Late 1930s, Marine Drive, the Queen's Necklace

By the mid-1930s, the city had expanded extensively into the newly developed suburbs. Bombay was thus beginning to spread outward in a northerly direction as well as intensify around the core area of the central business district. This intensification was also evident in the form of higher buildings; facilitated by the use of newly introduced construction materials such as reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete. The modern era had dawned in Bombay.

Coincidentally, around the time of the building boom in the city, an innovative architectural style known as Art Deco percolated through to India from Europe and the USA and manifested itself in Bombay. In many ways, this unique style became symbolic of the last burst of westernization that engulfed the city before India gained independence in the following decade.

A unique combination of factors led to the popular adaptation of Art Deco in Bombay. Tourism and travel had made rapid strides in the period between the two World Wars, resulting in a continuing stream of visitors to Bombay. Many touring European ballets, opera, theatrical and musical troupes were presented at the new hotels and theatres and brought a touch of glamour and new forms of entertainment to the city.

The upper classes and the business community of entrepreneurs and managers happily imbibed contemporary trends in western culture to create a bon vivant lifestyle that symbolized gaiety and color and encompassed western cuisine, dress, ballroom dancing, jazz, cabarets, horse racing, and cinema. The social and cultural ambiance in Bombay was thus suitably conducive to the introduction of Art Deco interiors and architecture.  

One of the earliest photos of the Taj Mahal, India, 1850s.

 

US cavalry soldiers in front of a tree called Grizzly Giant, 1900.

 

A California teacher teaching the physics of surfing, 1970.

 

The inside of a German WWI era U-Boat.

 

Soviet peasants listening to a radio for the first time, 1928.

 

View of the Pyramids during a Solar Eclipse, August 30, 1905.

 

The jaws of an ancient Megalodon shark that lived around 23 to 3.6 million years ago vs. a modern-day Great White.

 

Aerial view of the Temple of Ramses lll at Medinet Habu, Luxor, Egypt.

 

The smoky ruins of San Francisco, still hot with smoldering rubble, following the devastating earthquake on the 18th of April 1906.

 

Bird eye view of Manhatten in 1931

 

A man takes a selfie using a stick of wood to activate the camera, 1957

 

A statue in Istanbul to honor Tombili, a famous stray cat. He used to sit in this position and watch passers-by.

 

A traditional medieval cave house with a courtyard found in the desert of Libya

 

HINDENBURG LINE (GERMANY)

HINDENBURG, PAUL VON (1847–1934) German field marshal. President of the Weimar Republic, 1925–1934. He served as a young officer in the Seven Weeks’ War (1866), during which he was wounded at Königgrätz. He served again in the Franco–Prussian War (1870–1871). He joined the General Staff, serving first under the famed Helmuth von Moltke and then under Alfred von Schlieffen. Hindenburg retired in 1911 but was recalled upon the outbreak of World War I and the unexpected early Russian success in East Prussia. 

Along with Erich von Ludendorff, he won great victories over Russia at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in 1914. He was made commander in the east on November 1, 1914, and won again at Gorlice-Tarnow in 1915. He became chief of the General Staff in 1916, replacing Erich von Falkenhayn after the Russian “Brusilov offensive.” To break the stalemate on the Western Front, he hoped to defeat Great Britain at sea before the United States entered the war in strength. To do so, he approved the resumption of the strategy of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917. 

Upon the collapse of Russian resistance and German victory on the Eastern Front in 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff imposed the diktat of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on the Bolsheviks in March 1918. They turned to complete the supreme German effort in the west later that spring. When the Reichswehr was defeated in the fall of 1918, Hindenburg and Ludendorff advised the civilians in Berlin to ask for terms. Hindenburg retired from the Army in 1919. He stood for election as president of the Weimar Republic in 1925. 

He served Germany’s young and greatly fragile democracy reluctantly, badly, and with deep contempt for its political class and republican values: he remained an unreconstructed monarchist to his last days. He defeated Adolf Hitler in the presidential election of 1932 but agreed to appoint the Nazi Party leader chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Hindenburg may have been senile at the end of his life. 

He certainly underestimated Hitler, whom he infamously and prematurely dismissed as a mere “Bohemian corporal.” Hindenburg’s remains—and the victory banners captured from Russians during World War I—were interred in a great tomb and war memorial at Tannenberg. His body was hastily removed to Hamburg, and his tomb was blown up by the Wehrmacht, just before the site was overrun by the Red Army in 1945. Hindenburg was reburied at Schloss Hohenzollern, seat of the defunct Prussian and imperial dynasty.