Auteur: pdbfoto

The Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii was attacked by 184 Japanese bombers on the morning of December 7, 1941. During this first wave of attacks, the Japanese targeted docked battleships and some military airfields were also attacked. After the first wave of attacks, another 54 bombers and 80 dive bombers arrived to finish the job.

Scientist Nikola Tesla has entered the history books (among many other things) as the inventor of the first functional induction motor.

The British Egyptologist and archaeologist Howard Carter (1873-1939) made the discovery of his life in November 1922. The Egyptologist – who is financially supported by Lord Carnarvon (1866-1923) – has been searching for the tomb of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings for ten years.

Photography came to the ordinary man and woman from the end of the nineteenth century. That this happened was largely due to George Eastman, the inventor of the film roll and founder of the Kodak company. With the slogan ‘you press the button, we do the rest’, his company started selling photo cameras to the general public.

The French biologist Louis Boutan made a name for himself by taking photos underwater.
He started this in 1893.

In the Black Hills near Keystone (South Dakota) the heads of four American presidents have been carved. About 400 workers worked from 1927 until the end of October 1931 to construct the memorial that became known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. The photo above makes it clear that this was not a harmless job.

The photo was taken in March 1857, during the inauguration of James Buchanan, the only president who did not give the American people a First Lady. Buchanan was single.

Bookmobile from Newcastle

Created by Léon Foucault and Hippolyte Fizeau

The world was still reeling from the assassination of John F Kennedy when photographer Robert H Jackson was on hand to catch the decisive moment (Cartier-Bresson would be proud) that a vigilante idea of justice was metered out to the man who had changed the course of history. What’s striking in the image is the incongruity of all. It almost looks like a normal crowded scene of people, but for Oswald grimacing and the assassin, Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby holding a gun. The photo won a Pulitzer Prize for its author. Ruby was tried for murder, but appealed his conviction. He died before the start of a new trial. The power of the image lives on though.

Capturing a moment of incredible individual bravery, Jeff Widener’s photo of a single protestor facing down a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 became a symbol of defiance against oppression.
The photo earned Widener worldwide acclaim and nomination for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. The high vantage point of the image showed the scale of the unidentified man’s bravery, who was holding two shopping bags, grounding the act in the everyday.
Taken from his hotel window after a stray rock hit him in the head during a mob scene on the Chang-An Boulevard the previous day, Widener almost didn’t capture the famous image and had to borrow a roll of film from an Australian tourist staying in the hotel.

The Beatles were the biggest band in the world as the end of the sixties approached, but were coming to their Indian Summer by the time of their penultimate album, Abbey Road, when Scottish photographer Macmillan was hired for the shoot, after being introduced to the band by Yoko Ono.

Photographed outside the Beatles’ studio, Macmillan perched on a stepladder in the middle of Abbey Road and took six pictures of the Beatles crossing the street, with a policeman on hand to control traffic. One of those images would become synonymous with the Fab Four and would be seen the world over.

The anonymous location of a crossing in the quiet north London neighbourhood of St. John’s Wood has become a pilgrimage for tourists to this day, highlighting the impact that the photo has had on devoted pop fans for over 50 years.

Marilyn Monroe’s star remains as high today, as it did in 1954 when photographer Robert Shaw arranged a publicity shot for the film Seven Year Itch outside the Trans-Lux Theatre on Lexington Avenue, at around 2am.

Despite the late hour, crowds gathered to watch one of Hollywood’s most adored sex symbols cement her image. The photo is synonymous with Monroe’s image as a contemporary Aphrodite and an icon of beauty and glamor, but it proved too much for her then husband, Joe DiMaggio, who was there and became enraged with jealousy. They divorced weeks later.

Portraying a U.S. Navy sailor kissing a stranger on Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day) in Times Square at the end of World War II, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photo has become one of the most recognisable and imitated photos of the 20th century. The couple in the photo remained anonymous for years, before a 2016 book revealed them to be George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman.