PODCAST

Photo of the Day Podcast

Brenda Elthon

A little history. look.substack.com

history

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4:35

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/20

It is February 25, 1956, the last day of the annual Communist Party conference in Moscow.Fifteen hundred delegates from across the globe have gathered in a closed session to hear Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, deliver an unscheduled address.Stalin has been dead for three years.During his thirty-year rule, he was venerated as an all-knowing, all-powerful leader.His image was everywhere, and public recitations of his greatness filled Soviet media: Get full access to Photo of the Day at

5:02

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/19

Life in 1990.President George H.W. Bush, in his second year in office, is named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”Having launched the invasion of Panama in late 1989, Bush declares the operation a success with the detention of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, an operation which the UN and Organization for American States condemn as a violation of international law.Iraq invades Kuwait, annexes it as an Iraqi province, and establishes a puppet government there, setting the stage for the first

3:22

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/19

It is June 10, 1863.Former Yale senior Matthew Miller, from Galena, Illinois, is writing a letter to his aunt from Milliken’s Bend, Mississippi, where he commands a Federal unit of Black troops.Miller’s unit is one of several Federal units encamped there.Their mission is to guard a depot supplying Grant’s troops who are besieging Vicksburg fifteen miles away.Most of the troops guarding this Federal depot are Black men.Many of them were enslaved laborers until just recently.They have had little

4:25

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/17

Making cornbread.“ALREADY had the night completed ten Of winter's hours, and by his crowing had The winged sentinel announced the day, When Symilus the rustic husbandman Of scanty farm, solicitous aboutThe coming day's unpleasant emptiness,Doth slowly raise the limbs extended onHis pallet low, and doth with anxious handExplore the stilly darkness, groping forThe hearth which, being burnt, at length he finds. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

5:16

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/15

Reading the paper on February 15, 1943.With the crumbling of the German line in the Soviet Union, reports say Hitler has relinquished his role as the supreme commander of the German army.The job of planning Nazi military strategy in the east will be returned to field commanders, who have conditioned their acceptance on Hitler agreeing to the shortening of the German front and acknowledging responsibility for the ongoing German retreat.Hitler had assumed command in December 1941, telling the

2:38

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/14

Carl Sandburg gets it.Some of his words from 1936:The people will live on.The learning and blundering people will live on.They will be tricked and sold and again soldAnd go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,is a vast huddle with many units saying:“I earn my living. I make enough to get by and it takes all my time.“If I had more time I could do more for

4:25

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/13

Some thoughts on leaders and culture.Hitler had wanted to become a painter when he was young.But his drawings and paintings were mediocre, and he failed to gain entry into Vienna’s prestigious art school.He applied twice and they rejected him each time.Yet, Hitler nevertheless considered himself a preeminent authority on art and culture.And he recognized the power of art to mold public opinion.So, as he grabbed the reins of power, he used it. Get full access to Photo of the Day at

4:28

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/12

Life in 1961President Eisenhower, age 71, leaves public life, warning in his farewell speech to the nation of the military-industrial complex and its pervasive role in formulating US policy.President Kennedy, age 43, is in his first year as president.Kennedy executes plans begun during the Eisenhower administration for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba; but the invasion fails, further hardening relations between the US and the Soviet Union. Get full access to Photo of the Day at

4:14

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/11

It is March 20, 1912.Theodore Roosevelt, the former president, has been out of office for three years.Tonight, he is opening his campaign for reelection with a speech in Carnegie Hall.Three thousand people have come to see him.Political activists and social workers fill the balcony.And men and women in evening dress fill the main floor.As Roosevelt walks across the stage,the crowd fills the Hall with cheers of “Teddy, Teddy.”And when the cheers subside,Roosevelt makes an impassioned plea for social

4:14

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/10

It is January 1, 1942.A little book has been published, entitled “You Can’t Do Business With Hitler.”In simple terms, the book explains the folly of Charles Lindbergh and other “America First” isolationists who argue that America could survive and ‘do business’ in a Nazi-dominated world.The book’s author is Douglas Miller.He served as the commercial attaché in the US Embassy in Berlin for fourteen years, promoting American businesses in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power.At the time, American

5:36

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/08

Reading the paper on February 8, 1945.Washington, London and Moscow issued identical statements yesterday which said the “Big Three” Allied leaders, FDR, Churchill and Stalin, had reached ‘complete agreement’ on operations for the final phase of the war against Nazi Germany.They are meeting somewhere in the Black Sea area, reports say, and are now discussing plans for the postwar occupation of Germany, problems anticipated in liberated Europe, including fixing boundaries, and the establishment of a

2:55

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/07

It is April 1861 and America has been torn in two.Secession has culminated in the formation of the Confederate States of America.The South Carolina militia has fired upon the federal garrison at Fort Sumter.Northern states have answered President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteer soldiers in overwhelming numbers.They are on the march to Washington to defend the nation’s capital from Southern armies forming on the other side of the Potomac River.The poet Walt Whitman, a native New Yorker, was

3:40

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/06

It is August 10, 1921.Franklin Roosevelt and his family have spent the day sailing andswimming at the family’s vacation home on Canada’s Campobello Island.Franklin had tumbled out of his boat at one point during the daybut no one had thought much of it.But in the evening, Franklin’s legs began to ache, and he felt feverish.So, he went to bed early.The next morning, his fever had worsened,and he struggled to cross the hallway to reach the bathroom.Franklin’s left leg buckled under his weight. Get

4:15

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/05

It is March 28, 1945.US Navy vessels are in the midst of a seven-day bombardment of the Hagushi beaches of Okinawa in preparation for an amphibious assault there which will land sixty thousand American troops onshore by nightfall on April 1.The fleet of 1,300 naval vessels includes several minesweepers, whose job is to clear sea lanes to the beach landing zones.Don Panek serves on one of them, the minesweeper USS Revenge.Here is his diary entry for the day:“Everything came off smooth as usual and

6:23

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/04

When the ‘Queen of the Back Bay’ opened her namesake museum in Boston in 1903, she served champagne and doughnuts while the Boston Symphony Orchestra played.Infamous for wearing a white headband to the symphony on which she had written, ‘Oh, you Red Sox,” the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was the realization of a dream Isabella had shared with her beloved, departed husband, Jack.Isabella and Jack had traveled the world together for decades, amassing a stunning art collection.Having lost an infant

3:16

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/03

It is April 12, 1963.Dr. Martin Luther King is in the Birmingham, Alabama, jail.He has been arrested for leading a civil rights march in defianceof an injunction banning protest activity.During King’s incarceration, he will write a letter which will be consideredthe most important document of the civil rights era. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

5:06

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/02/01

Reading the paper on February 1, 1945.As American infantry continued their drive toward the German Siegfried Line of western defense yesterday, Soviet tanks and infantry smashed through Berlin’s outer defenses along a sixty-mile wide front in the east and are now within sixty-three miles of the Nazi capital. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

3:34

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/01/31

Some words from Walt Whitman:“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,Healthy, free, the world before me,The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,Strong and content I travel the open road. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

6:01

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/01/30

I"I was standing next to my mother as they were sorting us. The German came over and put me in the working group. But he noticed that I ran away, back to my mother. He stuck me in my arm with his bayonet and he said, 'You're in a concentration camp and you'd better behave or you'll be shot on the spot.' Then my mother marched away, and my father, and my five brothers. I never saw them again."For the next six months, Lili cleaned the camp toilets, subsisting on a slice of bread and a cup of water in

2:58

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2025/01/29

Back then, on D-Day, having faith in America was a good bet.I don’t know how to calculate the cost of squandering this legacy. 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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