Frederick Douglass (1817 - 1895) - Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. He was an American abolitionist, social reformer, writer, orator and statesman. He escape from slavery in Maryland and became a national leader of the abolitionist movement. Known for his oratory and antislavery writings. He was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.
Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as a slave and later times of his life. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and held several public offices.
Quote Source: Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies - On taking action about his own liberation and self-actualization.

"Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, and it was almost immediately made a pariah state by world powers"........"President Thomas Jefferson worked to isolate Haiti diplomatically and strangle it economically, fearing that the success of Haiti would inspire slave revolts back home".........."In 1825, France  sent warships to Haiti and forced the young nation to pay France 150 million francs to secure its independence, or suffer the consequences. Read the full article

In 1634, Rembrandt painted his wife, Saskia, as Flora — the Roman goddess of flowers and spring. One large bloom droops over her left ear from the wreath crowning her head, dwarfing the other blossoms in scale and splendor — a single tulip, its silken petals aflame with stripes of red and white.These tulips no longer exist.Read more

Aquatint, an etching technique, was invented in Amsterdam around 1650 by the printmaker Jan van de Velde IV. The technique  was all but forgotten until the eighteen century when recipes for its used were published and its techniques were improved by a number of artists. An exhibition at the National Gallery of Art will trace the technique’s development through Europe, starting in the late 1700s. Read more
Image: Stoke Hall , Derbyshire, England by Cartwright, Thomas - Public Domain

"There is gold,
in them, there hills,"
would bring a rush
and tingle your skin,
as you dreamt of riches,
in the grounds depth, there in.
My grandfather, my father,
several brothers too,
had claims of land
and searched for gold.
The area was east of CleElum,
off the Blewett Pass Hiway;
a small venue town of Liberty.
Swauk Creek, where gold was
discovered in 1873.
Swauk Creek, was the place to be.
It had been dredged and the creek
bed was marred with large piles of
rock and debris.
It would not pass today, environmentally.
Many a "stake" was made and a claim
would be filed. Usually the object was
to dig a mine, the assumption being
the gold washed down from the hillside
above the creek. You, the claim owners,
were required to show, a specified dollar
amount of investment, annually and track
the amount of time spent.
To discover the gold, which still remained,
was a wild idea and it was your claim.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) - Born Thomas Pain; was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.

"Reshaping previous ideas on the story of civilisation, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey was built by a prehistoric people 6,000 years before Stonehenge". Read the full article

"Just what form the future telephone will take is, of course, pure speculation. Here is my prophecy: In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will require no dial or equivalent, and I think the users will be able to see each other, if they want, as they talk. Who knows but what it may actually translate from one language to another?"

Mark R. Sullivan (1896 - 1985), He started with the Pacific Company, part of the Bell System as a traffic clerk in 1912 and rose to lead as President and Director of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. until 1945 .He later led another firm, Potomac Telephone Companies.As for The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, would go on to be known as Pacific Bell (aka PacBell) and was part of a set of companies acquired by AT&T. Mark Sullivan later led another firm, the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Companies, Washington, D.C. from 1945 to 1947.

From an address given on April 9, 1953, quoted in The Kingston Daily Freeman -  April 10, 1953; and in The Tacoma News Tribune, April 11, 1953

 Over 100 years ago, long before color-sensitive film was invented, the Russian photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky created high quality photos took by taking 3 individual black and white photos, each with a filter (red, blue and green)  in full color. 
This self-portrait on the Karolitskhali River, ca. 1910, shows Prokudin-Gorskii in suit and hat, seated on a rock beside the Karolitskhali River, in the Caucasus Mountains near the seaport of Batumi on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

Sergei Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (1863–1944) Was a chemist and photographer of the Russian Empire. He is best known for his pioneering work in color photography and his effort to document early 20th-century Russia.Around 1905, Prokudin-Gorsky envisioned and formulated a plan to use the emerging technological advances that had been made in color photography to document the Russian Empire. His ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire. He set out to do this around 1909 through 1915 with a specially equipped railroad-car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II and in possession of two permits that granted him access to restricted areas and cooperation from the empire’s bureaucracy. The result was a vivid portrait of a lost world—the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming Russian Revolution.
While some of his negatives were lost, the majority ended up in the U.S. Library of Congress after his death. Starting in 2000, the negatives were digitized and the color triples for each subject digitally combined to produce hundreds of high-quality color images of Russia and its neighbors from over a century ago.

He swung the mallet
like no other man,
for he was the famous
Gandy Dancer and
he could lay rail
for hours a day.
His tool was the long
nosed Spike Hammer.
He would swing over
the rail to drive in a spike.
Don't miss the spike
as the handle will hit the
rail and the head will break.

A "breaker boy" was a coal-mining worker whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker in the United States and also in the United Kingdom. Breaker boys were primarily children. The use of breaker boys began in the mid-1860s in the United States and the United Kingdom.  Although public disapproval of the employment of children as breaker boys existed by the mid-1880s, the practice did not end until the 1920s.

Lewis Wickes Hine - (1874-1940) was an American sociologist, photographer and humanist.  He used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States.
Hine began photographing subjects in New York in 1903, including, immigrants at Ellis Island, and immigrants as they settled in America. In 1909, Hine took photographs of child labor practices for the National Child Labor Committee, At the end of World War I, Hine was sent abroad by the American Red Cross to photograph relief activities. After the war, he continued to photograph the workingman and industry, such as the construction of the Empire State Building in 1931. A collection of his industrial photographs were published in 1932 in the book "Men at Work".  Read more about Lewis Wickes Hine

Credit: National Archives