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Black and white photograph of the stone Cenotaph in Whitehall draped in Union flags before its unveiling on 11 November 1920, with troops and crowds around it

Today in history · 106 years ago · November 11, 1920Art & Culture

The Cenotaph Was Built in Plaster for One Parade and Never Taken Down

Britain fell silent at the Cenotaph on Sunday. Lutyens designed it in 1919 as a wood-and-plaster prop for a single victory parade.

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Black and white studio portrait of General Juan Vicente Gómez, Venezuela's ruler, with a heavy moustache, wearing a dark suit and patterned tie, about 1910 to 1915

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Hand-colored 1749 engraving of a West Indian sugar works, with cane growing on the left, a boiling house, an animal-driven cane mill and enslaved workers watched by an overseer

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Color photograph of the sheer limestone walls of Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, with the Rio Grande running between Mexico on the left and the United States on the right

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Black and white photograph of the old Cairo railway station, a long building with a clock tower, seen across a square crowded with street vendors' carts in the early 1900s

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Egypt's Heir Drowned When His Train Fell in the Nile, and Ismail Got Egypt

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Black and white photograph of President Sukarno in a peci cap and dark glasses, smiling and waving from the back of an open car in Washington, with photographers and onlookers behind him, May 1956

Indonesia's First Vice President Quit in 1956. The Post Sat Empty 17 Years

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Hadrian's Gate in Antalya, a triple-arched Roman gateway of white marble set between stone towers, photographed in 2023

Antalya's Founding Dynasty Ended When a King Left His Kingdom to Rome

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Black and white photograph of D. F. Malan in a homburg hat and glasses stepping off a KLM airliner in the Netherlands in 1953, as a woman holding flowers greets him

In 1948 South Africa's Ruling Party Won the Most Votes and Lost Power

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Sepia photograph of José Batlle y Ordóñez, a heavy-set man in a dark coat, standing at a ballot table surrounded by men in suits

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Uruguay Renamed Christmas Family Day in 1919. Pope Leo Just Visited Anyway

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Black and white photograph of Senator Birch Bayh speaking at a lectern marked Democratic National Convention, with glass teleprompter screens on either side

The House Voted 338 to 70 to Abolish the Electoral College in 1969

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Two photographs of an early 1900s submarine telegraph cable: a length of tarred, armoured cable with a handwritten paper label, and the cut end showing the ring of steel armour wires around the core

Britain Cut Germany's Undersea Cables on the First Night of War in 1914

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A gold pocket watch by Breguet, Paris, about 1810, with a white enamel chapter ring and a skeletonised movement visible through the dial

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Photograph of a wedding party in India, taken between 1909 and 1919, with the seated couple garlanded and guests standing around them

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Black and white photograph of an open car and mounted guards passing crowds on a Brussels street during Baudouin's accession in July 1951

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In 1990 Belgium Declared Its King Unable to Reign, for About a Day and a Half

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Studio photograph of William W. Belknap in a Union general's uniform, seated, with a long beard

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Black and white photograph of David Ben-Gurion standing at a microphone reading the declaration of Israel's independence, under a portrait of Theodor Herzl, Tel Aviv, May 1948

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Ben-Gurion Exempted 400 Yeshiva Students in 1948. Israel Still Argues

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Black and white photograph of Thomas Sully's painted portrait of an elderly Thomas Jefferson in a fur-collared coat

Jefferson Bought a Quran in 1765. Congress Has Owned It Since 1815

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Two pages of a handwritten Rajatarangini manuscript in Sharada script, shown open under glass

Kalhana Wrote Kashmir's History in 1148. UNESCO Has Just Listed It

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Aerial photograph of San Quentin prison on a point of land in San Francisco Bay, with hills across the water behind it

California Emptied Death Row in 1972, and Manson Got a Parole Hearing

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Piranesi etching of the Arch of Titus around 1760, half walled into later buildings, with trees growing beside it and small figures below the carved relief

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The 1812 Gerry-mander cartoon: an engraved map of an Essex County senate district drawn as a winged monster with claws and a beak

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The pink colonnaded Cabildo of Asunción seen across a paved square, the building that housed Paraguay's Congress in 1999

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Indian miniature painting of Hanuman offering healing herbs to Rama and Lakshmana on a green hillside, surrounded by an army of monkeys and bears

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Painting of a crowded hall of men and a few women listening to a white-haired speaker at the 1840 Anti-Slavery Society Convention in London

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Photographic portrait of P.B.S. Pinchback, a bearded man in a dark suit

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Photograph of the Princess Olga Monument in Kyiv, a white stone figure on a tall dark plinth, with the gold-domed bell tower of St Michael's behind

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