A Very Dapper Stephen Hawking and His Wife Jane at Their Wedding in 1965

Stephen Hawking met his future wife, Jane Wilde, at a party through mutual college friends in 1962. The following year, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. In October 1964, the couple became engaged to marry, aware of the potential challenges that lay ahead due to Hawking’s shortened life expectancy and physical limitations. Hawking later said that the engagement gave him “something to live for.” The two were married on 14 July 1965 in their shared hometown of St Albans. They had three children: Robert, born in 1967, Lucy, born in 1969, and Timothy, born in 1979.

Hawking rarely discussed his illness and physical challenges, even – in a precedent set during their courtship – with Jane. His disabilities meant that the responsibilities of home and family rested firmly on his wife’s increasingly overwhelmed shoulders, leaving him more time to think about physics. Upon his appointment in 1974 to a year-long position at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, Jane proposed that a graduate or post-doctoral student live with them and help with his care. Hawking accepted, and Bernard Carr travelled with them as the first of many students who fulfilled this role. The family spent a generally happy and stimulating year in Pasadena.

Around December 1977, Jane met organist Jonathan Hellyer Jones when singing in a church choir. Hellyer Jones became close to the Hawking family, and by the mid-1980s, he and Jane had developed romantic feelings for each other. According to Jane, her husband was accepting of the situation, stating “he would not object so long as I continued to love him.” Jane and Hellyer Jones determined not to break up the family, and their relationship remained platonic for a long period.

After a tracheotomy in 1985, Hawking required a nurse 24/7 and nursing care was split across 3 shifts daily. In the late 1980s, Hawking grew close to one of his nurses, Elaine Mason, to the dismay of some colleagues, caregivers, and family members, who were disturbed by her strength of personality and protectiveness. In February 1990, Hawking told Jane that he was leaving her for Mason, and departed the family home. After his divorce from Jane in 1995, Hawking married Mason in September, declaring, “It’s wonderful – I have married the woman I love.”

In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, Music to Move the Stars, describing her marriage to Hawking and its breakdown. Its revelations caused a sensation in the media but, as was his usual practice regarding his personal life, Hawking made no public comment except to say that he did not read biographies about himself.

In 2006, Hawking and Mason quietly divorced, and Hawking resumed closer relationships with Jane, his children, and his grandchildren. Reflecting on this happier period, a revised version of Jane’s book, re-titled Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen, appeared in 2007, and was made into a film, The Theory of Everything, in 2014.

1902's Women of the Future Trading Cards

This set concentrates on the possible occupations of women in the future ("avenir"/"future"), and printed in 1902 by A. Bergertet in Nancy, France. The images are slightly odd, most being a little on the "swimsuit issue" side, but then again not without the women exhibiting a kind of coy pride in spite of what they looked like...

In spite of the attire, the women depicted as the "general", the firefighter ("pompier"), student (complete with a jauntily-held cigarette), and the sailor ("marin"), for example, are all taking their future positions seriously, even though their uniforms have been arranged for a 1902 man's viewing pleasure.

Its interesting to see that seeing into the future of professions and callings for women didn't have to "see" all that far, with all of the professions being attained within the next 50-75 years. Of course the pay is largely still not same for women as it is for men, nor is women's percentage share (for most) anywhere close to a proportional share, but it is a good start.

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Black and White Photographs of Chinese Humiliation Parade in NYC, May 1938

Twelve thousand Chinese people from all parts of the Metropolitan area closed their laundries and other businesses to take part in the largest demonstration ever staged in the United States. It observed China's "National Humiliation Day," the annual holiday on which China's people pause to recall Japan's humiliating twenty-one demands of May 9, 1915.

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30 Wonderful Color Photos of France, ca. 1955

Here's a collection of 30 mesmerizing color photographs depict France circa 1955...

Paris

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel et Musée du Louvre - Paris

Overlooking Paris from Notre Dame

Along the Seine, Paris

Near Chambord

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Amazing Color Photographs of America’s Hippie Communes From the 1970s

Their hair and dress, their pioneer spirit, even their Indian teepees evoke the nation’s frontier beginnings. These young people are members of a commune, which they have created for themselves as a new and radical way of living. Scores of these communes are springing up all across the U.S. In the wilderness areas of the West, Southwest, and New England, the new settlers build their own homes–adobe huts, log cabins, geodesic domes–share their money and labor and legislate their own laws and taboos.

According to LIFE, the youthful pioneers, unlike the earlier Americans who went into the wilderness to seek their fortunes, are refugees from affluence. Though there have been previous such experiments in the U.S., the new communes represent an evolution of the philosophy and life-style of the hippie movement. Most members have fled the big cities—New York’s East Village, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury—where they were beset by crime, police harassment, squalor, and disillusionment. They seek in the land, and in one another, meaningful work, mutual love and spiritual rebirth. Their religion is rooted in many faiths—among them Christianity, Hinduism, and Zen Buddhism. Some communes permit LSD and marijuana, but many now discourage their use or even ban them. Some take a broad view of sexual morality, but in many communes couples practice traditional American monogamy, and sexual behavior is often surprisingly pristine. Young children, however, are raised by all the adults and by the older children of the commune, which itself is often referred to as “the Family.”

(Photos courtesy of The Farm Archive Library)

44 Interesting Candid Vintage Snapshots of Women in the 1950s

The 1950s is often viewed as a period of conformity, when both men and women observed strict gender roles and complied with society’s expectations. After the devastation of the Great Depression and World War II, many Americans sought to build a peaceful and prosperous society. However, even though certain gender roles and norms were socially enforced, the 1950s was not as conformist as is sometimes portrayed, and discontent with the status quo bubbled just beneath the surface of the placid peacetime society.

Although women were expected to identify primarily as wives and mothers and to eschew work outside of the home, women continued to make up a significant proportion of the postwar labor force. Moreover, the 1950s witnessed significant changes in patterns of sexual behavior, which would ultimately lead to the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s.

Below is collection of 44 fun and interesting vintage photographs that capture everyday life of women during the 1950s.

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Beautiful Original “Star Wars” Lobby Card Set From 1977

Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977) Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guiness, and the voice of James Earl Jones.

Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a wookiee and two droids to save the universe from the Empire's world-destroying battle-station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the evil Darth Vader.