7th November 1909: English scientist Norman Lockyer photographed London from the air with a use of a helium balloon. This image shows Sloane Square, on the boundaries of the Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Chelsea districts.
Lockyer, who – along with French scientist Pierre Janssen – was credited with discovering helium, was seventy-three at the time the photograph was taken.
Pupils of the school photographed in 1895.
The Church of England Primary School in the village of Harby in Leicestershire, England opened on the 25th of March, 1861.
Part of the National Society for Promoting Religious Education, an organisation formed to promote education in England and Wales before the government began to regulate the school system, the building was constructed in 1860. It had two classrooms, and living accommodations for the teacher.
January 1942: London stands in ruins and covered in snow after German bombing in the Second World War. A crane and truck can be seen clearing debris.
St Paul’s Cathedral – which survived the Blitz – is in the background.
From the collection of the Imperial War Museums.
On this day: a War Child in London
This now-famous photograph, taken by Cecil Beaton, appeared on the cover of American LIFE Magazine on the 23rd of September, 1943. It shows Eileen Dunne, aged “3 and 3/4” sitting in her hospital bed in London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children after being injured in a German air raid.
The cover feature was significant, as it encouraged Americans – still more than a year out from joining the Second World War – to take more of an interest in the conflict.
The original caption for the photograph reads:
The wide-eyed young lady on the cover is Eileen Dunne, aged 3 3/4. A German bomber whose crew had never met her dropped a bomb on a North England village. A splinter from it hit Eileen. She is sitting in the hospital. A plucky chorus of wounded children had just finished singing in the North English dialect, “Roon, Rabbit, Roon.” The picture was taken by Cecil Beaton, the English photographer who generally specializes in fashionable or surrealist studies of society women.
May 1940: General Maurice Gamelin, Commander in Chief of the French Army, reviews Canadian troops at Aldershot, England shortly before the Dunkirk evacuation.
Second World War.
Happy May Day! Here is May Day on the village green in Luddington, Warwickshire, England in 1933.
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.
December 1916. First World War: Injured soldiers celebrate Christmas in the 3rd Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, England. Sheffield was bombed by a German zeppelin during the war, and soldiers from the region suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of the Somme.
1st December 1940: The Blitz, the German air raid campaign against the United Kingdom, was in full force in December of 1940.
Britain’s Home Guard, made up of 1.5 million volunteers ineligible for regular military service (due to circumstances such as age), operated from 1940 to 1944, guarding their homeland during the Second World War.
The caption of this photograph reads:
A veteran sergeant in the Dorking Home Guard cleans his Tommy gun at the dining room table, before going on parade, 1 December 1940.
The English city of Coventry suffered numerous Nazi bombing attacks in the blitz of 1940, but the worst came in November.
The city was bombarded from the 14th to the 15th, killing hundreds of people and injuring many hundreds more.
These photographs were taken on the 16th, showing many buildings ruined, and the recently built Owen Owen department store – the exterior still stands, but the inside was destroyed.
Coventry Cathedral was largely ruined, and still stands as a shell today. The new cathedral was built next door, and opened in 1962.
Hundreds more people were killed in German bombings the following year.
In Times Gone By... 
