unhistorical:

June 12, 1967: The Supreme Court declares anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. 

For forty-three years prior to this landmark civil rights case, Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act made marriage between white and non-whites a crime punishable by law. To circumvent this law, Mildred Dolores Jeter (a woman of Native American and African descent) and Richard Loving traveled in 1958 to Washington, D.C., where they were able to marry legally (though technically this was also a violation of the Virginia Code). Upon returning to Virginia, however, the Lovings were arrested and charged with “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth”, to which they pled guilty. 

Fortunately, with the help of the ACLU, the Loving case made it to the state court and then to the Supreme Court as Loving v. Virginia. By this time, most mainstream American churches had already affirmed their support for interracial marriage. Finally, in, 1967, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that, under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Racial Integrity Act (and any other anti-miscegenation laws) were unconstitutional:

To deny [marriage] on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.

This has a familiar sound.

—Jacob

librar-y:

New Jersey, April 1905. The Boardwalk parade.

unhistorical:

January 10, 1929: The Adventures of Tintin first appears in Le Petit Vingtième.

Today, Tintin and his companions are some of the most recognizable comic book characters in the world. When Hergé (Georges Remi) first published his strip in the youth supplement of a Belgian newspaper, no one knew that it would soon overshadow the entire newspaper in fame, and that it would last thirty-six years longer, as well. Because of its success, it was then serialized in another Belgian newspaper, Le Soir. Thanks to its rich plotting, clean style, and more complicated themes than could be found in other children’s comic books of the time, Tintin is now regarded as a classic series.

Since 1929, Tintin has spawned twenty-four complete books, its own magazine and studio, a radio series, two television shows, five video games, and eight films (including Steven Spielberg’s Secret of the Unicorn). The books alone have sold over 200 million copies.

unhistorical:

The first Times Square Ball - 1907. 

unhistorical:

December 23, 1908: Photographer Yousuf Karsh is born. 

Karsh, an ethnic Armenian, was born in southeast Turkey (at the time still the Ottoman Empire) during the Armenian Genocide. At the age of 20, he began apprenticing as a photographer in the United States before returning to Canada four years later, where he set up his own studio. In 1941, Karsh took a photograph of Winston Churchill that solidified his reputation as a photographer and brought him to international fame. To this day, it remains one of the most recognizable photos of all time - and certainly the most famous of Churchill. The Prime Minister’s scowl, according to an oft-told story, resulted from an audacious young Karsh’s attempt to forcibly remove his cigar from his mouth. 

After his Churchill portrait, Karsh apparently then decided to try and photograph as many famous 20th century figures as possible - from Humphrey Bogart to Helen Keller to Muhammad Ali to Fidel Castro. On the art of portraiture, he remarked:

It should be the aim of every photographer to make a single exposure that shows everything about the subject.

… advice that Karsh followed to a T in his own work, which is why he is regarded by many as one of the greatest portrait photographers of all time.

See the rest of his work here.