked whether or not she was Marilyn Monroe.

Maxwell was found dead in 1972 in her home, at age of 50, by her 15-year-old son, who had arrived home from school. The cause was an apparent heart attack. These stunning photos captured portraits of a young and beautiful Marilyn Maxwell in the 1940s and ’50s.

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Couple at the San Juan de los Lagos Fair in Mexico, 1940

Here’s a strange vintage photograph from the San Juan de los Lagos fair in Mexico, 1940. A woman with a crown of thorns and a bandaged face, is accompanied by a man who guides her and holds her by the arm, also a nopal with its thorns nailed on her chest. In her right hand, you can see a plate giving the impression that it is to collect the blood that drains during her flagellation. Faith and religious syncretism, a mixture of Catholicism and sacrifice.

People walk miles to reach San Juan de Los Lagos; it’s called a penitencia or manda to the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos. Some take it to the extreme like walking on your knees from where the town starts all the way to the church, going dressed as the virgin of San Juan walking days from your town to San Juan de Los Lagos, doing it fasted etc.

One day per year during certain religious festivities (Usually Virgin’s days, October 12 in Guadalajara or December 12 in Mexico City), people punish themselves to ask for forgiveness or in some cases they ask for a miracle (asking to be healed, to get pregnant, to get good grades, etc...).

Vintage Photographs of Egypt From Between the 1860s and 1890s

The Adelphoi Zangaki (Zangaki Brothers) were two brothers of Greek origin, active as photographers in Ottoman Egypt from the 1860s through to the 1890s. Little is known about them, except their initials, C. and G., and that they worked out of Port Said and Cairo from around the 1860s through to at least the 1890s. Many of the Zangaki photographs are signed with a brother's initial and/or a place of business, e.g., “C. Zangaki” or “Zangaki, Cairo” or occasionally “A. Zangaki”.

The two brothers specialized in photographing ancient monuments and scenes of everyday life, producing photographic prints for the tourist trade, but it remains unclear how they came to learn photography. However, shortly after their arrival in Egypt they had become established photographers with studios in Cairo and Port Said. 

The Zangaki brothers traveled along the Nile, accompanied by a horse-drawn darkroom wagon to document the Egyptian scenery, architecture and events. Their pictures included views of the pyramids at Giza or the Sphinx and cities, as well of Egyptians going about their daily lives. They occasionally worked with the French photographer Hippolyte Arnoux in Port Said, documenting the works on the Suez Canal. They were also among the first commercial photographers to produce large-scale images of late 19th- century Egypt.

River view, Alexandria

Students in the Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo

Flooded banks of the Nile

Caravan passing a dredging barge

European tourists and local guides climb one of the pyramids at Giza

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Beautiful Photos That Defined ’50s Women’s Swimsuits

The post-war economic boom meant that people were not only spending more money they also wanted luxurious new styles. This economic boom also resulted in the return of fashion.

For swimsuits, fabrics made in the 1950s were improved compared to the 1940s. Nylon and elastic was added to jersey fabric to make it stretchy and to make it dry faster after a dip. Improvements were also made to the rubberized material from the 1940s Lastex. This, along with cotton, acetate and taffeta made up most of the swimsuit materials in the 1950s.

Swimsuit patterns and colors became bolder compared to the floral patterns of the 1940s. Solid bathing suits in black, red, pink, aqua and white with contrasting piping in black or white were seen throughout the entire decade. Aside from solid colors, patterns like gingham, candy stripes and color blocking were also popular.

Towards the mid to late end of the 1950s artistic prints were a novelty and featured designs that were painted directly on to the fabric. Tropical themed prints as well as modern art based on the natural world were incredibly popular for this type of garment.

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40 Photographs That Show Eric Clapton’s Style on the Stage From Between the Mid-1980s and Early 1990s

In the eighties, Eric Clapton was trying to quit drugs and alcohol. Naturally, he got really into clothes and women. “I’d always loved clothes, and that became a huge interest for me,” he told Classic Rock in 2016.

Clapton meant it when he said he’d always been really into clothes: His 1970s stage ensembles included overalls and a bucket hat made from a flour bag, for example, and his former bandmates have spoken to his obsession with getting the look. But in the mid-1980s, he made a conscious effort to pivot away from his rock-dude image of vests and blouses and clean up his act a bit. So he turned to Armani and Versace. “I was really interested in Italian stuff,” he told Classic Rock. “I met and loved this lovely Italian lady, we had a child, and I met Giorgio Armani and I met Gianni Versace.”

Throughout the 1980s, he almost exclusively wore the two Italian greats and went all the way in, developing a look as rock-and-roll gigolo. He appeared onstage and in publicity photographs in Versace’s gangster-fashionisto tailoring—“revolutionary, but simple at the same time,” as he wrote in his 2007 biography—and Armani’s sexy cool-guy suits, with their soft shoulders and loong jackets. He liked the energy and the romance of it, he said: “English culture, and fashion, was always much more tweedy and introverted, so when I finally got to Italy in the mid-eighties I was overwhelmed by the vivacity of it all, and the colors and the flamboyance of everything, and I was sucked in, I really loved it.”

But in the early 1990s, he pumped the brakes on the bella figura thing for a bit, and this is where we must begin to pay close attention. If Clapton has been eager to speak on Armani mania, this much more bizarre and rewarding period is less documented. The British press, with its enviable flair for the poetic, has been eager to connect this makeover with his newfound sobriety and 1989 “comeback album” Journeyman, referring to his 1980s period as one defined by “heroin, alcohol, and dodgy Armani suits” and expressing relief later that “the suits have been binned in favor] of jeans, [and] his entire Armani-period output has been trashed.” Instead, The Telegraph wrote, “with his weatherbeaten, beardy visage, wire-rimmed specs and tufty, bed-head hair, he could pass now as a regular middle England dad, the sort you would hardly notice in a DIY superstore, or a country high street.”

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Amazing Vintage Photos of Construction of the Tyne Bridge

The Tyne Bridge is a through arch bridge over the River Tyne in North East England, linking Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. The bridge was designed by the engineering firm Mott, Hay and Anderson, who later designed the Forth Road Bridge, and was built by Dorman Long and Co. of Middlesbrough.

Construction of the Tyne Bridge from March 1927 to October 1928

The bridge was officially opened on 10 October 1928 by King George V and has since become a defining symbol of Tyneside. It is ranked as the tenth tallest structure in the city, and is one of the North East’s most iconic landmarks.

These photographs from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums were taken by James Bacon & Sons of Newcastle and document its construction from March 1927 to October 1928. They belonged to James Geddie, who was Chief Assistant Engineer on the construction of the Bridge with Dorman, Long & Co. Ltd. of Middlesbrough.

View of the Tyne Bridge in the very early stages of construction, looking from Newcastle upon Tyne over towards Gateshead, March 22, 1927

Work on the Tyne Bridge arch underway. The first sections of steelwork rise over Hillgate Quay, Gateshead, August 10, 1927

View of support mast and cables holding the Tyne Bridge in place as it is constructed, November 29, 1927

View through the girders from the Gateshead side of the Tyne Bridge to the Newcastle side, January 27, 1928

View of progress with the Tyne Bridge, February 2, 1928, showing the two halves getting closer together

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Chariot of 1938 Ben Hur Drawn by Four Motorcycles

For the Ben Hur of the motor age, no four-horse team would do. Instead, the charioteer–stunting in a sports festival sponsored by a Potsdam regiment in Germany–rides on a rubber-tired chariot drawn by four motorcycles in 1938.

“Reins” in the driver’s hands lead to the handlebars of all four “bikes,” which are harnessed together by three horizontal bars. The har-ness recalls certain farm tractors which are controlled by reins.

Charioteer in German sports festival drives four motorcycles with reins.

50 Amazing Photographs Capture Daily Life on Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River From the Early 1950s

The Chao Phraya River is an iconic symbol of Bangkok and a life-giver to Thailand’s various provinces through which it flows. The ‘River of Kings’ has a rich history, acting as a gateway to some of the capital’s most prestigious attractions.

The importance of the Chao Phraya River stretches as far back as the 15th century. Settlers chose the area that is now Bangkok for its fertile lands (it was once a swamp, after all), in addition to its strategic position close to the river’s mouth. The Thai capital was later relocated from Ayutthaya to the Chao Phraya’s western banks (modern-day Thonburi), and later still to the opposite side of the water. Both settlements were ultimately joined as one larger capital, now known as Bangkok (or Krung Thep in Thai).

Modern-day development across Bangkok has evolved the landscape along the river beyond recognition. Authorities have evicted numerous communities along the river in Bangkok during recent years, alleged to have been illegally occupying land. This is to make way for the controversial development of an enormous riverside promenade, stretching all the way from the Rama 7 Bridge in the north to Phra Pinklao Bridge towards the south.

Here, a gallery of 50 amazing photographs of life on the Chao Phraya river taken by Dmitri Kessel for LIFE magazine from the early 1950s.

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36 Vintage Snapshots of People in Their Kitchens From the 1960s

The 1960s were all about innovation and eclectic style. The mid-century modern look was still going strong and folks were eager to add pops of color throughout their home decor.

The 1960s marked the beginning of when kitchens became more than just a place to prepare food. Instead, kitchens turned into the center of the home, a room where families and friends gathered not just to make dinner, but to eat it, too.

Kitchens were open and spacious and just as functional as they were beautiful. Take a look at these vintage photos to see what kitchens looked like in the 1960s.

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Two Rare Color Photographs of Mark Twain Late in His Life in 1908

Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966) was an early 20th century photographer who became a key figure in the development of American pictorialism. He became the first major photographer to emphasize the visual potential of elevated viewpoints and later made some of the first completely abstract photographs.

The years 1906–07 were some of the most prolific and important for Coburn. He began 1906 by having one-man shows at the Royal Photographic Society and at the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association. In July five more gravures were published in Camera Work (No. 15). At the same time he began to study photogravure printing at the London County Council School of Photo-Engraving. It was during this time that Coburn made one of his most famous portraits, that of George Bernard Shaw posing nude as Rodin’s The Thinker.

In the summer he cruised round the Mediterranean and traveled to Paris, Rome and Venice in the fall while working on frontispieces for an American edition of Henry James’ novels. While in Paris he saw Steichen’s Autochrome color photographs and learned the process from him. Here, Mark Twain was photographed in color by Alvin Langdon Coburn using the newly created Autochrome system in 1908:

Photograph of Mark Twain late in his life, 1908.

Mark Twain photographed wearing his Oxford University Academic robes at his home in Redding, Connecticut, 1908.