Past Preserved

On January 23, 1960, Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh descended aboard…

Following World War I, barnstorming became a popular form of entertainment across the United States as…

On October 5, 1930, the British rigid airship R101 crashed near Beauvais in northern France while traveling…

In the early 1980s, Freddie Mercury was photographed playfully posing on the roof of a Lincoln Town Car…

Charles Darwin followed a remarkably structured routine while living and working at Down House in Kent.…

In 1931, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein was photographed posing with an enormous cactus while working in…

The photos of Stevie Nicks practicing martial arts with Australian bodyguard and karate instructor Bob Jones…

In 1974, Anthony Bourdain graduated from Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey, years before becoming one of…

Made in India around 1870–1875, this elaborate perfume holder, or attardan, was designed in the form of a…

Dating to the Old Babylonian period, around 1900–1600 BCE, this small clay tablet preserves a geometry…

In 1931, visitors to the Seventh Annual Industrial Exposition in Washington, D.C., could try a device called…

On September 18, 2008, Pamela Anderson arrived at Vivienne Westwood’s Red Label Spring/Summer 2009 show…

In 2005, Austrian art collective Gelitin installed Hase, also known as Rabbit or Coniglio, on Colletto Fava…

Madonna left Michigan for New York City in 1977, after leaving the University of Michigan to pursue a…

In 1954, Bettie Page posed with live cheetahs during a photo session with photographer Bunny Yeager at…

Billy Leon and Benny Loyd McCrary, identical twins from Hendersonville, North Carolina, became famous as the…

In 1959, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard had the fit of his custom-molded couch checked during preparations for…

In 2008, Florida Today political cartoonist Jeff Parker created “Just a Number,” a four-panel cartoon…

On November 12, 2001, just two months after the September 11 attacks, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed…

Ridley Scott’s 2005 historical epic Kingdom of Heaven featured Edward Norton in one of the film’s most…

“Human Flies” were daredevil performers who became popular in the early 20th century by scaling the…

The Ramblin’ Raft Race was an enormous annual gathering on Georgia’s Chattahoochee River that began in 1969…

Apollo, one of the major gods of ancient Greek and Roman religion, was commonly depicted as a youthful…

In 1943, the U.S. War Department produced “Camouflage Blinds the Enemy,” a series of training posters…