Histories Past

The Shigir Sculpture is the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world, made during the Mesolithic period, shortly after the end of the last Ice Age. The wood it was carved from is around 11,500 years old..

An ironworker poses for the camera during construction of the Columbia Tower, Seattle, 1984.

The number of details in this 😱

The Course of Empire Destruction, 1836 by Thomas Cole

Soldiers returning home from WWII, 1945

The unbroken seal on Tutankhamen’s Tomb, 1922.

Left untouched for 3,245 years, the seal was later broken by Howard Carter.

The story goes that he also found an ancient clay tablet in the antechamber. When he later translated it, the inscription read: “Death will slay with his wings whoever disturbs the peace of the pharaoh”.

This would later become the famous “Curse of the Pharaohs”, which in fact is just a myth. The curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, allegedly can cause bad luck, illness, or death.

17 years later Carter would die at his London flat, next to the Royal Albert Hall, on 2 March 1939, aged 64 from Hodgkin's disease. He was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in London on 6 March, with nine people attending his funeral.

His love for Egypt remained strong; his epitaph on his gravestone read: "May your spirit live, may you spend millions of years, you who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness", a quotation is taken from the Wishing Cup of Tutankhamun, and "O night, spread thy wings over me as the imperishable stars".

A bird's-eye view of Masada, built by Herod the Great as a palace complex on top of an isolated rock plateau at the Judaean Desert.

Photograph of KV-5 prototype “Победа” shortly before it tipped over and exploded during pre-production trials, 1943. After the German seizure of Leningrad and subsequent two-pronged advance toward Moscow, Soviet industry went into overdrive, creating increasingly bizarre stopgaps as supplies of raw materials began to dry up.

The KV-5 was one of these. Intended to be a mobile artillery battery, it instead proved to be a massive failure. The first prototype, shown here, fell over during maneuver testing. Poor design of the ammunition storage racks caused the vehicle to explode, killing the crew as well as the photographer.

Two girls standing outside of a snow fort, ca. 1910, by Jeanette Bernard