We are pleased to announce that LIFE.com has received a Webby Award nomination for best homepage. Considered to be "the Oscars of the Internet," the Webby Awards recognize excellence on the Web; this year they reviewed 10,000 applications.
You can help put us over the edge by expressing your love of our site, in vote form naturally. Put in a plug for us, and we'll do our part to keep the best photos on the Internet coming.
It's the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, one of the country's most shocking moments.
Not only was it the first assassination of a president in U.S. history, coming on the heels of its bloodiest conflict up to that point, it was also carried out by a famous actor, John Wilkes Booth (looking dapper and giving the 19th-century version of a movie-star pose above). Think Brad Pitt firing a rocket launcher at the Oval Office over health-care reform.
The murder of Lincoln established his reputation as America's first martyr and led to the phrase "My name is Mudd" (in reference to Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set Booth's broken leg and was tried and jailed as a conspirator). It also was the origin of America's longlasting mistrust of well-groomed, photogenic male actors with strongly held political beliefs.
OK, maybe that last part was made up, but it's something we could consider.
The ironic thing about Jacqueline Kennedy was that, despite that fact that she seemed to have been created to stand in front of a lens, the onetime professional photographer always would have preferred to have been behind the camera.
Still, the camera did love the woman, and it's difficult not to be charmed by photos of her even now, just as JFK found that his wife was his most effective tool to thaw the hearts of unsympathetic foreign leaders.
Of course, this was back in a day when the first lady of the United States wasn't saddled with the kind of political significance first ladies seem to be now, and was lauded for her fashion choices instead of dissected by fashionistas and politicos alike. And, needless to say, Jackie Kennedy had the sympathies of the world both for the death of her husband and, even before that, the loss of their child.
With the release of new tapes where Jackie O. talks frankly about her life with Arthur Schlesinger, the defacto Kennedy family historian, the country is sure to revisit America's favorite first lady in photos. But barring an unexpected bombshell, it's a pretty safe bet the look back will simply burnish our memory of her as an exemplar of American grace, class, and beauty.
It's hard to overstate just how tremendous a blow Poland suffered over the weekend when its president, Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and the country's top civilian and military leaders were all killed in a plane crash in Russia.
And the tragic circumstances seem even worse, somehow, when you consider that the dead were on their way to attend a memorial service for the Katyn massacre, in which Polish officers were mowed down by Soviet troops during World War II.
You get a glimpse, but just a glimpse, of how the entire nation is reeling from the news over the weekend in the photo above, in which a Polish soldier pays his respects among a veritable ocean of candles left by mourners outside the presidential palace in Warsaw, physical evidence of a massive outpouring of grief that recalls the mountains of flowers left outside Buckingham Palace after Princess Diana's death.
Whenever the kids where I grew up got ready for Passover, it involved a lot of relatives coming over, cheek-pinching, and theorizing about the mysterious process that ended with gefilte fish.
Over in Israel, however, it appears to involve hot women in bikinis having mud fights at the beach.
Looks like some Jewish parents in America have a lot of explaining to do ....
Recent Comments