Unfinished family business.

Theodore Roosevelt wanted to be the hero of the Spanish-American War.

He was convinced that his gallantry fighting the Spanish in the Battle of San Juan Hill was deserving of the Medal of Honor.

Roosevelt’s lobbying for the award began soon after the battle, while he was still in Cuba.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

The end has come.

It is July 16, 1945.

The peace in Europe is not quite six weeks old.

And the leaders of the victorious Allied powers — Truman, Churchill and Stalin — are traveling to Potsdam, Germany, to discuss the fate of postwar Europe.

For Winston Churchill, the trip offers an opportunity to see Berlin.

His car passed through the Brandenburg Gate and then arrived at the remains of Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

With the nation falling into a dizzying spin, we all need to find something to hold on to.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

A badge of honor.

For a long time, it was customary for the valedictorian of West Point’s graduating class to be commissioned into the US Army Corps of Engineers.

And so it was that Douglas MacArthur, the top-ranking cadet of the West Point class of 1903, became an Army engineer, a job he’d fill for the first fourteen years of his Army career.

As a graduation present, MacArthur’s family presented him with two 14-carat gold pins in the shape of a castle, the West Point logo.

MacArthur wore these pins as a young engineering officer.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

The Irish.

A blight caused by a mold destroyed the leaves and edible roots of the potato plant in Ireland in the mid-1840s.

The result was a famine which lasted seven years.

During this time, from 1845 until 1852, starvation, disease, and evictions from leased farmland drove two million people to North America.

Among them were all eight of President Kennedy’s great-grandparents.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

Friday, October 27, 1961.

The Berlin Wall is ten weeks old.

The Soviet Union moves 33 tanks to Checkpoint Charlie, near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

They face-off against ten US tanks, five US armored personnel carriers and three British anti-tank guns.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

November 6, 1860

It is election day.

Lincoln leaves his office in Springfield at 3:00 PM and walks to the polling place in the courthouse where he votes a straight Republican ticket.

He spends the evening in the Springfield telegraph office monitoring election returns from across the nation.

Shortly after midnight, Lincoln joins his wife for a late supper.

He’s been elected the sixteenth President of the United States.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

Get off the old path.

The Holocaust.

The scale of loss is incomprehensible, and the directors of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum seem to understand this.

So, they have made available more than one thousand family journals and diaries of Holocaust victims which tell the story of loss on a personal scale.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

Seeking perspective.

It is July 4, 1942.

More than 3.9 million Americans are deployed across the globe in the new world war.

With their primary breadwinner gone, families left behind are suffering financial hardship.

And so much happened on that day:

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe

Plenty of blame to go around.

It is 1828 and the Southern economy has changed.

Tobacco plantations in the northern regions are in decline.

But in the Deep South, cotton and sugar plantations are thriving.

Isaac Franklin and John Armfield sense a business opportunity is this dichotomy.

Get full access to History in Pictures at look.substack.com/subscribe