Schoolchildren Salute the Flag in the U.S in 1915, And Here's What the American Flag Salute Once Looked Like

The American schoolchildren in the picture below are showing their loyalty to the flag and country by giving the “Bellamy salute” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Despite how it might look, the Bellamy Salute had nothing to do with Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler, but it did cause quite stir many years ago. In fact, the Bellamy salute is an interesting aside on the history of the Pledge of Allegiance itself.

Bellamy salute, September 1915.

The Bellamy salute is a palm-out salute described by Francis Bellamy, the author of the American Pledge of Allegiance, as the gesture which was to accompany the pledge. During the period when it was used with the Pledge of Allegiance, it was sometimes known as the “flag salute”. Both the Pledge and its salute originated in 1892.

Later, during the 1920s and 1930s, Italian fascists and Nazis adopted a salute which was very similar, and which was derived from the Roman salute, a gesture that was popularly (albeit erroneously) believed to have been used in ancient Rome. This resulted in controversy over the use of the Bellamy salute in the United States. It was officially replaced by the hand-over-heart salute when Congress amended the Flag Code on December 22, 1942.

Children saluting the flag.

The inventor of the Bellamy salute was James B. Upham, junior partner and editor of The Youth's Companion. Bellamy recalled that Upham, upon reading the pledge, came into the posture of the salute, snapped his heels together, and said “Now up there is the flag; I come to salute; as I say 'I pledge allegiance to my flag,' I stretch out my right hand and keep it raised while I say the stirring words that follow.”

The Bellamy salute was first demonstrated on October 12, 1892 according to Bellamy's published instructions for the “National School Celebration of Columbus Day”:

At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute -- right hand lifted, palm downward, to align with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” At the words, “to my Flag,” the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side. — From The Youth’s Companion, 65 (1892): 446–447.

The initial civilian salute was replaced with a hand-on-heart gesture, followed by the extension of the arm as described by Bellamy. Though the instruction called for the palm to be up, many found this awkward, and performed it with the palm down.

The Pledge of Allegiance written in the hand of its author, Francis Bellamy.

By the 1920s, Italian fascists adopted what has been called the Roman salute to symbolize their claim to have revitalized Italy on the model of ancient Rome. A similar ritual was adopted by the German Nazis, creating the Nazi salute. The similarity to the Bellamy salute led to confusion, especially during World War II.

From 1939 until the attack on Pearl Harbor, detractors of Americans who argued against intervention in World War II produced propaganda using the salute to lessen those Americans' reputations. Among the anti-interventionist Americans was aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. Supporters of Lindbergh's views would claim that Lindbergh did not support Adolf Hitler, and that pictures of him appearing to do the Nazi salute were actually pictures of him using the Bellamy salute. In his Pulitzer Prize winning biography Lindbergh (1998), author A. Scott Berg explains that interventionist propagandists would photograph Lindbergh and other isolationists using this salute from an angle that left out the American flag, so it would be indistinguishable from the Hitler salute to observers.

A group of children salutes the flag at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement playground in May 1934.

In order to prevent further confusion or controversy, the United States Congress instituted the hand-over-the-heart gesture as the salute to be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States, instead of the Bellamy salute. This was done when Congress amended the Flag Code on December 22, 1942.

There was initially some resistance to dropping the Bellamy salute, for example from the Daughters of the American Revolution, but this opposition died down quickly following Nazi Germany's declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941.

Children performing the Bellamy salute to the flag of the United States, 1941.

Earl Babcock's school day begins with the salute to the flag, Rochester, New York, March 1943.

Shocking Photos Show How French Women Were Punished by Having Their Heads Shaved Publicly for Collaborating With Nazis

At the end of World War II, many French people accused of collaboration with Germany endured a particularly humiliating act of revenge: their heads were shaved in public.

There are thousands upon thousands of joyful pictures of the liberation of France in 1944. But among the cheering images there are also shocking ones. These show the fate of women accused of “collaboration horizontale”. To sum it up, when a woman who had engaged in collaboration horizontale — that means having sex with occupying troops — was punished, her head was forcibly shaved as the first step. Depending upon how the partisans felt, she also might have been disrobed, tarred and feathered, and perhaps beaten.

The punishment of shaving a woman’s head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the dark ages, with the Visigoths. During the middle ages, this mark of shame, denuding a woman of what was supposed to be her most seductive feature, was commonly a punishment for adultery. Shaving women’s heads as a mark of retribution and humiliation was reintroduced in the 20th century. After French troops occupied the Rhineland in 1923, German women who had relations with them later suffered the same fate. And during the Second World war, the Nazi state issued orders that German women accused of sleeping with non-Aryans or foreign prisoners employed on farms should also be publicly punished in this way.

The humiliating scenes often took place in front of jeering crowds. Members of the resistance were suppose to be doing the shaving but in fact many of them weren’t from the resistance - they were in fact collaborators themselves seeking to divert attention away from themselves. Many of the collaborators were prostitutes or young mothers whose husbands were in prisoner of war camps. The only way they could feed themselves and their children was to have a liaison with a German.

French female collaborator punished by having her head shaved to publicly mark her, 1944.

A French woman with a bloody face is forced to look at the camera while French soldiers do nothing.

A woman who collaborated with the Nazis has her hair cut as a sign of public disgust.

Two women, partially stripped, their heads shaved and with swastikas painted on their faces, are marched barefoot down the streets of Paris, to shame and humiliate them for collaborating with the Germans during the Second World War. August 27, 1944.

A sobbing French woman with a swastika smeared on her face is paraded through the streets with civilians and a soldier.

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The Model in Britain’s Sex-and-Spy Profumo Scandal: 22 Vintage Photos of Christine Keeler in the 1960s

Christine Keeler (1942–2017, Orpington, Kent) was an English model who, as one of the central figures in the Profumo affair, contributed to the collapse of the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.

At age 16, Keeler left home and moved to London to work as a fashion model. Over the next two years she took a number of different jobs, eventually becoming a dancer at a Soho gentlemen’s club that catered to the upper classes. There she met Charles Ward, a physician who was connected to some of the most politically and socially powerful families in England. Keeler moved in with Ward, and he acted as her patron, introducing her to men who moved in his circle, including Eugene Ivanov, a Russian military attaché and intelligence agent with whom Keeler became romantically involved.

In July 1961 Keeler met John Profumo, the secretary of state for war, at one of Ward’s parties, and the two began a short-lived affair. Rumours of the relationship leaked to the press, but Profumo was quick to deny them, going so far as to lie before Parliament in March 1963. Evidence of the affair quickly accumulated, however, and Profumo resigned in June 1963. Largely due to the scandal, the Macmillan government was voted out of office within a year.

At the height of the media flurry surrounding the Profumo affair, Keeler posed for a series of publicity shots with photographer Lewis Morley. The most famous of those images, featuring a nude Keeler astride a wooden chair, became one of the most iconic photographs of the 1960s. Keeler subsequently retreated to private life, emerging in 2001 with the biography The Truth at Last: My Story. The events of the Profumo affair were dramatized in the film Scandal (1989).

On 5 December 2017, Keeler’s son Seymour Platt announced that his mother “passed away last night at about 11.30 p.m.” at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Locksbottom, Greater London. She had been ill for some months, suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was aged 75.

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Rare Photographs Capture the Moment Some of the Nazis' Most Notorious Murderers Were Brought to Justice, 1945

These rare photos show some of the world's most infamous monsters just moments after their reign of terror came to an end. The pictures, which form part of a stunning group of previously unseen snaps documenting the Second World War, were found in an old suitcase belonging to a former Spitfire pilot.

Nazi killers Franz Hossler and Irma Grese can be seen relaxing in the black and white photos which have only just been uncovered. In the photos, evil Hossler, who was commander at Auschwitz concentration camp and then deputy commandant of Burgen-Belsen, can be seen smirking.

The mass murderers were caught on camera along with dozens of other defendants at Celle Prison in Germany by Flight Lieutenant Keith Parfitt.

Pictured on the left is Herta Bothe, alongside two other female prisoners.

Herta Bothe can be seen looking stern as she is caught.

Franz Hossler (far right), was a feared concentration camp commander.

Bothe (left) was a Nazi concentration camp guard imprisoned for war crimes but eventually released.

A group of young women sit outside the jail where 45 people faced charges for war crimes in 1945.

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The Story Behind the Photograph of a Priest Holding a Wounded Soldier in the 1962 Venezuelan Insurrection

Father Luis Manuel Padilla holding a wounded government rifleman shot down in the streets of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, during a bloody revolt against President Betancourt in June 1962. More than 200 were killed before rebels were beaten. This photo won the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Héctor Rondón Lovera.

“Aid from the Padre,” 1962.

On June 4, 1962, Venezuelan photographer Héctor Rondón Lovera covered the El Porteñazo military rebellion in the city of Puerto Cabello. While he took many compelling scenes during the short-lived conflict, the most poignant of them all was his photograph above of Navy chaplain Luis Manuel Padilla clutching a wounded soldier who was also holding onto him as he tried to pull himself up. Despite the sniper fire flying around the area, Padillo was reportedly walking around and giving last rites to dying soldiers.

“I found myself in solid lead for forty-five minutes… I was flattened against the wall while bullets were flying, when the priest appeared. The truth is, I don’t know how I took those pictures, lying on the ground.” – Lovera later said that he was unsure how he managed to take the pictures.

From the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, Lovera traveled 60 miles (97 km) to Puerto Cabello and arrived just in time to witness the entrance of government tanks in the city. Lovera had to avoid the line of fire by lying flat, so how he managed to capture the poignant scene above is a story in itself. For his iconic snap entitled “Aid from a Padre,” Lovera earned the World Press Photo of the Year in 1962, and also inspired American painter Norman Rockwell for his 1965 “Southern Justice” painting.

Héctor Rondón Lovera was born on November 25, 1933, in Bruzual, Venezuela. He worked at a glass factory, joined the military and then worked as a taxi driver before in 1955 he became the official Los Togues regional photographer for the city and state officials. In 1959 he joined the Caracas Newspaper, La Republica, as its photographer. He was the second non-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for photography. Below are some more photographs were taken by Lovera on that day:

(Photos by Héctor Rondón Lovera/AP Photo, via Rare Historical Photos and Lomography)

AC/DC Got Banned for Spreading Neofascism, And Here's a List of Western Bands Banned on Soviet Radio in 1985

An interesting list from back in the day has recently surfaced, showcasing artists banned in the Soviet Union for different reasons. Its existence has been revealed in a book, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, by Russian emigre and author Alexei Yurchak.

The Soviet government had a reputation of being extremely strict in those days, but the reasons why the musicians got banned from the radio is what will surprise you the most.

AC/DC got banned in Soviet Union for spreading Neofascism; Sabbath, Priest, Maiden also among banned acts. Apparently, Julio Iglesias was also a neofascist and Van Halen were anti-Soviets, full list inside.

The blacklist, titled ‘The Approximate List of Foreign Musical Groups and Artists, Whose Repertoires Contain Ideologically Harmful Compositions’, was drawn up by Komsomol, the Communist Party's Youth Wing. It was written in the obscure and verbose language of Soviet bureaucracy and riddled with classic Cold War paranoia.

Despite their left-wing street-cred in the West, the Clash were banned for “punk and violence”, as were, among others, the B-52s, the Stranglers and Blondie.

Heavy Metal acts such as Black Sabbath, Nazareth, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were blacklisted for supposed offences including religious obscurantism, violence, racism and anti-communism.

Talking Heads joined the list for “myth of the Soviet military threat” and Pink Floyd were blacklisted for “distortion of Soviet foreign policy.” But more mainstream acts also fell foul of the communist authorities. The Village People were deemed “violent,” Tina Turner was banned for “sex”, Summer for “eroticism” and several artists, including Iglesias and 10cc, for “neofascism.”

The document stated: “This information is recommended for the purpose of intensifying control over the activities of discotheques” and “must also be provided to all VIA [vocal instrument ensembles].”

Here’s the original memo:

(via The Scotsman)

“Give Him Air! Give Him Air!” – Ethel Kennedy in the Moments After Robert F. Kennedy's Assassination, 1968

This dramatic photograph of Ethel Kennedy stirred controversy and debate over the ethics of photojournalism following its publication hours after the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, 1968. Led to where her husband lay Mrs Kennedy bent down by his side and whispered “I’m with you my baby”. She then stood, turned to the crown and shouted “give him air.”

Ethel Kennedy, shortly after Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. (Photo by Harry Benson)

Harry Benson has captured this moment of raw emotion and trauma perfectly. Her outreached hand is blurred and slightly obscures her face, yet her eyes engage the viewer and reveal her anguish. Just after securing this shot, Benson was knocked to the floor by a Kennedy aide. Instinctively he changed films and hid the valuable spool, which featured many of his iconic pictures of the scene, down his sock.

“Bobby Kennedy, to me, was the first celebrity political person,” Benson says. “He was like Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney. He was an event.”

Senator Robert F. Kennedy speaks to a jubilant crowd at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, minutes before his death. (Photo by Harry Benson)

Legendary photographer Harry Benson is best known for his intimate photographs of the Beatles, but his wide-ranging career as a journalist spanned pop culture, politics, and social upheaval; from relaxed photos of celebrities like Princess Diana and Michael Jackson to shots of the Berlin Wall coming down and scenes of Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral.

His front-row seat to history includes the day that Bobby Kennedy was tragically shot in Los Angeles in 1968. Kennedy was giving a speech at the Ambassador Hotel after winning the California presidential primary when he was shot several times by Sirhan Sirhan, a 22-year-old of Palestinian descent who felt betrayed by Kennedy's support of Israel. Five others were also wounded in the attack; Kennedy died the next day.

“You’d thought of yourself like the guy in the bar who would say, ‘God if I was there that night—I would have done this, I would have done that.’ Now, I’m there; Now I’ve got to do it. So my main thing, purpose was to get as close as I could to Bobby, take pictures and walk around there,” Benson says of the famous night in Los Angeles.

Shortly after the photograph was taken, Benson was knocked to the ground. “They punched me and all that, and while I’m changing film, other people were shot around me. I was the last photographer to leave.”

“I put the film in my sock, because if a policeman comes up to me and says, ‘I want your film,’ and he’s got a gun, I want to photograph for Life magazine; I don’t want to die for it,” Benson recalls.

Robert F. Kennedy moments after being shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, 1968. (Photo by Harry Benson)

Some people have criticized Benson for taking the pictures, and that fateful night still haunts him. But he has no regrets: “Other photographers who were there held back, but I knew I needed to record this. History was happening right in front of me. I am a photographer and this is what I do.”

The Dancer in Birkenau: Meet the Polish-Jewish Ballerina Who Shot Nazis on Her Way to the Gas Chamber

More a certainty than a legend, a woman killed a Nazi guard at Birkenau while she was ordered to strip en route to the gas chambers. But who was she?

On October 23, 1943, a transport of around 1700 Polish Jews with foreign passports were transported out of the Special Camp at the Bergen-Belsen Exchange camp in Germany; they arrived on passenger trains at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, although they had been told that they were being taken to a transfer camp called Bergau near Dresden, from where they would continue on to Switzerland to be exchanged for German POWs.

One of the passengers was Franceska Mann, a beautiful dancer who was a performer at the Melody Palace nightclub in Warsaw. She had probably obtained her foreign passport from the Hotel Polski on the Aryan side of the Warsaw Ghetto. In July 1943, the Germans arrested the 600 Jewish inhabitants of the hotel and some of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen as exchange Jews. Others were sent to Vittel in France to await transfer to South America.

According to Jerzy Tabau, a prisoner who later escaped from Birkenau and wrote a report on the incident, the new arrivals were not registered at Birkenau. Instead, they were told that they had to be disinfected before crossing the border into Switzerland. They were taken into an undressing room next to one of the gas chambers and ordered to undress. The beautiful Franceska caught the attention of SS Sergeant Major Josef Schillinger, who stared at her and ordered her to undress completely. Suddenly Franceska threw her shoe into Schillinger's face, and as he opened his gun holster, Franceska grabbed his pistol and fired two shots, wounding him in the stomach. Then she fired a third shot which wounded another SS Sergeant named Emmerich. Schillinger died on the way to the hospital.

(Illustration by Władysław Siwek)

According to Tabau, whose report, called “The Polish Major's Report,” was entered into the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal as Document L-022, the shots served as a signal for the other women to attack the SS men; one SS man had his nose torn off, and another was scalped, according to Tabau's report which was quoted by Martin Gilbert in his book entitled The Holocaust: A History of the Jews During the Second World War.

Reinforcements were summoned and the camp commander, Rudolf Höss, came with other SS men carrying machine guns and grenades. According to another report, called “Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe” written by Ainsztein and quoted by Martin Gilbert, the women were then removed one by one, taken outside and shot to death. However, Eberhard Kolb wrote in his book about the history of Bergen-Belsen that they were all murdered in the gas chamber.

In 1944, two more transports of the Polish Jews at Bergen-Belsen were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, leaving only about 350 prisoners in the Special Camp who had papers for Palestine, the USA or legitimate documents for South American countries, according to Eberhard Kolb.

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Historical Photos of John Mccain as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam

John McCain's capture and subsequent imprisonment occurred on October 26, 1967. He was flying his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi. McCain fractured both arms and a leg when he ejected from the aircraft, and nearly drowned after he parachuted into Trúc Bạch Lake. Some North Vietnamese pulled him ashore, then others crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him. McCain was then transported to Hanoi's main Hỏa Lò Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".

Although McCain was seriously wounded and injured, his captors refused to treat him. They beat and interrogated him to get information, and he was given medical care only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a high-ranking admiral. His status as a prisoner of war (POW) made the front pages of major newspapers.

McCain spent six weeks in the hospital, where he received marginal care. He had lost 50 pounds (23 kg), was in a chest cast, and his gray hair had turned as white as snow. McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi. In December 1967, McCain was placed in a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live more than a week. In March 1968, McCain was placed into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.

In mid-1968, his father John S. McCain Jr. was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, and the North Vietnamese offered McCain early release because they wanted to appear merciful for propaganda purposes, and also to show other POWs that elite prisoners were willing to be treated preferentially. McCain refused repatriation unless every man taken in before him was also released. Such early release was prohibited by the POWs' interpretation of the military Code of Conduct which states in Article III: “I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy”. To prevent the enemy from using prisoners for propaganda, officers were to agree to be released in the order in which they were captured.

Beginning in August 1968, McCain was subjected to a program of severe torture. He was bound and beaten every two hours; this punishment occurred at the same time that he was suffering from dysentery. Further injuries brought McCain to “the point of suicide,” but his preparations were interrupted by guards. Eventually, McCain made an anti-U.S. propaganda "confession". He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he later wrote, “I had learned what we all learned over there: every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.” Many U.S. POWs were tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements; virtually all of them eventually yielded something to their captors. McCain received two to three beatings weekly because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.

McCain refused to meet various anti-war groups seeking peace in Hanoi, wanting to give neither them nor the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory. From late 1969, treatment of McCain and many of the other POWs became more tolerable, while McCain continued actively to resist the camp authorities. McCain and other prisoners cheered the U.S. "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972, viewing it as a forceful measure to push North Vietnam to terms.

McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years until his release on March 14, 1973. His wartime injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.

John McCain (front right) with his squadron and T-2 Buckeye trainer, in 1965.

John McCain being pulled out of Trúc Bạch Lake in Hanoi and about to become a prisoner of war, on October 26, 1967.

John McCain is administered to in a Hanoi, Vietnam hospital as a prisoner of war in the fall of 1967.

In this undated photo, John McCain is seen lying injured in North Vietnam wearing an arm cast.

John McCain lies in a hospital bed in Hanoi, North Vietnam, after being taken prisoner of war.

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Haunting Photographs That Captured the Horror of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Assassination

Had Joseph Louw decided to finish his dinner on April 4, 1968, the photographs that captured the horror of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination may never have come to be. Louw, a young South African photographer and filmmaker at work on a documentary about King, had been eating dinner in a Memphis restaurant during the hour before tragedy struck. A sudden urge to watch the NBC nightly news brought him back to the Lorraine Motel, where he soon heard a single shot fired.

Louw, who was staying three doors down from King, immediately rushed onto the balcony, where he saw King collapse to the ground. After realizing there was nothing he could do to help, he ran inside to get his camera. “At first,” he told LIFE the following week, “it was just a matter of realizing the horror of the thing. Then I knew I must record it for the world to see.”

Louw captured the chaos and emotion that hovered over that April evening. He shot four rolls of film, but one image in particular remains emblazoned on the memories of those alive to see it at the time. In the moments following the shot, as King lay unconscious on the balcony, his comrades turned their attention to a sight in the distance: the assassin, getting away. They pointed their fingers in concert in the direction of his flight.

Civil rights leader Andrew Young (L) and others standing on balcony of Lorraine motel pointing in direction of assailant after assassination of civil rights ldr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is lying at their feet.

Louw rushed to the studio of fellow photographer Ernest C. Withers to develop the film. As he did, his hands shook. “I remember the last stage of developing,” he said. “It was the longest 10 minutes of my life. The first picture I looked at was Dr. King laying behind the railing. I never did photograph him full in the face. I felt I had to keep my distance and respect.”

Martin Luther King standing on the balcony on the day of his assassination along with his best friend Ralph Abernathy on the right. On the left is Jesse Jackson, to his left another preacher.

The first police officer made it on to the balcony. The man standing to the right of the police officer is King's best friend Ralph Abernathy. You can see the pain on that mans face as he's looking down at his friend dying.

Ralph Abernathy and others crouched down tending to King who has a small white Motel towel on the wound in his right jaw.

Blood beginning to pool around King's head.

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