Yankees slugger Babe Ruth on May 28, 1924, at the War Department in Washington shortly after signing up for a three-year stint in the New York National Guard. View full size. National Photo Company Collection.

September 1942. Students at Washington High School in Los Angeles training for specific contributions to the war effort. Instructor Ralph Angar explains propeller characteristics to students in the aeronautics class. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information.

July 1939. Corner of a sharecropper's kitchen showing stove and butter churn. Person County, North Carolina. View full size. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

February 1939. "On U.S. 99 between Bakersfield and the Ridge, en route to San Diego. Migrant man shaving by roadside." View full size. Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration.

October 1939. "Father and son have cleared thirty acres of raw stump land in three years. Boundary County, Idaho." View full size. Photo by Dorothea Lange.

From 1929, another view of the peripatetic Burn family and their unusual car on G Street in Washington, D.C. View full size. National Photo Co. Collection.

July 1923. A wagon horse outfitted against summer insect pests on the streets of Washington, D.C. View full size. National Photo Company Collection.

A street vendor and his radio-equipped cart circa 1928 in Washington, D.C. View full size. 4x5 glass negative from the National Photo Company Collection.

April 3, 1929. "Main Street a la Cart." The Burn Ballad Bungalow on G Street in Washington, D.C. (I just know there's someone out there who can rescue these people from obscurity, regardless of how much they may have deserved it. Who were they?) 4x5 glass negative, National Photo Co. Collection. View full size. [Thanks to Shorpy reader Janet we have the answer: These are the wandering writers June and Farrar Burn and their sons North and South.]

Spring 1943. The town of Questa in Taos County, New Mexico. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Collier, Farm Security Administration.

"Toy dog." (Resembling the Victor mascot Nipper.) February 7, 1916. The name Victor seems to have been inked on the pup's collar by the photographer after the negative was developed. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.

November 1911. Before Halloween came into its own as a holiday in this country, there was "Thanksgiving masking," where kids would dress up and go door to door for apples, or maybe "scramble for pennies." View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. Links: Yahoo Xtra | Encyclopedia.com

Two Thanksgiving maskers circa 1911. View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

November 29, 1911. Painting a Thanksgiving masker somewhere in New York. View full size. 5x7 glass negative from the George Grantham Bain Collection.

Thanksgiving maskers outside a restaurant circa 1911, when a turkey dinner with all the fixings was 40 cents. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection.