Historical images - Images that made history

[Carlos Thin]

Frances Virginia Harris, from Georgia in the US at the end of the 19th Century
View attachment 7666862

The "I can fix her" eyes go back a long way.

The Japanese coined this three billennia ago, the "sanpaku eyes" that tell of disaster.

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

The Japanese coined this three billennia ago, the "sanpaku eyes" that tell of disaster.
View attachment 7667106

She actually lived until 1971, had eight kids, and is buried in Florida, so probably accurate.

 

[AnOminous]

The "I can fix her" eyes go back a long way.

Somehow, "fixing" her always involves a hot beef injection.

Picture of a dude notorious for such hot beef injections, who was nearly impossible to kill.

 

[Soso]

Crossing the 38th Parallel during the Korean War

 

[Nicholas II of Russia]

Nicholas II goofing off with Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia, and Anna Vyrubova, 1914.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Lumber

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

1980's Publix employees:

 

[Soso]

The funeral of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie as they were laid to rest. May they rest in peace. My great grandfather was very saddened by their deaths from what my great uncle told me.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Hulk Hogan with the Power Rangers

 

[𒀭Δημιουργός χάος]

Taken in 1908, a photo reveals two of Menkaure’s triad sculptures soon after their discovery at Menkaure’s Valley Temple in Giza.

 

[Soso]

Funeral of the last Korean Emperor. He died underneath the rule of Japan, his country no longer free. There are rumors that he was poisoned by Japan, later sparking the indepdence movement.

 

[Ventrue]

The Final Portrait of Marie Antoinette: 1793

At the end of Marie Antoinette's life she was made the subject by the works of three artists, two of which sketched her when she was alive, Alexandre Kucharski during her imprisonment and Jacques-Louis David during her transportation to the guillotine. Madame Tussaud made a death mask from wax with her head after the execution.

Spoiler: Marie Antoinette in the Temple Tower by Alexandre Kucharski, 1793

The last portrait of Marie Antoinette was by the former royal court painter, Alexandre Kucharski.

Marie Antoinette posed for a short time after the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793. At this time letters were still exchanged with the royal prisoners and discreet visits to the Temple could be arranged; it is possible that Kucharski was himself somehow involved in an abortive attempt at flight orchestrated by the Queen's femme de chambre Madame Reynier de Jarjayes, for the night of 9th-10th March 1793.

The jail administer, Jean-Baptiste Michonis who was subsequently arrested and interrogated at the beginning of September 1793 admitted allowing entry to "various people", among them a "painter". Marie Antoinette herself explained that Kucharski had simply come to paint a pastel - his Polish name was so badly transcribed that he was not identified at the time.

According to the Prince d'Arenberg, Kucharski saw Marie Antoinette twice, on both occasions incognito. (The legend is unsubstantiated that he disguised himself as a National Guardsman, a ruse which was certainly used by the artist Laurent Dabos to enter the Temple to paint Louis XVI and his son, Louis-Charles.

Significantly, on April 1, 1793 the Commune decreed that no-one guarding the Temple or anything else could engage in drawing under pain of arrest.) The dating suggests, therefore, that the picture was sketched between the end of January and the beginning of March, then finished off at a later point in Kucharski's studio, rue du Coq-Héron.


Given the circumstances, drawing two sketches and relying on memory, the painting is understandably poor in quality when compared to Kucharski's previous work of Marie Antoinette from 1790 and 1791.

Spoiler: Queen Marie Antoinette, 1790 and 1791

Spoiler: Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine by Jacques-Louis David, October, 16 1793

She was transported to the execution site in an open cart, on a rope leash, wearing a plain white dress, with her hair shorn and hands tied behind her back. This is exactly how she was depicted by David, a supporter of the French Revolution.

This drawing also shows the composure the queen maintained during her final moments, despite the humiliation she faced. Marie Antoinette was executed at the Place de la Révolution on October 16, 1793.

Her last words are recorded as, "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès" or "Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose", after accidentally stepping on her executioner's shoe.

Spoiler: Marie Antionette's death mask by Madame Tussaud, (Image taken possibly, 1906)

Over the course of the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud ended up making death masks of revolutionaries and royalists, including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, her student Madame Élisabeth (Louis XVI’s sister), and even Jean-Paul Marat, just hours after he was stabbed in the bath in 1793.

Legend has it that some heads were brought to her directly after their execution, while others she procured by visiting the cemetery at night. She would then make plaster casts of the heads and use these to make her famed waxworks of the movers and shakers of the revolution. These would then go on display at the Salon, where intellectuals would discuss the latest developments.

Madame Tussaud's original death mask of Marie Antionette has long since been missing and only reproductions exist. It is uncertain if the death mask in the picture is the original or a reproduction of the original, the date of the image is possibly 1906.

Spoiler: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

The phrase "let them eat cake" is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence that she said it. This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiographical work Les Confessions, finished in 1767 and published in 1782.

The quote from the book is, "Enfin Je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande Princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche". ("Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: 'Let them eat brioche'.")

Rousseau ascribes these words to a "great princess", but the purported writing date precedes Marie Antoinette's arrival in France on 1770.

In reality, she was a teetotaler who ate frugally. She was notorious among the royal court for her intense modesty. Marie Antoinette had a gambling problem when she was young. She loved to entertain and had wonderful parties. She liked to dance the night away, but settled down when the children started to come. She had a lively sense of humour. Her clothes, were magnificent; volumes could and have been written about Marie Antoinette’s style. She did gradually introduce simpler fashions to France.

In pre-revolutionary France it was for the King and the Queen to give an example of almsgiving. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette took this duty seriously and throughout their reign did what they could to help the needy. During the fireworks celebrating the marriage of the young prince and princess in May 1770, there was a stampede in which 132 people were killed. Louis and Marie Antoinette gave all of their private spending money for a year to relieve the suffering of the victims and their families.

They became very popular with the common people as a result, which was reflected in the adulation with which they were received when the Dauphin took his wife to Paris on her first “official” visit in June 1773. Marie Antoinette’s reputation for sweetness and mercy became even more entrenched in 1774, when as the new Queen she asked that the people be relieved of a tax called “The Queen’s belt,” customary at the beginning of each reign. “Belts are no longer worn,” she quipped. It was the onslaught of revolutionary propaganda that would eventually destroy her reputation.

The King and Queen were patrons of the Maison Philanthropique, a society which helped the aged, blind and widows. The queen taught her daughter Madame Royale to wait upon peasant children, to sacrifice her Christmas gifts so as to buy fuel and blankets for the destitute, and to bring baskets of food to the sick. Marie Antoinette started a home for unwed mothers at the royal palace. She adopted three poor children to be raised with her own, as well overseeing the upbringing of several needy children, whose education she paid for, while caring for their families. She brought several peasant families to live on her farm at Trianon, building cottages for them. There was food for the hungry distributed every day at Versailles, at the King’s command.

During the famine of 1787-88, the royal family sold much of their flatware to buy grain for the people, and themselves ate the cheap barley bread in order to be able to give more to the hungry. There were many other things they did; what I mentioned here is taken from Vincent Cronin’s Louis and Antoinette, as well as Marguerite Jallut’s and Philippe Huisman’s biography of the Marie Antoinette. The royal couple’s almsgiving stopped only with their incarceration in the Temple in August 1792, for then they had nothing left to give but their lives.

Marie Antoinette would likely have been perfectly happy to have played only a ceremonial part as queen. But Louis' weakness forced her to take a more dominant role—for which the French people could not forgive her. Cartoons depicted her as a harpy trampling the constitution. She was blamed for bankrupting the country, when others in the high-spending, lavish court bore equal responsibility. Ultimately, she was condemned simply for being Louis' wife and a symbol of tyranny. Certainly she became a scapegoat for nearly everything that was wrong with France's absolutist, dynastic system. But it's also clear that in their refusal to compromise, Louis and Marie Antoinette lost everything.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Today is the 111st anniversary of the start of World War I

 

[Soso]

A camera gift given to the last Empress of China. She always loved western items and was into western culture when she learned about it from her American tutors.

 

[Carlos Thin]

The phrase "let them eat cake" is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence that she said it. This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiographical work Les Confessions, finished in 1767 and published in 1782.

The quote from the book is, "Enfin Je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande Princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche". ("Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: 'Let them eat brioche'.")

Rousseau ascribes these words to a "great princess", but the purported writing date precedes Marie Antoinette's arrival in France on 1770.

In reality, she was a teetotaler who ate frugally. She was notorious among the royal court for her intense modesty. Marie Antoinette had a gambling problem when she was young. She loved to entertain and had wonderful parties. She liked to dance the night away, but settled down when the children started to come. She had a lively sense of humour. Her clothes, were magnificent; volumes could and have been written about Marie Antoinette’s style. She did gradually introduce simpler fashions to France.

In pre-revolutionary France it was for the King and the Queen to give an example of almsgiving. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette took this duty seriously and throughout their reign did what they could to help the needy. During the fireworks celebrating the marriage of the young prince and princess in May 1770, there was a stampede in which 132 people were killed. Louis and Marie Antoinette gave all of their private spending money for a year to relieve the suffering of the victims and their families.

They became very popular with the common people as a result, which was reflected in the adulation with which they were received when the Dauphin took his wife to Paris on her first “official” visit in June 1773. Marie Antoinette’s reputation for sweetness and mercy became even more entrenched in 1774, when as the new Queen she asked that the people be relieved of a tax called “The Queen’s belt,” customary at the beginning of each reign. “Belts are no longer worn,” she quipped. It was the onslaught of revolutionary propaganda that would eventually destroy her reputation.

The King and Queen were patrons of the Maison Philanthropique, a society which helped the aged, blind and widows. The queen taught her daughter Madame Royale to wait upon peasant children, to sacrifice her Christmas gifts so as to buy fuel and blankets for the destitute, and to bring baskets of food to the sick. Marie Antoinette started a home for unwed mothers at the royal palace. She adopted three poor children to be raised with her own, as well overseeing the upbringing of several needy children, whose education she paid for, while caring for their families. She brought several peasant families to live on her farm at Trianon, building cottages for them. There was food for the hungry distributed every day at Versailles, at the King’s command.

During the famine of 1787-88, the royal family sold much of their flatware to buy grain for the people, and themselves ate the cheap barley bread in order to be able to give more to the hungry. There were many other things they did; what I mentioned here is taken from Vincent Cronin’s Louis and Antoinette, as well as Marguerite Jallut’s and Philippe Huisman’s biography of the Marie Antoinette. The royal couple’s almsgiving stopped only with their incarceration in the Temple in August 1792, for then they had nothing left to give but their lives.

Bitch was the Princess Diana of her day. Her consort proved to be a disaster though. Some people prove best in the background, it seems.

 

[Picklechu]

View attachment 7697557View attachment 7697627
A camera gift given to the last Empress of China. She always loved western items and was into western culture when she learned about it from her American tutors.

It's too bad that she had to marry a proto-lolcow like Puyi, then descend into opium addiction and cray-cray. She died in a communist prison camp after she was captured following Japan's defeat and the fall of Manchukuo.

 

[Soso]

It's too bad that she had to marry a proto-lolcow like Puyi, then descend into opium addiction and cray-cray. She died in a communist prison camp after she was captured following Japan's defeat and the fall of Manchukuo.

I can't help yet feel bad about her. She really didn't have much of a choice unlike the Manchu princess who willingly informed Japan everything, and there are some things saying that she absolutely did not want to be in Manchukuo. One of the monarchs I feel the most pity for. In a better timeline, she could have fled to America and enjoyed the American music she loved that her tutors showed her.

Thread tax:

Spoiler: [Gore] The assassination of the last Korean Empress

The last Empress of Korea defiantly looks at her Japanese assassins

The official picture of the Empress Myeongseong. Stressed by Japanese influence rising in Korea, she repeatedly requested help from Russia which was going through it's own struggles at the time.

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

Johnny Horton singing his song "Johnny Reb" to the last living Confederate Civil War veteran:

 

[Sirius]

Columbine High School's library on the night of April 20th, 1999. At that point there were still computers running and bodies left to rot inside.

Zoomed in version of the first image. Note the broken windows, this was due to Harris exchanging gunfire with law enforcement shortly before killing himself.