The 1902 Panhard et Levassor Type A2: A Pioneer of Modern Engineering

The 1902 Panhard et Levassor Type A2 stands as a pivotal milestone in automotive history, representing the era when the automobile began to move away from the “horseless carriage” design toward a more modern architecture.

As one of the premier French manufacturers of the early 20th century, Panhard et Levassor utilized the revolutionary Système Panhard, which placed the engine at the front of the vehicle and used a rear-wheel-drive configuration, a layout that would become the industry standard for decades. The Type A2 was typically powered by a Centaure two-cylinder engine, producing around 5 to 7 horsepower, which was sufficient to propel the elegant wooden-spoke-wheeled vehicle at modest speeds.

Often featuring a “Tonneau” body style with rear-entry seating, the A2 was not only a feat of engineering but also a symbol of luxury and status during the dawn of the motoring age. Below is a collection of amazing photos of the 1902 Panhard et Levassor Type A2.

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40 Funny Photos of Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in “Chris's New Year's Eve Party” (1962)

Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in “Chris’s New Year's Eve Party” (1962), the fourteenth episode of the first season of The Lucy Show. It first aired December 31, 1962 on CBS. When her daughter Chris’s party is a flop, Lucy and Viv revive it with their silent movie sketch featuring Lucy as Charlie Chaplin. Not exactly a full scale show, it is still performed for an audience – Chris’s teenage friends.

Chris exacts a promise from Lucy that she can throw a New Year’s Eve party without Lucy’s interference. Neighbor, Harry Connors is pressed into service to chaperone the party, leaving Lucy and Viv on their own for the night.

Lucy and Viv take the boys to the Elm Tree Inn to stay out of Chris’ way. After a sweet but dull dinner with the boys, Viv’s boyfriend, Eddie, drops by to tell them that the party is a disaster and Chris needs their help.

Everyone rushes home to help. Lucy, with assistance from Viv and Harry, entertains Chris’ guests with a Charlie Chaplin routine that ushers in the New Year with great success. Photographer Ralph Crane captured this performance in a series of black and white photographs for LIFE magazine:

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Mugshots of Bertha Liebbeke aka Fainting Bertha, One of the Midwest’s Most Infamous Pickpockets

Bertha Liebbeke (often spelled Liebke), known by the alias “Fainting Bertha,” was one of the American Midwest’s most notorious pickpockets during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Bertha’s 1899 CDV mugshot (front and back) listed her many aliases. Her occupation was given as “prostitute,” possibly an effort by police to blacken her name. (History Nebraska)

A Chicago detective named Clifton Woolridge described Bertha as a “girlish young woman, with the baby dimples and skin of peach and cream, the innocent blue eyes, and the smiles that play so easily over her face as she talks vivaciously and with keen sense of both wit and humor.” Woolridge was clearly smitten with Bertha, and he was not the only man to fall into her trap.

She was born in March 1880 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. When she was in her mid-teens, Bertha’s father, William, died. Soon after his death she was diagnosed with St. Vitus Dance (now called Sydenham’s chorea), an infectious disease resulting in uncontrollable twitching and jerking movements of the victim’s face, hands and feet. The diagnosis got her sent to the Iowa Institution for Feeble-Minded Children in Glenwood. Due to age restrictions she was later transferred to the Iowa State Hospital for the Insane in Clarinda. She remained there for less than a year.

After her release from the mental hospital, Bertha claimed a man named Gunther seduced her. She also claimed he schooled her in the art of “larceny from the person.” She proved to be an excellent student. Not only was she good at getting the goods, she developed a unique approach to pickpocketing that took advantage of her beauty.

Bertha would locate a prosperous-looking gentleman in a crowd and smile demurely at him. Intrigued, he would come closer. When he got next to her, she would be suddenly overcome by a dizzy spell. The gallant gentleman would catch the lovely lady just in time to keep her from hitting the ground. She heaved a sigh, came to and thanked him, but not before she’d picked her rescuer’s pockets so skillfully that he didn’t notice the theft until she was long gone. When they reported their losses to the police, none of Bertha’s victims suspected her as the culprit.

Even after news reports about “Fainting Bertha” made her the most notorious female pickpocket in the Midwest, men continued to walk into her trap. She could steal anything—a wallet, a diamond stickpin, a gold watch—without batting an eyelash.

Margaret Reilly was one of Bertha’s many aliases. (Pittsburgh Daily Post, Feb. 22, 1925)

Before long Bertha was traveling by boat and train to all the big Midwestern cities, robbing conductors and passengers along the way. She also used her nimble fingers to steal from department stores, including Marshall Field’s in Chicago, where Detective Woolridge made her acquaintance. Over the course of her career she used at least nine aliases. By the turn of the century her photo graced the walls of every rogues’ gallery in the Midwest.

Being photographed by the police didn’t bother Bertha in the least. She smiled beguilingly when, as inmate #5693, she was photographed at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, where she’d been sent after a conviction for grand larceny.

Bertha smiled in her mugshots taken at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. (History Nebraska)

It was becoming clear that all was not well with Bertha’s mind. She suffered periodic bouts of insanity so intense it was impossible for prison guards, doctors or hospital attendants to control her. In the grip of one of these attacks, which often occurred at night, she had been known to break every window she could reach while screaming profanities at the top of her lungs. Her mood swings were extreme—one minute she was calm and the next, she was crying hysterically.

Unfortunately for hospital and prison officials, Bertha was not only good at stealing jewelry and cash, she also had a talent for lifting keys and picking locks. In 1905, when she was a patient in an insane asylum in Kankakee, Illinois, she escaped and tried to set fire to herself. By 1907 she’d been housed in seven different penitentiaries and asylums and she’d escaped a dozen times from them. She also frequently threatened to commit suicide. Back and forth between the hospital and the prison Bertha went.

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A Young Patti Smith Photographed by Norman Seeff in New York, 1969

In 1969, Patti Smith was still living on the margins of New York’s art world. She was known mainly as a poet, reading her work in small downtown spaces, drifting between cheap rooms, bookstores, and the Chelsea Hotel orbit. Rock stardom was not yet part of the picture. She dressed simply, often borrowing men’s clothes, cultivating a look that felt instinctive rather than styled. What mattered to her was language, attitude, and presence, not polish.

Norman Seeff, at the same time, was just beginning to define his photographic voice. He was fascinated less by celebrity than by creative tension, the psychological state of artists before they became icons. When he photographed Patti Smith in New York, he wasn’t documenting fame; he was witnessing potential.

The shoot took place in a studio on West 72nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue (or, by some accounts, in a kitchen in the Chelsea Hotel). Because Seeff was still learning how to interact with subjects, the session was informal and raw. You can even see photographic equipment in the background of some shots, which later became part of Seeff’s signature “behind-the-scenes” style.

What makes the photographs significant in hindsight is how fully formed Patti Smith already seems. Years before Horses (1975) and her emergence as the godmother of punk, the images already contain her defiance, vulnerability, and poetic gravity. You can see the same spirit that would later electrify CBGB and reshape rock imagery—only here, it’s still unfiltered and unsure of its own future.

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Richard Ansdell: A Master of Victorian Animal and Sporting Art

Richard Ansdell (1815–1885) was a distinguished British painter of the Victorian era, renowned for his exceptional skill in depicting animals, sporting scenes, and the rugged beauty of the Scottish Highlands.

Rising from a humble background in Liverpool, Ansdell became a celebrated member of the Royal Academy and was often considered a formidable rival to the famous Sir Edwin Landseer. His work is characterized by a meticulous attention to anatomical detail and a dramatic sense of narrative, whether he was portraying the intense energy of a hunt, the quiet life of a Highland shepherd, or powerful social themes as seen in his masterpiece, The Hunted Slaves.

His immense popularity during his lifetime was so significant that the district of Ansdell in Lancashire was named in his honor, making him the only English artist to have a town bear his name. Today, his paintings remain vital cultural records of 19th-century rural life and the enduring bond between humans and animals.

The Hunted Slaves

A Family Portrait

A Highlander with Setters and Game

A Warm Welcome

Andalusian Gallant

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35 Advertising Posters For Cigarette and Cigar in the Early 20th Century

In the early 20th century, advertising posters for cigarettes and cigars emerged as a dominant art form, blending commercial interest with the aesthetic movements of the time, such as Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Unlike the text-heavy ads of the previous century, these posters relied on bold visual storytelling and vibrant color lithography to capture the public's imagination.

Tobacco companies hired renowned illustrators to create iconic imagery that associated smoking with prestige and luxury. For cigars, posters often featured tropical landscapes or regal figures to emphasize the “exotic” and premium nature of the tobacco. Meanwhile, cigarette posters began to shift toward lifestyle branding, depicting the “New Woman” or the “Sophisticated Gentleman” to make smoking appear as an essential accessory for modern life.

These posters were not just advertisements, they were powerful cultural artifacts that utilized psychological triggers, such as social belonging, health claims, and romanticism, to cement tobacco’s place in the daily routine of the early 1900s.

Manufacture de cigares C. Müller & Co, Payerne, Switzerland, circa 1900

Cigarettes Saphir, circa 1900s

Cigarillos Paris, Fides, 1900

Los Cigarrillos Paris son los mejores, circa 1900s

Murad, The Turkish Cigarette, 1900

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40 Photos of Mary Tyler Moore in the 1970s

Mary Tyler Moore (December 29, 1936 – January 25, 2017) was an American actress, producer, and social advocate. She is best known for her roles on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), which “helped define a new vision of American womanhood” and “appealed to an audience facing the new trials of modern-day existence.”

Debuting on CBS on September 19, 1970, the sitcom followed Mary Richards, an associate producer at WJM-TV in Minneapolis. It won 29 Emmy Awards during its run, a record at the time. The show is cited as a landmark of second-wave feminism for its realistic depiction of workplace dynamics, equal pay, and female friendship.

Alongside her husband Grant Tinker, she co-founded MTM Enterprises in 1969/1970. The studio produced her namesake show and other 1970s hits like Rhoda, Phyllis, and The Bob Newhart Show.

In 1969, at age 33, Moore was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She maintained a private but active lifestyle, becoming a vocal advocate for diabetes research later in her life.

After her show ended in 1977, she ventured into variety television with Mary (1978) and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979). She concluded the decade by filming the dramatic role of Beth Jarrett in Ordinary People (released in 1980), which earned her an Academy Award nomination.

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