Horse-drawn fire engine racing to a fire. The era of the fire horse lasted roughly fifty years stretching from the end of the Civil War until the end of 1915 @facethenation

First ever video footage of New York fire brigade, 1893 🚒

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When the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in 1917, the first thing they did was to start destroying monuments to the tsars and replace them many times over with monuments to Communist revolutionary heroes and influential socialist thinkers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Vladimir Lenin initiated a plan of "Monumental propaganda", and according to this strategy, numerous monuments became important means to propagate revolutionary ideas.

The earliest monuments of Lenin's Plan appeared on the streets and squares of Moscow and Saint Petersburg in time for the first anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7, 1918. From 1918 – 1921 in Moscow alone over 25 sculptural monuments were set up and more than 15 monuments were erected in Saint Petersburg. Still, due to the use of inexpensive materials, most monuments haven’t survived.

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Lenin speaks at the opening of the monument to Marx and Engels on November 7, 1918

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A car mounted pedestrian catcher. The shovel-like contraption fixed to the front of a car was designed to reduce the number drunk pedestrians killed on Paris's busy roads in 1924 @facethenation

A trial of a protective net attached to the front of an automobile for the safety of any pedestrians the car might attack

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One of the strangest craft of the 1950's, the Avrocar VZ-9 was the result of a Canadian effort to develop a supersonic, vertical takeoff and landing fighter-bomber. However, its circular shape gave it the appearance of a “flying saucer” out of science fiction movies of the period.

When it was discovered that the VZ-9 could barely get off the ground and would not be able to operate at high altitude, the U.S. Army evaluated it as a hovercraft to carry troops across swamps. It was here that the nickname Avrocar was coined as being more appropriate. The flying saucer was more of a skimming saucer, with a top speed said to be less than forty miles per hour, making it slower than an army truck. Helicopters were more practical for flying troops over swamps. The project was cancelled in 1961.

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The Avrocar VZ-9 was developed by Avro Canada as a top secret black project for the U.S. Army and Air Force, but the flying saucer shaped aircraft was a failure

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Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, meeting at the "Big Three" Tehran Conference around December 1, 1943 @facethenation

The Tehran was a strategy meeting of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill from Nov 28 and Dec 1, 1943. It was the first of the World War II conferences of the "Big Three" Allied leaders

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US marines watch a test explosion of an American atom bomb, 1952. Over 2000 marines took part in the tests @facethenation

US marines take part in a tactical exercise a few seconds after an atomic bomb. Many soldiers who were present were exposed to high levels of radiation

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Not long ago, there were no galaxies far, far away. In fact, less than a century ago, many scientists believed there was just one galaxy, the Milky Way. All that changed, however, on December 30, 1924, when astronomer Edwin Hubble announced he had evidence that the Milky Way galaxy was just one of the many galaxies in an ever expanding universe.

Discovering that our galaxy wasn’t alone was just the beginning for Hubble. He continued measuring distances and velocities in deep space, finding that the further apart galaxies are from each other, the faster they move away from one another. His findings, published in 1929, led to the widely accepted notion that the universe is expanding. Albert Einstein personally thanked Hubble for the support his findings gave to his theory of relativity.

Earlier, in 1917, Albert Einstein had found that his newly developed theory of general relativity indicated that the universe must be either expanding or contracting. Unable to believe what his own equations were telling him, Einstein introduced a cosmological constant to the equations to avoid this "problem". When Einstein learned of Hubble's redshifts, he immediately realized that the expansion predicted by General Relativity must be real, and in later life he said that changing his equations was "the biggest blunder of his life".

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Albert Einstein with Edwin Hubble, in 1931, looking through the lens of the 100-inch telescope 🔭 through which Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1924

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Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered the antibiotic penicillin in 1928, these natural inhibitors of microbial growth have revolutionized medicine and saved countless lives @facethenation

Fleming returned to his lab from vacation and noticed mold growing in a petri dish. There were no bacteria in the area around the mold because something in the mold was killing them

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A monowheel is one big wheel with rider and engine inside its circumference. The first monowheel designs appeared as early as 1869.

In the early 1900's, a group of American inventors attempted to develop a propeller-driven monowheel. Monowheels were also built in Europe. The Italian inventor Davide Cislaghi designed a monowheel with a tilting outer wheel for turning. He received a French patent for the device in 1924 and a British patent in 1927. Historical accounts indicate that he went on to commercialize production of his design under the Motoruota name.

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Italian inventor Davide Cislaghi driving his monowheel motorcycle in France, 1935

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In 1864 Otto von Bismarck initiated decisive wars with Denmark, Austria and France to unite 39 independent German states under Prussian leadership @facethenation

Germany became a modern, unified nation under the leadership of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck, 1890

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