23rd December 1953: Australian soldiers finish decorating a Christmas tree near the new border between North and South Korea. The tree is decorated with electric lights, to be powered by a generator.
The Korean War ended earlier that year, in July. 17 000 Australians served in Korea between 1950 and 1953.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
The caption for this photo reads:
“Powder smoke and dust billow as a recoilless rifle team of Co. D, 7th infantry Regiment, 3rd U.S. Infantry Division, fire their weapon at Chinese Communist position on Hill 200 near Qnmong-Myon, Korea. 9 November 1951.”
The Korean War lasted from June 1950 to July 1953.
This photograph is dated the 18th of September, 1950, and the caption reads as follows:
Two North Korean boys, serving in the North Korean Army, taken prisoner in the Sindang-dong area by elements of the 389th Infantry Regiment, are interrogated by a U.S. soldier shortly after their capture.
The Korean War broke out on the 25th of June, 1950. On that day North Korea (backed by China and the Soviet Union) invaded the South (supported by the United Nations).
An explosion on the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Essex after a crash on the 16th of September, 1951, during the Korean War. A plane hit and destroyed parked aircraft onboard, killing seven.
Workers at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London remove scaffolding from the Victoria Tower. The image appeared in The Illustrated London News on the 20th of March, 1954.
From The Londonist, via the British Newspaper Archive.
3rd December 1950: A wounded chaplain is photographed conducting a memorial service over the snow-covered bodies of dead US Marines.
The image was taken during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War.
The newly established New Amsterdam Ballet in rehearsal under the direction of Mascha ter Weeme. 24th September 1959.
Two years later the company would merge with Nederlands Ballet to form today’s Dutch National Ballet, directed by Sonia Gaskell until 1969.
This is the 21st September edition of New York’s Sunday News from 1958, announcing that US civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been stabbed in the chest the day before, at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem.
The attacker was a woman named Izola Curry, and the crime surprised many as she was African American.
Surgery was required to removed the knife, and King stayed in hospital for almost two weeks.
7th August 1957: The tail of an airship sticks up in the air after it was brought down by a nuclear test in Nevada, USA.
The downing of the (unmanned) ship came at the height of tensions during the Cold War, at a time Russian/Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, infamous for carrying out Stalinist purges in Ukraine, was repeatedly threatening the West with nuclear annihilation.
928 nuclear tests were held at the site in Nevada. The frequent mushroom clouds, seen for miles, became Las Vegas tourist attractions.
A jeep stuck up a tree. From the collection of the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
On the 18th of January, 1951 Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea, just north of Australia, began to erupt.
The worst of the devastation came three days later when a violent blast led to the deaths of some 3000 people, and left more than 5000 homeless.
The following year Australian vulcanologist Tony Taylor was awarded the George Cross for his work during the disaster.
In Times Gone By... 
