The Amazing Story of Josephine Baker With Her Pet Cheetah

When Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) burst onto the Parisian entertainment scene in 1925, she quickly became an overnight sensation, a symbol of the Jazz Age, and the highest-paid performer in Europe. Known for her boundary-pushing routines at venues like the Folies Bergère, Baker loved using her wealth to shock, delight, and construct a larger-than-life persona. Nothing solidified that eccentric, powerful image quite like her companion: a live cheetah named Chiquita.

Chiquita was originally gifted to Baker around 1925 by Henri Varna, the manager of the Casino de Paris, with the explicit intention of incorporating the wild cat into her stage acts. Baker, a profound animal lover who eventually accumulated a massive menagerie (including a chimpanzee named Ethel, a pig named Albert, a snake, a goat, and multiple dogs), fell completely in love with the cheetah.

Chiquita quickly became a crucial part of Baker’s public identity. On stage, the cheetah would lounge elegantly alongside her. However, because Chiquita was a live, unpredictable animal, the performances did not always go smoothly. During several shows, Chiquita would suddenly leap off the stage directly into the orchestra pit. While the audience found the sudden escape thrilling and assumed it was part of the exotic act, the musicians were routinely terrified, scrambling to protect themselves and their instruments from a full-grown cheetah.

The spectacle wasn’t confined to the theater. Baker regularly took Chiquita out into the public sphere to maximize the media frenzy. Chiquita was famously fitted with a custom, diamond-studded collar. Baker would casually walk the cheetah on a leash down the high-end shopping avenues of Paris, such as the Champs-Élysées, turning heads and drawing massive crowds of photographers.

The famous fashion icon Diana Vreeland once recounted a hot July afternoon in a Parisian cinema where she sat down in the balcony, only to realize that Baker was sitting right next to her, having brought Chiquita into the theater to watch a movie that featured wild desert cheetahs. When the movie ended, the cheetah bolted down three flights of stairs with Baker trailing behind on the leash, before leaping seamlessly into the back of her custom white-and-silver Rolls-Royce.

Beyond the publicity, Chiquita was a true pet. The cheetah traveled the world with Baker in her luxury cars, ate high-quality meals, and frequently slept at the foot of her bed. Chiquita remained one of the most iconic symbols of Baker’s Roaring Twenties peak, embodying the sheer avant-garde style and untamed spirit of the era's most captivating star.

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Suzi Quatro in Her Famous Leather Bikini, 1974

These photographs of Suzi Quatro in a leather bikini was taken in 1974 during her promotional tour in Adelaide, Australia. While the pioneering American rock singer, bassist, and actress is globally recognized for her signature one-piece black leather jumpsuits, this specific promotional photoshoot became a viral, historical moment of its own.

Quatro herself has playfully looked back on the image on her social media, noting how it captured a distinct “snapshot of days gone by” during her whirlwind early career.

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Class of 1946: Vintage Portraits From a St. Louis High School

High school portraits from the 1940s provide a fascinating glimpse into the lives and fashion of American teenagers during a pivotal era shaped by World War II and its aftermath.

These black-and-white photos feature students dressed in formal attire, with boys wearing sharp suits and ties, and girls appearing in modest dresses or blouses with carefully styled hair. Typically simple and dignified, these portraits reflect the core values of the era, such as discipline, responsibility, and respectability.

Taken in 1946, this specific collection of vintage portraits features personal inscriptions to Bernetha Joseph and is believed to originate from a high school in St. Louis, Missouri.

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26 Vintage Postcards of Austrian Actress Mia May From the Early 20th Century

Mia May (born Hermine Pfleger; June 2, 1884 – November 28, 1980) was an Austrian actress and one of the notable stars of early German silent cinema, particularly known for melodramas and tragedies. She appeared in about 44 films between 1912 and 1924.

Born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to Johann Pfleger (a baker) and Albine Pfleger (née Steinfelder). She showed an early talent for performance, making her stage debut at age 5 at the Jantsch Theater. She played child roles until 14, then continued as a teenager under the stage name Herma Angelot, appearing as an actress and singer at the Apollo Theater in Vienna. She also took ballet lessons during high school.

In 1902, she married Joseph Otto Mandl (later known as Joe May, a film director and producer). Their daughter, Eva Maria Mandl (who became actress Eva May), was born seven weeks later. The family adopted the "May" surname for their professional lives.

The family moved to Berlin around 1912 after Joe May entered the film industry. Mia made her film debut in In der Tiefe des Schachtes (1912), directed by her husband. She quickly became a prominent leading lady in German cinema.

Mia May specialized in dramatic roles and was compared to contemporaries like Asta Nielsen, Henny Porten, and Pola Negri. She starred in major productions, often directed by her husband. She served as managing director of her husband’s production company (May-Film GmbH, founded 1915) and even contributed as a screenwriter (e.g., Your Big Secret, 1918).

Her career ended abruptly in 1924 after her daughter Eva May’s suicide (by gunshot, at age 22). Mia retired from acting following this tragedy.

With the rise of the Nazis in 1933, the couple (Joe May was Jewish) emigrated via France to the United States. In Hollywood/Los Angeles, they tried their hand at the restaurant business, opening the Wiener Bar (1937) and later the Blue Danube (1949, Austrian cuisine), but neither succeeded long-term. Joe May died in 1954; Mia lived until 1980, passing away in Los Angeles at age 96.

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Edwardian Young Women: Charming Vintage Photos of Happy and Simple Lives

The Edwardian era is often remembered as a final golden age of innocence and elegance before the upheaval of the First World War. These charming vintage photos capture the everyday lives of young Women during this period: playing in sunlit gardens, strolling along country lanes, enjoying seaside holidays, or simply posing with their friends.

Dressed in white lace dresses, wide-brimmed hats, and long flowing hair, they represent a world of gentle simplicity, youthful joy, and unspoiled beauty. Far from the formal studio portraits of the Victorian age, these images radiate a sense of freedom, happiness, and carefree childhood that feels both timeless and deeply nostalgic.

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The Story Behind the Iconic Artwork for The Smiths’ 1985 Studio Album “Meat Is Murder”

Meat Is Murder is the second studio album by the Smiths, released on 11 February 1985 by Rough Trade Records. Following the release of their self-titled debut album in early 1984, the Smiths maintained a prolific output with non-album singles and the compilation Hatful of Hollow, while also drawing media attention for their outspoken political views and provocative lyrics.

The Smiths’ 1985 album cover features an altered photograph of a 20-year-old American Marine Corporal named Michael Wynn. Taken on September 21, 1967, during the Vietnam War.

The photograph originally appeared as promotional still and archival footage in the 1968 Oscar-nominated anti-war documentary, In the Year of the Pig, directed by American filmmaker Emile de Antonio. Frontman Morrissey, who curated most of the band’s distinctive record covers, intercepted this striking visual for the band's second album sleeve.

In the authentic photo, Wynn had handwritten the popular counter-culture slogan “Make War Not Love” across his M1 helmet. Morrissey and layout designer Caryn Gough systematically doctored the image, superimposing the message “Meat Is Murder” over the original text to align with the LP’s fierce pro-vegetarian title track.

The original un-altered photograph of Michael Wynn.

According to Morrissey, the jarring parallel between military slaughter and the commercial meat industry was entirely deliberate. He intended the provocative image to serve as a harsh wake-up call, stating that the only way to challenge institutionalized cruelty was to give society “a taste of their own medicine.”

Michael Wynn survived the Vietnam War and later immigrated to Australia in 1982, completely unaware of his global indie-rock fame. The Smiths never sought permission to use or alter his likeness. Wynn only discovered he was a legendary album cover star in 1985 when his sister spotted the vinyl record sitting on a shop shelf.

Wynn publicly expressed that he was initially unhappy about the band modifying his helmet’s original text. Decades later, music critics and historians noted an unintended poetry to the image: many Vietnam veterans returned home traumatized by PTSD only to face public ridicule, frequently feeling as though they had been treated like literal pieces of meat by the military apparatus and the public alike.

The Memorial to the Child Victims of War in Lidice, Czech Republic

The Memorial to the Child Victims of War is a deeply moving bronze sculpture located at the Lidice Memorial in Lidice, Czech Republic. Created by academic sculptor Marie Uchytilová, it serves as a universal monument to all innocent child casualties of global conflicts while specifically commemorating the 82 local children murdered by Nazi forces at the Chełmno extermination camp in the summer of 1942.

In June 1942, Nazi forces completely destroyed the village of Lidice as a brutal act of retaliation for the assassination of SS General Reinhard Heydrich. The village was burned to the ground, the adult men were executed, and the women were sent to concentration camps.

Among the village children, 82 were deemed “unsuitable for Germanization,” transported to Chełmno, and murdered in mobile gas vans. They consisted of 42 girls and 40 boys ranging from 1 to 16 years old. Only 9 children from the village survived by being placed with German families.

Deeply moved by the tragedy, sculptor Marie Uchytilová dedicated two decades of her life, starting in 1969, to crafting the installation. To give each child a distinct identity, Uchytilová meticulously studied surviving photographs of the victims to capture their unique personalities, sizes, and expressions.

Working without financial support from the state, she spent her own savings to cast the first three statues in bronze. She completed the plaster molds in the spring of 1989 but unexpectedly passed away in November of that year, never seeing the finished product. Her husband, Jiří Václav Hampl, took over the monumental task in 1990. The first batch of 30 bronze statues was unveiled in 1995, and the final statues were safely installed in the year 2000.

The final monument comprises 82 life-sized bronze statues positioned on a hillside overlooking the site of the razed village. The figures stand together looking out into space, frozen in expressions of confusion, sadness, and innocence, creating a profound and chilling impression on visitors. The installation directly adjoins the "Garden of Peace and Friendship" on the expansive grounds of the Lidice Memorial Park.

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