30 Amazing Photos of Airplanes Flying Over the Twin Towers, Before Their Destruction on September 11, 2001

Before September 11, 2001, commercial airliners and civil aircraft regularly shared the skyline with the World Trade Center towers. Because Lower Manhattan sits in close proximity to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), LaGuardia Airport (LGA), and John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), aircraft banking over the Hudson and East Rivers were a standard visual feature of the New York metropolitan airspace throughout the late 20th century.

The Twin Towers stood at 1,368 feet (North Tower) and 1,362 feet (South Tower). Flights departing or approaching Newark and LaGuardia frequently traversed corridors over the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay, placing incoming and outgoing air traffic within clear visual range of Lower Manhattan.

During the design phase in the mid-1960s, lead structural engineer Leslie Robertson and the Port Authority designed the towers to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, the largest commercial jetliner in service at the time, assuming a lost aircraft searching for a landing site in heavy fog.

Air France and British Airways Concordes flying in or out of JFK were frequently photographed climbing past the Manhattan skyline with the towers framed in the background. Local sightseeing helicopters, police aircraft, and small private planes operated routinely in the low-altitude Hudson River VFR (Visual Flight Rules) corridor adjacent to the complex.

Following the tragedy, airspace rules over Manhattan were permanently altered, heavily restricting low-altitude civilian flights over the city.

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Exclusive Interview: Freddie Mercury’s Mother on Her ‘Dear Boy’

8 September 2012 – An exclusive interview by Angela Levin with Jer Bulsara on her “Dear Boy” is published in The Telegraph.

Twenty years after the death of rock’s most famous singer, and with a lavish book of rare photographs about to be published, his mother, Jer Bulsara, talks to Angela Levin about how she coped with his transformation from Farrokh Bulsara to Freddie Mercury.

Freddie Mercury’s mother was watching the Olympic closing ceremony when her adored son’s image suddenly appeared on a vast screen. “I cried out: 'Oh my dear boy, where are you?’” she tells me. “I miss him so much.” A cheeky smile then spreads across her face. “They showed John Lennon too, but there was much more applause for my Freddie.”

Freddie, born Farrokh Bulsara, the frontman of rock band Queen and charismatic solo performer, died in 1991 of Aids-related pneumonia. He was 45. Jer Bulsara, who is 90 next month, has found immense consolation in his continuing popularity, yet when talking about him her voice still cracks with emotion.

“His passing doesn’t seem more than 20 years ago,” she says. “I still feel he is around because his music is played so often. It reassures me that he is still loved by people all over the world, but of course, none of them love him as much as his mother.”

Mrs Bulsara, who lives in a purpose-built three-bedroom bungalow in Nottingham, is tiny, immaculate and rather stooped, but her brain is sharp and her kind eyes sparkle when she talks about “my boy”. She is a practising Parsee, a religion that follows the prophet Zoroaster which arrived in India from Persia in the 7th century. She is also deeply private and this is the first in-depth interview she has given. The reason is a lavish new book: Freddie Mercury, The Great Pretender, A Life in Pictures that is full of wonderful photographs, including several never-before seen images, that span the rock star’s life.

One can only imagine how hard it must have been for Freddie’s devoutly religious parents to come to terms with their firebrand son. Fortunately, the love flowed both ways and Freddie seems to have tried to protect them from his excesses.

Indeed, Mrs Bulsara reveals a very different Freddie to the exotic, bisexual, wild-living, supremely talented performer the public knew. “Freddie kept a strict division between his work and his home all his life,” she says.

“If I ever asked he would say, 'Mum that is business, and this is family.’ He was kind and very respectful both to myself and his father.” Her husband, Bomi, a former cashier in the British Colonial Office, died nine years ago aged 95.

His sexuality was not a subject Freddie ever discussed at home. Nor did he tell her that he was HIV positive or dying of Aids. “He protected us by never discussing these matters,” Mrs Bulsara reveals. “It is quite different now, but back then it would have been very hard for him to tell us and we respected his feelings.” Did she visit him when he was dying? “Of course,” she whispers. “He didn’t have to say anything. I knew he was very ill.”

Freddie was born in Zanzibar in 1946 and went to an English-style boarding school in India when he was eight. “We tried to instil good values into him, like respecting the family and giving 100 per cent to whatever he did and although he wasn’t religious, he respected our ways.” The Parsee faith believes in one invisible God and is founded on the three tenets of good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

“Freddie always loved to sing and set up a school band when he was 12. In 1964, as a result of the Zanzibar Revolution, the family, including Freddie’s younger sister Kashmira, now 60, fled to the UK and settled in a four-bedroomed terraced house in Feltham, Middlesex. Mrs Bulsara and her husband found it hard, not least because of the weather, but Freddie thrived.

Like most parents they wanted their only son to have a safe job. “Most of our family are lawyers or accountants, but Freddie insisted he wasn’t clever enough and wanted to play music and sing,” she laughs. “My husband and I thought it was a phase he would grow out of and expected he would soon come back to his senses and return to proper studies. It didn’t happen.” It was an excuse, of course, and instead Freddie went to Ealing Art College where he studied for a diploma in art and graphic design. “I felt particularly sad when Freddie decided to leave home and move to a flat in west London,” his mother continues. “He was always playing music and an elderly neighbour complained about the noise so he said it was time to go. I told him I understood.

“He first had a flat and then a big house, also in Kensington, but when he wasn’t away on tour, he would come home regularly. He always liked my cooking, especially my dahls, sweet and sour mince and cheese biscuits. When he was famous and had people to dinner he’d sometimes ask me to make them for him.

“He was so generous, too. One day he bought me a complete set of antique silver cutlery to apologise for not turning up for a meal. I didn’t like to use it as it was so posh, so only put it out when he came. He also invited us for meals prepared by his cook and made a big fuss of me. When I went into the kitchen out of habit to help, he’d insist I sat down and relax.”

Freddie had countless male lovers in his life, but the individual he called the love of his life was a woman. Freddie met 19-year-old Mary Austin, who was a PR for the Biba boutique, in the early Seventies. They were together for seven years and he later described her as his common-law wife. He said she was the only person he truly loved and left his mansion, most of his wealth and recording royalties to her. He even took her home to meet his parents.

“She was lovely and used to come to us for meals,” Mrs Bulsara recalls. “I used to wish they had got married and had a normal life with children. But even when they broke up, I knew she still loved my boy and they stayed friends right to the end. I haven’t seen her since he died.”

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25 Amazing Photographs of Horse-Drawn Combine Harvesters From the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, horse-drawn combine harvesters reached their absolute peak of scale and complexity, transforming vast agricultural landscapes like the American West and Pacific Northwest. Facing a major rural labor shortage after the California Gold Rush, manufacturers pushed mechanical boundaries to engineer giant, wooden “pull-type” behemoths that relied entirely on massive teams of animals for power.

During this period, the size of combine harvesters grew rapidly to maximize efficiency in the vast wheat fields of California, Oregon, and Washington State. To move these multi-ton wooden machines, farmers used immense teams typically ranging from 20 to 40 horses or mules. A legendary and frequently photographed standard was the 33-horse hitch, often configured in lines of up to 12 animals abreast.

Operating the hitch was an art form. The “skinner” (driver) sat on a high perch at the front of the combine, managing dozens of leather reins and utilizing specialized verbal commands to orchestrate the movement of the entire herd. Each horse wore custom collars and had a strictly designated position in the hierarchy. A single massive machine could cut and thresh 40 to 50 acres of wheat a day, effectively replacing the grueling physical labor of 60 to 100 men using hand scythes.

The late 19th century introduced crucial technological changes that transitioned combines from experimental novelties into reliable industrial assets. In 1886, the Holt Manufacturing Company introduced a landmark design utilizing link belting and sprockets instead of rigid iron gears. This was a massive safety breakthrough: if a team of horses suddenly panicked or ran away, the flexible link belts would snap cleanly rather than stripping the expensive internal gears of the harvester.

Harvesting the rolling, steep terrain of the Palouse region in Washington State was incredibly dangerous; a normal combine would tip over or spill its grain screens. Holt patented the “sidehill combine,” featuring a pivoting chassis. Operators could manually adjust the leveling mechanism, keeping the internal threshing equipment perfectly horizontal while the outer wheels tracked along steep inclines.

Running a late-19th-century harvest required an army of support staff working alongside the horses. Beyond the main driver, a typical team included a separator man (mechanic) to grease the bearings and monitor the belts, and multiple sack-sewers who caught the cleaned grain, sewed the burlap sacks shut, and dropped them onto a side ramp. The horses required relentless care. Supply wagons followed the harvesters strictly to provide water and feed to the team during midday breaks. Because of the extreme physical toll, horses had to be rotated to prevent exhaustion.

By the early 1910s, the limits of animal logistics became glaringly clear. Feeding, housing, and harnessing 30+ horses every morning required too much time and overhead. The transition away from animal power happened in distinct waves. Farmers began mounting small gasoline engines directly onto the horse-drawn combines to spin the internal threshing parts. This meant the horses only had to pull the dead weight of the machine, narrowing the team size down significantly.

By the 1920s, heavy internal combustion tractors, including early crawler tractors developed by companies like Caterpillar (which bought out Holt), fully replaced animal teams. By the late 1930s, the final commercial horse-drawn combines were retired, ending one of the most visually spectacular eras in agricultural history.

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Frances Dee: Elegant Beauty of Classic Hollywood

Frances Dee (1909–2004) was an American actress known for her delicate beauty and refined screen presence during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Dee rose to prominence in the early 1930s with roles in films such as Playboy of Paris opposite Maurice Chevalier, Little Women (1933), and Becky Sharp (1935). Later she delivered a memorable performance in the atmospheric horror classic I Walked with a Zombie (1943).

Married for nearly six decades to actor Joel McCrea, Dee balanced a successful film career with a private life away from the spotlight. She remains remembered as one of the most graceful and understated leading ladies of classic Hollywood. These vintage photos capture the delicate beauty and timeless elegance of Frances Dee, a graceful star of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

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Debbie Harry on Top of the World Trade Center, ca. 1974

This photograph of Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry was taken around 1974–1975 by her bandmate, co-founder, and long-time partner, Chris Stein. Harry is pictured leaning against the railing of the Observation Deck atop one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, looking south toward Upper New York Bay, Governors Island, and Staten Island.

Taken during the very early days of Blondie before they achieved global stardom, the photo reflects the gritty, artistic downtown New York scene of the mid-1970s.

Chris Stein was not only Blondie's guitarist and main songwriter alongside Harry, but also an avid photographer who documented the band's rise, everyday moments, and the surrounding NYC punk/new wave scene.

When Stein republished this image in his photo retrospective Point of View: Me, New York City & The Punk Scene, he noted its deep emotional and historical weight. Beyond being a candid snapshot of a future rock icon in her formative years, it stands as a poignant artifact of pre-9/11 New York City, capturing a lost moment in time before both the band’s fame and the towers themselves changed history.

Roecliff & Chapman Model: Elegant British Postwar Ready-to-Wear

Roecliff & Chapman Model was a British ready-to-wear fashion house active in the late 1940s and ’50s, specializing in high-end womenswear.

Based at a prestigious address on Grosvenor Street in Mayfair, London, the company produced elegant, well-crafted garments that reflected the refined style of postwar British fashion. Their designs offered sophisticated ready-to-wear alternatives at a time when quality and understated elegance were highly valued.

Though the label appears to have ceased operations by the late 1950s, surviving pieces remain appreciated as examples of mid-century British fashion craftsmanship. These elegant designs showcase the refined style and quality craftsmanship of Roecliff & Chapman Model, a sophisticated British ready-to-wear label of the postwar era.

Actress Hazel Court in watered silk dress in purple, white and gray, with a shirt top and gathered skirt by Roecliff & Chapman, photo by Richard Dormer, Harper's Bazaar UK, July 1949

Anne Gunning in elegant silk jersey dress with soft folds on one side by Roecliff & Chapman, photo by Richard Dormer, Harper's Bazaar UK, December 1950

Susan Hook in black velvet dress with mermaid-tight skirt flaring into a fish-tail from the knee by Roecliff & Chapman, photo by Richard Dormer, Harper's Bazaar UK, November 1950

Actress Kay Kendall in cyclamen silk jersey draped evening dress leaving one shoulder bare by Roecliff & Chapman, photo by Richard Dormer, Madeira, Harper's Bazaar UK, January 1951

Fiona Campbell-Walter in beautiful halter gown in navy taffeta with white embroidery by Roecliff & Chapman at Bon Marché, Harper's Bazaar UK, June 1951

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Photographer Posts Never-Before-Seen Photographs of 9/11 Bystanders

A photographer (storiestellr) on Threads has gained significant attention for sharing a series of unpublished, chronological photographs of 9/11 bystanders. The photo series documents everyday people on the streets of New York City during the morning of September 11, 2001, capturing the immediate, raw confusion, disbelief, and shock as the events unfolded.

Instead of focusing directly on the burning buildings, the images emphasize the faces of bystanders, witnesses, and ordinary New Yorkers trying to process the tragedy in real time. Many of these archival photos reflect a surreal mix of normalcy and mounting realization, showing how individuals reacted instinctively to preserve history before the full scale of the terrorist attack was completely understood.

Along with each image, the photographer posts written captions reflecting on what was happening at that specific location and moment, detailing the human experience behind the lens.

“Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, I turned my camera away from World Trade Center and toward the bewildered crowd,” he wrote. “Starting today, I’m posting a few chronological photographs a day, with a line or two from my journal and an essay I wrote – until September 11, 2026.”

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