Photographs Taken by NYPD Officer Walter Taylor Before the Collapse of the South Tower on September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, striking floors 77 through 85. This occurred about 17 minutes after the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, had hit the North Tower.

After the first plane hit the North Tower, many people in the South Tower began to evacuate on their own, despite an initial announcement on the public address system advising them to stay in their offices.

The impact of Flight 175 caused catastrophic structural damage and ignited a massive fire. The plane’s high speed and off-center impact left the building unbalanced and weakened the steel columns and trusses that supported the floors.

The crash and subsequent fire trapped hundreds of people on the floors above the impact zone. While one of the three stairwells in the South Tower remained partially intact, allowing some people to escape from above the impact zone, many others were unable to get out.

The fires, fueled by the jet fuel, weakened the building’s steel structure. As the steel began to heat up, the floor trusses started to sag, pulling away from the outer columns. This process, known as “creep,” eventually led to the failure of the core columns. The weakening of the steel structure caused the floors above the impact zone to drop onto the floors below, initiating a chain reaction of progressive collapse that led to the entire tower’s fall.

These rarely seen photographs taken by NYPD officer Walter Taylor before the South Tower’s collapse at 9:59 a.m. (56 minutes after impact) on September 11, 2001:

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Hugh Grant Rocking Umbro at a Charity Football Match in London, 1994

In June 1994, directly following his breakout global stardom in Four Weddings and a Funeral (released earlier that spring), Hugh Grant participated in a high-profile celebrity charity football match held in London. Photographs from the match gained cult status over the years due to his quintessential mid-90s kit, a long-sleeved, collared, blue striped Umbro football shirt paired with classic retro short running shorts and his signature floppy hair.

Fresh off the box-office success of Four Weddings, Grant was one of the most photographed figures in British pop culture during the summer of 1994. While known primarily for his acting, he is an avid football fan who supports Fulham F.C. and even worked briefly as an assistant groundsman at Craven Cottage before his career took off.

Events like these were popular fixtures in 1990s London, bringing together actors, musicians, and television personalities alongside former professional footballers to raise funds for local and national UK charities.

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20 Rare and Amazing Photos of the Alkmaar Cheese Market in the Late 19th Century

The Alkmaar Cheese Market is one of the oldest and most iconic traditional markets in the Netherlands. Cheese trading in Alkmaar dates back to at least 1365, and the Cheese Carriers’ Guild was formally established in 1593.

These rare and amazing photos capture the Alkmaar Cheese Market during the late 19th century, when it was still a vital center of the Dutch cheese trade. The images show the bustling Waagplein filled with large wheels of cheese, traditional carriers in their distinctive uniforms, and the busy activity of weighing, inspecting, and transporting goods.

Taken at a time when the market was a major commercial event rather than a tourist attraction, these historic photos preserve the authentic atmosphere, clothing, and working traditions of one of the Netherlands’ most enduring cultural institutions.

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Rare Photographs Taken From the Queensboro Plaza Elevated Subway Station on 9/11

On September 11, 2001, commuters at the Queensboro Plaza elevated subway station in Queens, New York, had a direct, distant line of sight looking southwest down toward Lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center towers were smoking after the terrorist attacks.

These rare photographs captured this specific vantage point, showing N and W train platforms with the burning towers framed in the background across the East River.

Art Deco Masterpiece: Amazing Photos of the 1937 Cord 812 Supercharged Phaeton

The 1937 Cord 812 Supercharged Phaeton is one of the most striking and innovative American automobiles of the prewar era.

Designed by Gordon Buehrig, the Cord featured groundbreaking elements such as front-wheel drive, hidden headlights, and its distinctive “coffin-nose” styling. The Supercharged version was powered by a Lycoming V8 fitted with a Schwitzer-Cummins supercharger, producing around 170–190 horsepower and identifiable by its dramatic external exhaust pipes.

With its low, sleek profile and advanced engineering, the 812 Phaeton remains a rare and highly prized symbol of 1930s automotive design and Art Deco elegance. These stunning photos capture the bold design and timeless sophistication of the rare 1937 Cord 812 Supercharged Phaeton, a true Art Deco classic.

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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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