PREDECESSORS: A MODERN HISTORY BLOG

A shirtless Marine relaxes with a book on the wing of an F4U-1 plane. Bougainville, 1944.

A menorah stands in silent defiance before the Nazi flag. 1931.

An injured survivor of the Hindenburg disaster has a smoke as he is carried from the crash site at Lakehurst, New Jersey. May 6, 1937.

A German soldier smokes a cigarette whilst nestled comfortably inside one of the Paris Siege Guns captured during the Spring Offensive. 1918.

French Field Marshall Horatio Herbert Kitchener meets the mounted General Albert Baratier. 1915.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan at their first official meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. The men behind them are their interpreters. November 21, 1985.

10,000 German prisoners of war captured after the D-Day landings. June 1944. 

Expended shell cases piled up after the Battle of the Somme. 1916.

Six days before he was assassinated, John F. Kennedy visited Cape Canaveral to be briefed on the Saturn rocket. Accompanying him is Senator George Smathers of Florida. November 16th, 1963.

Directional sound finders used to detect incoming enemy planes. 1917.

The Fascist headquarters of Benito Mussolini in Rome. 1934.

Female archers competing at the London Olympics. 1908.

These two men wear directional sound finders, to detect approaching planes. 1917.

A German Communist crosses his arms and stares at his firing squad, moments before he is executed. 1919.

The first bananas to reach Norway are unloaded. 1905.

The production of the star spangled banner: women in a Brooklyn factory toil at their sewing machines. July 1940. Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White.

President Kennedy dons a blue suit and pair of sunglasses as he watches a military pageant alongside the Shah of Iran at Camp Lejeune. 1962.