One woman’s brave fight against how Italy treated rape victims in 1966 shook the country. The lessons from this fight are still important today. After being kidnapped and raped, Franca Viola became the first Italian woman to decline a “rehabilitating marriage” (“matrimonio riparatore” in Italian) with her attacker. She was one of the first Italian women who had been raped…
Vintage Wonders
Mug shot photography changed the way police investigate crimes and let them maintain pictures of the people they detained. Starting in the middle of the 1800s, police took pictures of the faces of offenders they already knew. These pictures, which are called “mug shots” (from the British slang word “mug,” which means “face”), replaced drawings and information on wanted posters….
Terry Sawchuk is a 36-year-old goalkeeper for the Toronto Maple Leafs. A professional make-up artist and a doctor have recreated some of the more than 400 stitches he got while playing in the National Hockey League for 16 years. Terry Sawchuk’s face was hit many times, although not all at once. His cuts and bruises recovered. The scars were hard…
The U.S. military sent Joe O’Donnell to Nagasaki to take this picture of the damage done to Japan by air raids with firebombs and atomic bombs. He journeyed across Western Japan for the next seven months, starting in September 1945, to document the destruction and show the suffering of the bomb victims, including the dead, the wounded, the homeless, and…
During World War II, Roza Shanina was a Soviet sniper who killed fifty-nine people, including twelve soldiers during the Battle of Vilnius. Shanina joined the army after her brother died in 1941 and opted to be a marksman on the front line. Praised for her shooting accuracy, Shanina was capable of precisely hitting enemy personnel and making doublets (two target…
Terry Fox was a Canadian athlete, philanthropist, and cancer research champion whose incredible willpower turned a personal tragedy into a national cause. Fox lost his right leg to cancer in 1980 and then set out on a long marathon across the country to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Even though his voyage was cut short, his legacy lives…
Michael Rockefeller, a promising young ethnographer, went missing in the southern coast of New Guinea in November 1961. People were very interested in his disappearance, not just because he was the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in history, but also because of the alarming rumors that came after. He was officially reported dead by drowning,…
There are so many fast-food signage that you can’t ignore them as you drive through any big American metropolis. But these drive-thrus weren’t always a frequent sight at every highway stop. They began off like your neighborhood pizza business, with small beginnings. The early fast-food places were very different from what you see now. A lot of the time, the…
Ann-Margret Olsson, better known as Ann-Margret, became a huge movie star with a unique mix of ability, charm, and beauty. She was born in Sweden and grew up in the US, and her magnetic presence in the entertainment world drew many in. But it wasn’t just her acting skills that made her a legend; it was her many talents as…
Juliane Koepcke, who was only 17 years old at the time, was the only person to survive LANSA Flight 508 on Christmas Eve 1971. The flight was going from Lima, Peru’s capital, to Panguana. After a lightning strike forced the plane to break apart in the air, Juliane fell 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) into the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest while still…