PODCAST

Photo of the Day Podcast

Brenda Elthon

A little history. look.substack.com

history

All Episodes

1:53

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/05/01

It is May 1918.Eight artists have been made US Army captains and have arrived in France.Their job is to prepare artistic scenes from World War I for distribution to American magazines.These works should be historically accurate but also inspiring.The War Department wants to boost public support for the war.These combat artists produced seven hundred works of art but their commanding officers didn’t like them.“They do not serve either a military purpose or propaganda purposes,” said one, noting that

5:00

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/30

Sometimes they tell the whole story.Leonardo da Vinci drew a diagram and specifications for a flying machine, which he called a ‘helical air screw,’ in 1493.The machine measured about fifteen feet in diameter and was to have been made out of linen, reed and wire.528 years later, in February 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars, carrying the Ingenuity helicopter in its belly.The Ingenuity flew seventy-five flights across the Martian surface during the next three years.*****

3:44

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/29

It is September 13, 1900.The storm has passed, and Galveston — devastated and in ruin — is cut off.Relief supplies are pouring into the wharf at nearby Texas City, where boats are ferrying them across Galveston Bay.Worried men who wanted to search for family members in Galveston are allowed on these boats, but not women.So, Winifred Black has dressed in men’s clothing and talked her way onto a relief boat.She will be the first journalist to reach Galveston and her reports will rivet the nation. Get

2:43

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/28

It is July 18, 1863.650 Black men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry have mounted an assault on Fort Wagner, the Confederate stronghold in Charleston Harbor.The assault will end in a costly failure.At the end of the day, 270 men of the 54th had been killed, wounded, captured or gone missing. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

4:51

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/26

New Zealanders have blocked temporarily the advance of German invasion forces in Greece’s Thermopylae Pass.It is the site of the battle 2,400 years ago between the Persian Empire and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Leonidas of Sparta.The New Zealand effort has enabled the British Expeditionary Force to evacuate most of its troops and equipment for repositioning in Crete. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

3:39

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/25

It is the afternoon of September 17, 1862.Federal infantrymen from New York and Pennsylvania have received orders to cross a bridge on Antietam Creek in southern Maryland and capture the high ground on the other side.That ground is held by men from Georgia who are arrayed there in fortified positions and are prepared to hold it. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

3:00

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/24

It is July 1, 1934.President Franklin Roosevelt and his sons have boarded the USS Houston in Annapolis harbor for a one-month cruise to the Virgin Islands, Haiti, Panama and Hawaii.The trip will enable FDR to meet local officials, tour US military facilities and be seen by large crowds of everyday people.It comes at a difficult time.The domestic economy, deep in the grasp of the Great Depression, has occupied much of FDR’s time.But the rise of militarism in Europe and Japan cannot be ignored. Get

2:51

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/23

When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, Glenn White was the seventeen-year-old film projector operator at the Strand Theater in Emporia, Kansas.He dropped out of high school, enlisted in the Marines and deployed to the South Pacific.Glenn’s company landed on the southern coast of Betio Island, a part of the Tarawa atoll in the South Pacific where the Japanese had an airbase, on the night of November 21, 1943.They fought the Japanese for twenty-four hours, pushing them back from the beach and reaching

2:42

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/22

A three-year famine struck Sweden in 1867.The onset year became known as the Year of Great Weakness.It was the last famine in Europe to arise from Nature.It hit hardest in Sweden’s north.There, the winter’s snow did not melt until late June, delaying the spring planting of crops.Then, the autumn cold came early, ending the growing season prematurely.Food was scarce and starvation was rampant. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

2:40

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/22

It is March 7, 1941.The White House has received a letter from a young boy living in Augusta, Arkansas.“Dear President,I am a little country boy eight years old.I have been going to school three years, and I am now in the third grade.I got one spanking when I was in the first grade for talking. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

4:46

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/19

As Allied armies move deep into Germany, US officials say three million German soldiers have been killed, wounded or captured since D-Day, fulfilling General Eisenhower’s prediction that the Allies would break the German army within a year of the Normandy landings.Magdeburg, Leipzig and Nuremberg are within the Allies’ grasp and pockets of German resistance behind the front lines are being mopped up.German radio reports say Soviet forces are within fourteen miles of Berlin. Get full access to Photo

2:49

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/18

It is April 14, 1906.President Theodore Roosevelt has traveled to the grounds of the US Capitol where he will lay the cornerstone of the Cannon House Office Building.He had been reelected to office in a landslide sixteen months before as the champion of progressive reforms intended to regulate industry and mitigate the effects of industrial capitalism on individuals and communities.Roosevelt intends to confront the Gilded Age robber barons and he warns of a future under their control.These are words

2:08

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/17

It is July 24, 1864.James Burgan is a soldier with the 31st Indiana Volunteer Infantry.He is in a Federal camp near Atlanta and is writing to his sister, Cassie.From his letter:‘Those left living of the army had the bloodiest fight on the 22nd of July there has been during the campaign.Our loss was about fifteen hundred.The rebs’ loss was about four more thousand.The fight was about three miles from here. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

2:39

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/16

It is the summer of 1941.Helmut is a seventeen-year-old high school student who speaks German, Russian and Ukrainian.He lives in a village in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast of eastern Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union.Hitler has launched his invasion of the Soviet Union, forcing the Soviet army to retreat from eastern Europe.German troops have followed in their wake and have arrived in Helmut’s village.They have found him and have assigned him to work as an interpreter for a unit of the

4:16

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/15

It is Apr0il 15, 1912.President Taft and his wife have gone to an evening theater performance.The afternoon papers had been reassuring.‘All passengers and crew aboard the Titanic have survived the collision with the iceberg,’ they said.That would include Taft’s friend and White House aide, Archie.But as Taft sat in the theater, waiting for the curtain to go up, a White House messenger arrived.Within minutes, Taft left the theater for the telegraph office in the Executive Office Building and began

2:08

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/14

It is May 17, 1943.Ten US aircraft have taken off from southeast England and are headed across the English Channel to bomb the steel factory at Ijmuiden, a coastal city near Amsterdam.Their mission was doomed from the start.As the aircraft crossed the coastline, they encountered heavy barrages of German anti-aircraft fire and they all went down, one by one.Thirty-seven fliers were lost, including Norris Calkins, the twenty-one-year-old bombardier on board the “Draggin’ Lady." Get full access to

5:15

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/12

President Roosevelt died yesterday in Warm Springs, Georgia, from a cerebral hemorrhage.Death came suddenly and without warning, depriving the President from witnessing triumphs he has long sought: the Allies’ taking of Berlin, and the opening of the United Nations conference on April 25th.Roosevelt, age 63, had gone to Warm Springs at the end of March to rest after the recent Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin.Mrs. Roosevelt will fly to Warm Springs to accompany the President’s body on the

2:22

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/11

It is Tuesday evening, April 11, 1865.All of Washington is bathed in light from lamps and candles set in windows.Flags fly from balconies and upper-story windows.At street corners, bonfires blaze.Near the river, rockets fire into the skies. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

3:25

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/10

It is May 22, 1849.Alonzo Delano, a storekeeper from Ottawa, Illinois, is in a wagon train in the midst of the prairie which, in eighteen years, will become the state of Nebraska.It is the seventh week of his overland trip to California, where he hopes the climate will cure his tuberculosis.From Alonzo’s memoir:A little before noon we saw the grass-covered sand hills which bounded the valley of the Platte [River]. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

3:14

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/04/09

It is April 9, 1865.President Lincoln is aboard the steamer River Queen, returning to Washington from a two-week visit to General Grant’s headquarters in City Point, Virginia.It had been a tumultuous visit. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

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Photo of the Day Podcast

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