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Photo Galleries
1919: The Year In Photographs (A Look Back At Life 100 Years Ago)
December 28, 2019 07:00 GMT
By
Lucie Steinzova
A Bolshevik uprising in Berlin, civil war in Russia, the first nonstop transatlantic crossing by air, and daily commutes by zeppelin. These seldom-seen images show some of the events and moments that helped to define life a century ago.
1
Donald C. Thompson (left), a photographer for Leslie's Weekly, and a man identified as Captain Kingmore of the U.S. Army, take moving pictures in Yekaterinburg in eastern Russia in subzero temperatures circa 1919.
2
Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is buried in Oyster Bay, New York, on January 8, 1919.
3
The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is seen during the January Uprising -- an abortive attempt by communists to seize power.
4
The 69th Division of the U.S. Army returns home from World War I.
5
The railway station square in Arras, France, scarred by war, as seen in February 1919.
6
Josef Stalin (left), Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin meet at the Communist Party's Eight Congress in Moscow in March 1919.
7
Actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin is seen in a still from Sunnyside, a 1919 silent short film he wrote, directed, and starred in.
8
The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., holds its annual Easter Egg Roll, with attendance reaching 55,000 people.
9
The thoroughbred Sir Barton, winner of the 44th Kentucky Derby, poses for a portrait in May 1919. Sir Barton was the first Triple Crown winner in 1916.
10
This photo offers a tantalizing glimpse of life in Afghanistan in May 1919. The story behind this picture, beyond the handwritten caption, is lost.
11
Aviation pioneers John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown crash-land their Vickers Vimy aircraft in a bog near a wireless station in Clifden, Ireland, on June 15, 1919, completing the first nonstop transatlantic flight.
12
A day at the beach in the summer of 1919. It's not clear where this photo was taken.
13
Refugees at an American Red Cross hospital in what is today North Macedonia in July 1919. The barefoot man on the right had just visited the bathhouse in the background. The others are waiting their turn. Bathing was compulsory to prevent the spread of typhus.
14
Allied leaders chat while meeting in Versailles for the peace treaty that officially ended World War I. (Left to right) British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.
15
American Red Cross supplies arrive in Pirot, Serbia, devastated by World War I, by oxcart in August 1919.
16
Leon Trotsky pays tribute to the victims of a bomb attack at the Moscow headquarters of the Communist Party on September 26, 1919. Anarchists and other leftists were blamed for killing 12 people and injuring 55.
17
The German airship Bodensee makes its daily flight from Berlin to Friedrichschafen in October 1919.
18
A detachment of Red Army soldiers marches to the front lines during the Russian Civil War in 1919.
19
Ukrainian peasants identify the body of a relative who was killed by the communists and exhumed after the area was captured by the White Army in November 1919.
20
Vendors, each with a full day's stock of food, wait for customers at a meager street market in Kavalla, northern Greece, in November 1919. So scarce was food in most parts of the Balkans that they sold potatoes and other vegetables by the piece and not by the basket.
21
Albert Einstein poses in his study in Berlin in 1919 when he was 40 years old. Although recognized in scientific circles, Einstein would become a household name only after receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
22
This American Red Cross photo is accompanied by a caption saying it was taken in so-called "Little Russia" in November 1919 and goes on to praise the hardiness and resourcefulness of Ukrainian peasants during World War I.
23
This picture shows the trials of an American Red Cross car that made the trip from Bucharest, Romania, across Bulgaria, to Pirot, Serbia, in November 1919 before the railroad was reconstructed. It was so cold the engine wouldn't work properly. Peasants helped push it uphill and it coasted down.
24
Eastman Kodak founder George Eastman (left) and Thomas Edison pose with their inventions in December 1919. Edison invented motion-picture equipment and Kodak invented roll film and the camera box, both of which helped to create the motion-picture industry.
25
A Christmas tree is seen in what appears to be a U.S. prison.
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Lucie Steinzova
Lucie Steinzova is the photo editor for RFE/RL.
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1919: The Year In Photographs (A Look Back At Life 100 Years Ago)
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