Page 4 - Citing Primary News Today

This photograph shows kindergarten teachers and pupils in a yard of the orphanage on Pushkinskaya Street in Brest-Litovsk, Poland (Yiddish, Brisk; present-day Brest, Belarus). After World War I and the Russo-Polish War that followed (1919-20), there were tens of thousands of Jewish orphans in Poland. The Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers (later the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, both names abbreviated as JDC) was formed in 1914 t...

This atlas of portolan charts of the old and the new worlds consists of 16 double leaves made from fine white parchment, bound in costly red morocco leather (made from fine goatskin) with gold ornaments in oriental style. The important Portuguese mariner, cartographer, and painter Fernão Vaz Dourado is thought to have made the atlas in 1580, near the end of his life. It belongs to a class of late-16th-century cartographic masterpieces, which reflect the period's rising demand for cartograp...

This lithograph is a partial view of the Fairmount Waterworks, on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, one of America's earliest municipal water-treatment systems. Powered consecutively by steam engines, waterwheels, and pumps that lifted water to reservoirs on a hill (Faire Mount), the waterworks and its beautiful setting were a tourist attraction from the beginning. They are seen here from the forebay, the reservoir from which the water was drawn to run the equipment. The plant was design...

This print shows two sculling barges on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Each barge has a crew of eight and a coxswain. In the background are Peter's Island and the Columbia Railroad Bridge. A boat house is on the shore of the island and a train is seen exiting the covered bridge. The Columbia Railroad Bridge, one of the oldest railroad bridges in the United States, was completed in 1834 after being commissioned by the state legislature for the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad. The ...

John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817) was born Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in Lausanne, Switzerland. His accounts of his travels in the Middle East in the early 19th century are among the earliest modern European descriptions of Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan. Upon finishing university studies in Switzerland, he went to England to enroll in Cambridge University, where he studied Arabic and Islam in order to prepare himself for a career as an explorer-adventurer. As his acquaintance Muhammad 'Ali B...

Josie Billie was a member of the Florida Seminole people who lived his entire life on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation in Hendry County, Florida. Born December 12, 1887, Josie Billie was the son of Connie Pajo, also known to Floridians as Billie Cornpatch, the first Indian to receive a Western education in Florida. A Seminole medicine man and long-time public spokesman for the Florida Seminoles, Billie later continued his medical work as an herbalist and became a Baptist minister. He was a fre...

ʻAbd al-Rahman Khan (1844-1901) ruled Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901. He was a grandson of Dost Mohammad Khan (ruled 1826-39 and 1845-63), the founder of the Barakzai dynasty of Afghanistan after the fall of the Durranis and the end of the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1842. After long years in exile in Central Asia, Rahman came to power in Afghanistan with the support of the British, by whom he was later patronized financially, politically, and militarily. The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanis...

William Sprague IV (1830--1915) was a wealthy textile manufacturer and politician who served as governor of Rhode Island from 1860 to 1863 and as a U.S. senator from 1863 to 1875. Born in Cranston, Rhode Island, he attended Irving Institute in Tarrytown, New York, but was forced, after the murder of his father, to leave school early to tend to the family business. As governor he played a fundamental role in organizing troops for the Civil War. He accompanied a Rhode Island infantry regiment into...

This map sheet displays three views of the central Arabian Peninsula. It was created by the legendary Harry Saint John Bridger Philby (1885-1960), a British adventurer, political counsellor, author, spy, and the most celebrated early modern traveler in Arabia, about which he published several books. The map focuses on the topographic features along the routes of Philby's travels. The central map shows the route across the Arabian Peninsula from Riyadh to Jeddah (Jiddah) taken in 1917 in conn...

This work is a commentary on Mulahhas fī al-Hay'a Al-Basīta (The compendium of plain astronomy), a treatise on theoretical astronomy by Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad Jighmīnī. A renowned Persian mathematician and astronomer, Jighmīnī was born in the village of Jaghmīn, in the region of Khwarizm in present-day Uzbekistan. He died circa 1221 during the cataclysmic Mongol conquest of Khwarizm. Several popular commentaries were written on his treatise. On the cover of this manuscript a...