Teenage Girls Iron Their Hair Before a Night Out in New York City, 1964

Teenage girls are all steamed up these days about straight hair. The steam iron is replacing the huge rollers on which countless teens slept every night to achieve the height and curls. The same girls endure having their hair stretched to absolute straightness on the ironing board, and then ironed to keep it that way.

Unlike the roller setting, this takes teamwork. Gay Stilley, 14, goes through an ironing session with her friends Geri Siblano, 15, and Joan Mahoney, 15, in the Stilley Home in Glen Oaks, Queens, New York City on Dec. 23, 1964. With a wary eye, Gay tries to watch the straightening process as one friend stretches her hair with a comb and another does the ironing, in the Stilley kitchen.

(via Anorak)

Faces of Century: These Photos of People When They Were Young and At 100 Will Leave You Amazed!

So many things change when a person ages. Wrinkles, changing hairlines, graying hair, the list goes on... But one thing that always stays the same is a person's identity.

For his photo project called Faces of Century, photographer Jan Langer captured over a dozen Czech centenarians and compared their pictures of when they were young, and when they were over 100 years old.

“How these people see their life after such a period? The majority of those I approached agree that with advancing age life is faster; until, at last, the life will pass in a moment,” Langer says. “Time is shrinking, as are the faces of the elders. I wondered what changes and what remains on a human face and in a human mind in such a long time, and in such a short while in relative terms. I wondered how much loneliness of the old age weighs, and what memories stay in 100-year-old mind.”

This set of comparative photos (of archive portraits from the family album and contemporary portraits from the present time) explores the similarities and the differences in appearance and in physiognomy. The characteristics of personality change throughout life but it seems as if individual nature remains rooted in the abyss of time.

1. Vlasta Čížková, 23 Years Old (Finished Girl High School), 101 Years Old

2. Antonín Kovář, 25 Years Old (Bandmaster Of His Own Band), 102 Years Old

3. Marie Burešová, 23 Years Old (Wedding), 101 Years Old

4. Marie Fejfarová, Her Personal History Was Burnt; On The Right 101 Years Old

5. Antonín Baldrman, 17 Years Old (Skilled Locksmith), 101 Years Old

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Wonderful 19th Century Illustrations Show Clothes and Ceremonial Costumes from the Ottoman Empire

During the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire reached a peak of economic and political power. As such, the textile industry also witnessed a boom, with weaving techniques and the quality of fabrics at their pinnacle. Of course, the sultans would have nothing less than luxurious kaftans composed of the most expensive fabrics, with gold- or silver-plated threads. In order to supply the substantial demand, special workshops designed court apparel and furnishings, sometimes even placing orders to other workshops in Istanbul and Bursa in order to meet the high demand.

These watercolor illustrations made in the early nineteenth century are from an album presented to the Russian heir to the throne Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov (1845-1894), who later became Alexander III of Russia. The album seems to have been a gift given in 1867 by someone by the name of Grigoriy Sharopenko and the pictures are most likely copies of earlier illustrations.

The drawings show clothes and ceremonial costumes from the Ottoman Empire, with the most noticeable features being the various headdresses as well as the layering of the clothes. The combination of different textiles and manner of layering was a way of distinguishing not only gender but class, religion, and clans, and the aim was to combine the clothes so that each individual layer could still be seen.

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The 1960s: The Typical Age of Youth – A Look Back At The Daily Life of '60s Teenage Girls

The 1960s marked the boom of youth fashion. Young people also had a quite liberal lifestyle in this era. Skirts and dresses were popular for girls, the most popular music genre was Rock and Roll, and one popular song was Yellow Submarine by The Beatles.

Check out these snapshot that will give you a look back at the lifestyle of teenage girls in the 1960s.

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33 Rare Photos Show American Stores From the Late 19th Century

That's what stores in the United States looked like over 100 years ago.

Hat shop

Ice cream store front

Interior of a store in Nebraska

Jewelery store

Lighting store in Ohio

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Rare Photos Show Members of the Osage Indian Tribe That Were Being Killed Off One-by-One After Oil Was Discovered Underneath Their Land

Rare images have revealed the intriguing murder mystery that captivated a nation as the FBI stepped in for the first time in history to solve a case. The black and white pictures show the Native American tribe that were being killed off one-by-one after oil was discovered underneath their land.

The Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma, USA were the richest people per capita in the world in the 1920s and had built mansions, rode in chauffeured automobiles and sent their children to study in Europe.

The true-life murder story, which became one of the FBI’s first major homicide investigation, is chronicled in a new book, Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann and published by Simon and Schuster.

The killings began in May 1921, with 25-year-old Anna Brown. Her decaying body was found by hunters in a ravine. Police suspected alcohol-poisoning — until a coroner found she had been shot between the eyes. The same day, her cousin Charles Whitehorn’s body turned up — and two months later her mother Lizzie Kyle died, her death blamed on whiskey.

Then in early 1923, Brown’s cousin Henry Roan was shot in his car. The next month Brown’s sister Rita Smith and her husband Bill died when their house exploded.

But the murders went far beyond just one family. The FBI estimated 60 Osage Indians died violent or suspicious deaths. A mother was found dead on her lawn. A sympathetic local lawyer was thrown from a speeding train and a white oilman who travelled to Washington D.C. to report on the crimes was stabbed 20 times.

By 1923, as local police seemed unwilling to investigate, the tribe demanded justice. Luckily, the then fledgling FBI was looking for cases to earn them publicity, so from 1923 to 1925 they quizzed more than 150 people in relation to the Osage killings. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover asked Tom White to unravel the mystery. Mr White put in place an undercover team, who alongside the Osage, exposed a chilling conspiracy.

In its undercover investigation, the FBI found that several murders in one family were found to have been committed by a gang led by William "King of Osage Hills" Hale. His goal was to gain the oil royalty headrights and wealth of several tribe members, including his nephew's Osage wife, the last survivor of her family.

Three men were convicted and sentenced in this case, but most murders went unsolved. The investigation also uncovered extensive corruption among local officials involved in the Osage guardian program.

As a result of the Reign of Terror, as it was known, and the subsequent investigation Congress changed the law to prohibit non-Osage from inheriting headrights from Osage with half or more Native American ancestry.

Mollie Burkhart, right, with her sisters Anna and Minnie. They were part of the Osage Native American tribe, who were killed one by one in a murder mystery.

Mollie became a prime target after it was revealed her people were living on land where there was oil underneath.

The Osage tribe were among the richest people in the world and often rode in chauffeur-driven cars.

The fourth sister Rita with servant.

The killings began in May 1921, when 25-year-old Anna Brown’s decaying body was found by hunters in a ravine.

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30 Amazing Black and White Photographs of Vietnamese Bar Girls During the War

During the late 1960s, about thirty-two establishments in Saigon were houses of prostitution, ranging from modest apartments to elegant three-story establishments. A good deal of the sex business was in the hands of the Vietnamese underworld, like the "Yellow Pang Society." In the French as well as in the American period, the "Flower Boats" or sampans plied their trade. They were frequently family operations, with the daughter(s) working as prostitute(s) while the brothers pimped on dry land. Some of the larger junks, however, were professionally run, often by the Saigon underworld. Prior to 1975, statistics from the Ministry of Society of the Saigon government reported about 200,000 professional prostitutes. In Saigon alone in 1968, there were about 10,000 professional prostitutes. By 1974, the figure had reached 100,000.

During the Vietnam War, one million soldiers from the United States were stationed throughout Southeast Asia. Most of these host countries signed agreements to provide their services as "Rest and Recreation" centers for United States military and aid personnel. Their presence contributed to the proliferation of commercial sexual intercourse. Although the U.S. Army was not officially involved in providing sex workers to cover itself against congressional reaction at home, it is known that some of the brothels kept by the Vietnamese Government and the ARVIN (Army of Vietnam) were exclusively reserved for GIs.

It was to be the model for other "recreation centers," including several within the Saigon area: The Pleiku brothel has twenty rooms, whitewashed and pleasantly furnished. The girls are all carefully selected on the basis of good looks, personality and knowledge of English. (U.S. Army Intelligence also runs a security check on each girl to make sure she is not a Viet Cong agent out to pick up useful information from her trusting bedmates.) The girls are closely supervised by a matron under contract to the Pleiku Administrative Council. An American GI pays 300 piastres ($2.50) for a ticket, allowing him up to three hours with any given girl. Between 100 and 300 GIs visit the house each day, passing through a sandbagged guard post where they are required to show their ticket and have it stamped by a Vietnamese soldier. Fifteen percent of the girl’s earnings are deducted to pay for expenses at the center, but a hard-working and a popular prostitute can earn between 8000 to 15,000 piastres ($66 to $125) a month, a good salary in today’s Vietnam. The main reason for the U.S. Army to provide those establishments was the alarmingly high venereal disease rate among U.S. enlisted men. However, most of the soldiers preferred to look for prostitutes themselves in bars catering to GIs.

"A prostitute earned as much as $180 per month. The average government civil servant earned roughly $30 a month, and even cabinet ministers and Assembly members had fixed salaries of $120. A special form of prostitution was the "mistress," i.e., a paid steady girlfriend. GIs considered this a "safer" alternative to the brothels and bar girls. There existed rumors about an incurable strain of syphilis, called "Black Clap," and Viet Cong girls who were able to put razor blades into their vaginas to castrate or even kill clients (Gulzow & Mitchell 1980). The latter rumor is without doubt a reflection of the ability of some trained girls to use their vaginas to smoke cigarettes, shoot arrows, or to put razor blades or other sharp materials in them without getting hurt.

While under French rule, marriages of French soldiers and Vietnamese women were prohibited. American soldiers, on the other hand, could marry. A U.S. Army study of sixty-four GIs who had filed applications to marry Vietnamese girls between June 1964 and November 1966 concluded that a high proportion of GIs who married Vietnamese women were divorced, sexually inhibited, fearful of American women, or disenchanted with some aspects of American life.

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