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Flashback

Each month, National Geographic features a photograph from our archives in Flashback. Browse through the galleries of historical images for a view into our past.

/flashback/2012/img/0612-wright-brothers-kitty-hawk-714.jpg /flashback/2012/img/0612-wright-brothers-kitty-hawk-60.jpg UP IN THE AIR Though Wilbur had piloted all the glider tests since the Wright brothers had started their flying project in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1900, Orville—junior by four years—finally got his chance in the fall of 1902. Wilbur helped launch him.
When their airplane was ready to fly a little more than a year later, the two tossed a coin to see who would pilot. Wilbur won—but his attempt ended in less than four seconds. Three days later, when the damage from Wilbur's try had been fixed, it was Orville's turn. The younger brother's stab at sustained, controlled, free flight succeeded, and “the flying problem,” as the brothers called it, was solved.
—Johnna Rizzo]]> /flashback/2012/img/0512-volcanic-mud-baths-714.jpg /flashback/2012/img/0512-volcanic-mud-baths-60.jpg HOT STUFF Bathers bask in geothermal mud at a spa in Iceland in the early 1950s. The treatment is said to relax the muscles and soothe the skin. Present-day spas in the country continue the tradition, limiting sessions in the 100°F mud to 15 minutes and warning off those with heart or lung problems or allergies to nickel.

Writer Deena Clark covered the country in her story "Iceland Tapestry" for the November 1951 Geographic. She made no mention of mud baths but did share the packing list an official gave her prior to her trip: "'You'll need a passport, a cocktail dress, a dinner gown, a raincoat, galoshes—and a boundless capacity for astonishment!'... I found he was right," she noted, "especially about the last."
—Margaret G. Zackowitz]]> /flashback/2012/img/0412-empress-miniature-boat-714.jpg /flashback/2012/img/0412-empress-miniature-boat-60.jpg MODEL CITIZEN At London's Kensington Gardens, every Sunday morning in 1953 marked departure time for the Empress of Britain—in miniature. Modelmaker (and weekday bus driver) Alfred Kidd based his 93-pound steam-powered ship on the namesake Canadian ocean liner sunk by a Nazi torpedo in 1940. The vessel took Kidd four years to build, working an average of three hours a day. "While other folks are wrapped up in scarves and overcoats against the cold winds," say notes accompanying the photograph, "Alfred Kidd, coatless, is active and happy as any schoolboy as he sets the course for his model and runs round to meet it on the other side of the Round Pond."
—Margaret G. Zackowitz]]> /flashback/2012/img/0312-austrian-treasures-714.jpg /flashback/2012/img/0312-austrian-treasures-60.jpg SHOW HORNS Centuries-old vessels made of narwhal tusk (from left), rhinoceros horn, and a stony stomach accretion called a bezoar were among Austria's treasures—part of Nazi caches stashed across that country—touring world museums after World War II. Notes from Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art, where 875,173 people viewed the exhibit in the winter of 1949, say the works "were lent by the Austrian Government in gratitude to the American people for the rescue of works of art from the salt mines in Upper Austria." Today these vessels reside in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, where they're slated to go on display this December.
—Margaret G. Zackowitz]]> /flashback/2012/img/0212-pointers-portholes-714.jpg /flashback/2012/img/0212-pointers-portholes-60.jpg THE HOLE THING Pointers named Tyree and Skeeter poke through portholes in a Plymouth. Notes accompanying the photograph—which was published in a 1958 National Geographic book about dogs—say the animals' owner, E. D. Todd of Victoria, British Columbia, installed the openings in the trunk "to give dogs light and air when he went driving." Though probably not the safest arrangement for the pets in case of accident, it likely did cut down on the dog hairs in the car's back seat. Their coats may be short and slick, but pointers can be prodigious shedders.
—Margaret G. Zackowitz]]> /flashback/2012/img/0112-byrd-dogs-714.jpg /flashback/2012/img/0112-byrd-dogs-60.jpg BYRD DOGS Puppies pull a play sledge for the amusement of supply officer George Black during Richard E. Byrd's first Antarctic expedition. They were the offspring of the 94 dogs originally brought along for transport on the journey—and would soon be the youngest residents of a part of the camp called Dog Town. "Oh Lord, all the perfumes in France couldn't have rid Dog Town of its gamy aroma," wrote Byrd in a book about his travels, Exploring With Byrd. (This photograph ran in his August 1930 account of the 1928-30 Antarctic trip for National Geographic.) "The air in the tunnels was thick enough not only to be cut with a knife; spiced with a dash of garlic from the bulbs that hung over Noville's door, it could have been served as pemmican."
—Margaret G. Zackowitz]]>