The Waffle Shop, 522 10th Street NW, Washington D.C. Circa 1950 photograph by Theodor Horydczak. View full size. The diner still exists but is about to close. This, kids, was the epitome of fast food. (McDonald's? Beh.)

"Mission where Elsie Sigel met her slayer." Photograph circa 1915. The body of the 19-year-old missionary, granddaughter of Civil War hero Franz Sigel, was found in 1909 bound in a trunk in her lover Leon Ling's fourth-floor apartment at 782 Eighth Avenue in New York, next to the Chinese restaurant where he was a waiter. Ling disappeared, and the crime remains officially unsolved. View full size. Read more about this notorious murder here (continued here). 8x10 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

"3 p.m. Some of the boys at a busy trolley junction in Jersey City. Three brothers, Salvatore, 9 yrs. (in front), Joseph, 11 yrs. (cripple), Lewis, 13 yrs. (between these two). 'We would be murdered if we shot craps.' Boy at left sold me pair of dice for 2 cents." November 1912. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

January 1943. "Indiana Harbor Belt R.R. switchman demonstrating signal with a 'fusee,' used at twilight and dawn when visibility is poor. This signal means 'back up.' Calumet City, Illinois." Kodachrome by Jack Delano. View full size.

Ayer Mill clock tower, Lawrence, Massachusetts. January 1941. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

December 1942. Classification yard at the Chicago & Northwestern Proviso Yard, Chicago. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

April 1943. "Illinois Central R.R. freight cars at the South Water Street freight terminal, Chicago. The C & O and Nickel Plate Railroads lease part of this terminal." 4x5 inch Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size.

Tenement homeworker with clothing tags. Roxbury, Massachusetts. August 1912. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size. Homeworkers, often children, sewed tags onto finished garments or performed other piecework at home instead of going to school.

October 1908. "Boy Sweeper and Carding Machines, Lincoln Cotton Mills, Evansville, Indiana." Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

"Bring out yer rats." Ferrets were used in turn of the century New York to track down rodents. Here is the result of one such hunt in 1908. You want to be dressed in a jacket and tie for this kind of work. From the George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.

December 1940. "Secondhand plumbing store, Brockton, Mass." 35mm Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano. View full size. As of 2007, Saba Mechanical Plumbing & Heating is still in business in Brockton, at an address on Linus Avenue.

Street corner, Brockton, Massachusetts. January 1941. Two blurry figures pass by a fire hydrant in this time exposure by Jack Delano. View full size. Using the 125 above the door and the street sign as clues, we were able to find this building in Google Maps: 125 Pleasant Street at North Warren Avenue. It's the building to the right with the white roof, and seems to be more or less unchanged. Some of the apartments above the store are on the market as condos. The building the photographer used as his vantage point has disappeared, replaced by a parking lot.

Eleven-year-old bakery worker Glenn Dungey. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. April 1917. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

"Swipin’ coal from the freight yards." Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. April 1917. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

October 1908. "Trapper Boy, Turkey Knob Mine, Macdonald, West Virginia. Boy had to stoop on account of low roof, photo taken more than a mile inside the mine." Photo by Lews Wickes Hine.. View full size.