80 Fascinating Photos From The US Past You Need To See

During the 1940s, women played a vital role in shipbuilding across the Rust Belt as World War II created an urgent demand for industrial labor and thousands of men left for military service; in cities along the Great Lakes, women stepped into skilled positions as welders, riveters, electricians, and draftspeople, helping keep shipyards operating at full capacity. At the Toledo Shipbuilding Company in Ohio, women were an essential part of the workforce that constructed naval and Coast Guard vessels, including the icebreaker Mackinaw (WAGB-83), a massive and technologically advanced ship designed to keep Great Lakes shipping lanes open year-round for wartime transport of iron ore, coal, and other critical materials. Built with the combined efforts of male and female workers, the Mackinaw symbolized both industrial innovation and social change, demonstrating how women’s labor in Rust Belt shipyards directly supported the war effort while permanently expanding opportunities for women in American manufacturing.

In this picture, a two-year-old Franklin is unbreeched. Breeching” was the occasion when a small boy was dressed in trousers for the first time. Before this, young boys were often dressed in gowns or dresses until they first wore breeches, typically between the ages of two and eight.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, to James Roosevelt I and his second wife, Sara Ann Delano. James was 54 at the time, 27 years older than Sara, and his eldest child from his first marriage was actually older than his new wife.

Franklin grew up deeply privileged. He played tennis and golf, traveled frequently to Europe, and benefited from substantial family wealth on both sides, as well as his father’s successful business and political career. James often brought young Franklin along to meetings, including one with President Grover Cleveland. During that meeting, Cleveland famously told the boy, “My little man, I am making a strange wish for you. It is that you may never be President of the United States.”

But Franklin’s childhood wasn’t defined by privilege alone; it was also marked by affection. Though James was a reserved patriarch in the style of the era, he was more involved with his son than many men of his status. Sara, meanwhile, utterly doted on Franklin. Unlike many wealthy parents of the time, she personally educated and cared for him rather than relying entirely on servants. Franklin returned her devotion, and the two remained close throughout her life.

This upbringing shaped Franklin into an optimistic, confident young man, though one also insulated by privilege and lacking broader empathy early on. That perspective would only change after his later diagnosis with polio.

On January 11, 1937, striking General Motors workers battled Flint police at GM's Fisher Body No. 2 in a bloody night of fighting and a turning point in the Sit-Down Strike.

Known as the "Battle of the Running Bulls," the fight triggered the mobilization of the National Guard by Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy the next day.

"On Jan. 11, violence began outside of Fisher Body 2 when company police shut off the heat, locked the gate to the plant and removed the ladder used to supply food to the strikers," according to the book "The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37: Witnesses and Warriors."

"When the sit-downers forced the gate open, the company police called in the Flint police for help and they responded with tear gas and bullets," the book says.

Car parts and water from fire hoses were launched at the police. Law enforcement fired buckshot and tear gas at the strikers.

Fighting ended with strikers controlling the gates to the plant and with the police retreating. Governor Frank Murphy sent in the National Guard to maintain peace and order but refused to direct them to act with force against the workers.

"In the morning Chevrolet Avenue looked like a battlefield of the industrial age," recalled Victor Reuther. "Smashed and overturned vehicles, broken windowpanes, shattered bottles, stones, hinges, splintered picket signs, used tear-gas canisters, and everywhere the ice formed by the water that had served so effectively as a defensive weapon."

Published anonymously in Philadelphia, the work challenged British authority in plain language accessible to the average colonist.

His father, Lieutenant George Black, joined the 21st Indiana Volunteers with his son, William, accompanying him as the regiment’s drummer boy.

During the 1862 Battle of Baton Rouge, Confederates captured William and imprisoned him at Ship Island. Union troops eventually liberated the prisoners, leading to William’s discharge in September 1862. In February 1863, he re-enlisted and became the youngest Civil War soldier injured on active duty when a shell damaged his left hand and arm. He remained with his unit until he was mustered out of service in January 1866. His wartime drum was passed through generations of his family until it was eventually gifted to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum.

OwlEyes00: Fun fact - in 1936 FDR won South Carolina with 98.57 percent of the vote. Landon only received 1,646 of the almost 120,000 votes cast there. It's the most lopsided result in a contested state in any US presidential election (on a few occasions early in US history some states were completely uncontested, with only one candidate, who naturally got 100 percent of the vote).