Back In The Good Old Days

Men carry a car down a path in an area only accessible by foot in Nepal in 1951.

Spectators come to see the ceremony as a part of the Panama Canal is completed in 1910.

A performer wears a special headpiece during a masquerade in Nigeria in 1948.

Workers installing concrete pipes near Boise, Idaho, US in 1941.

Officials and royals oversee the oilfields at Campina, Romania in 1930.

Danish born Queen Alexandra of the UK wearing the Dagmar Necklace and other jewels in London, England in 1896.

A girl does a trick on her horse for a circus act somewhere in the US in 1937.

Here is another one from 1938.

The first Waffle House? - circa 1900-1916.

The Two Girls Waffle House was located in the tent city on the north side of Ship Creek in what is now Anchorage, Alaska.

An evening at home - date unknown.

1916 4th of July Parade, Front Street, Nome Alaska.

Circa 1914 Rural Mail Delivery

Circa 1925 Pumping gasoline

1906 Detroit Opera House

Circa 1914 José Doroteo Arango Arámbula (Pancho Villa)

Circa 1917 Old General Store

Circa 1888 This photo, called “The Cow Boy,” was taken by former miner John C. H. Grabill, is still considered to be one of the most realistic depictions of cowboys. Notice the leather chaps and the cloth neck wrap he’s wearing to keep cool.

Circa 1913 Cincinnati Street Car

Bea Arthur (nee Bernice Frankel) (1922-2009)

Bea served as a SSgt, USMC 1943-45 during WW II. After enlisting, she was assigned as typist at Marine HQ in Wash DC, then air stations in VA and NC. Best remembered for her title role in the TV series "Maude" and as Dorothy in "Golden Girls".

Circa 1930 Lucille Ball

1924. Miss America - my, my - how our standards of beauty have changed!

John Fitzgerald Kennedy - as a boy.

Emily Todd Helm was Mary Todd Lincoln's half-sister. In 1856 she married Benjamin Helm, a Confederate general. After Helm's death in 1863 Emily Helm passed through Union Lines to visit her sister in the White House. This caused great consternation in the Northern newspapers. Emily Helm took an oath of loyalty to the Union and was granted amnesty.

Three days before his 19th birthday, George H.W. Bush became the youngest aviator in the US Navy.

President Bush became what he believed to be the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy - and he was at the time of his commissioning. I also believed that, but have learned differently.

For years, the former President, a TBM Avenger torpedo bomber pilot, thought he was the youngest Naval Aviator of the war, but Chuck Downey, of Poplar Grove, Illinois, has the President beat by 11 days, a fact the President has since acknowledged.

Downey was born Aug. 2, 1924, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy on July 16, 1943. He earned his Wings of Gold at the tender age of 18 years, 11 months and 14 days and later flew SB2C Helldiver dive bombers off the carrier U.S.S. Ticonderoga. You can read more about Mr. Downey at The Youngest Naval Aviator of WWII

NOTE:Mr. Downey passed away on February 19, 2016.

Washington, D.C., circa 1919.

Walter Reed Hospital flu ward. One of the very few images in Washington area photo archives documenting the influenza contagion of 1918-1919, which killed over 500,000 Americans and tens of millions around the globe. Most victims succumbed to bacterial pneumonia following influenza virus infection.