Echoes

Alternate History Chronicles

Articles Where/When?

La Gazette des Archives portuaires

« Le Pavillon de l’Arrow » de Varigny au banc d’essai: un faux qui ne colle pas

Livre sorti le 9 novembre, note d’Aix le 10, avis de Vincennes le 11: la polémique a pris en trois jours. Nous avons regardé les filigranes et les chaînes d’entrée, pas la jaquette.

November 13, 1979 · Le Havre, France · By Michel Dardenne

1970s color film photograph (Ektachrome 64), close-up of a 19th-century port register on an archive reading-room table; thick laid paper pages with chain lines, visible sewing on raised cords, red-dyed edges, a broken red wax seal on a tricolor ribbon; asymmetric composition with the ribbon and seal dropping into the lower-left foreground; incidental background details: green blotter, cotton handling gloves, a wooden pencil stub, out-of-focus grey archival boxes on metal shelving, cold winter window light; taken with a 50mm lens on a Nikon FE, shallow depth of field, slight blue cast and fine film grain; no visible text or labels anywhere.
A realistic late-afternoon digital press photograph taken in May 2014 in Barr, Alsace: a close, slightly angled view of a brass nameplate being unscrewed from a weathered sandstone townhouse facade. Only a pair of adult hands is visible, one holding a flathead screwdriver, the other steadying the plate; no faces. The brass shows fine scratches and faint tarnish; any lettering is either out of frame or too out-of-focus to read. Shallow depth of field (full-frame DSLR, 35mm lens at f/2.8); the background falls softly to cobblestones with tiny weeds and a bicycle handlebar cut by the frame edge, a passer-by glancing over while continuing to walk. Natural warm light, slight highlight clipping on the metal, mild shadow noise, asymmetrical composition with the plate low right of frame.

Le Matin Populaire · May 16, 2014

À Barr, la démission Heiden et le retour d’un vieux fantôme dans les successions

Le patron du domaine s’est retiré lundi « pour raisons de santé ». Dans le village on parle d’un coup de vis venu de Strasbourg. La préfecture dément. Les salaires, eux, n’attendent pas.

Nadia Bellier
Color 35mm photograph on Ektachrome 100, shot in 1983 inside the Federal Bullion Board Eighth District corridor in St. Louis; Nikon FM2 with 50mm f/1.8 at f/2.8, 1/60s handheld. Asymmetrical composition from waist height looking down a fluorescent-lit hallway with scuffed linoleum and cream-painted walls; worn baseboards, a wall clock catching glare, and a coat rack with a grey overcoat. Dominant subject: a maintenance worker on an aluminum step stool tightening screws on a brass nameplate on a director’s office doorframe. Background: clerks at high wooden standing desks flipping paper ledgers and stamping forms; two men in dark suits pass by carrying folders. Shallow depth of field isolates the worker; slight motion blur on a clerk’s hand; natural film grain; avoid any readable text on the nameplate, folders, or walls; no watermarks or lettering visible.

The Peoria Ledger · Nov 12, 1983

Ames’s First Signals at St. Louis Stir Rate Talk Along the River

With Lattimore gone, an Eighth District easing is back on the table. A small trim and a fuller auction could unstick bonds and winter stock, but the opposition is selling freezes and write‑downs.

Ned Carr

The Prairie Review · Sep 2, 2026

Letter from the Fence at O’Hare

On Lawrence Avenue the glycol smell still hangs while Springfield opens the charter and the insurer says the number is the number. The pumps do not care.

Aisha Karim

The Connacht Review · Oct 6, 1949

Seals, Sacks, and Silence

The Court has ratified the Government’s 72‑hour cut and a notary rule. Before 22 October, the Commission and the President can still keep island and emigrant ballots from falling out of the count.

The Connacht Review

Where & When

Trace the fault lines

Open the full map & timeline

Revue des Deux Mondes · Jun 13, 1777

Le jour où l’Atlantique devint politique: 1777–1977, La Fayette, Vergennes et la longue alliance

Paris

Revue Méditerranéenne · Apr 2, 1800

De Topkapı à Gouvia, 175 ans qui ont fait une puissance navale neutre

Marseille

The Saigon Herald Magazine · Apr 28, 1970

Four Years on the Border: How the Mekong Security Zone Shaped a Region

Saigon, Republic of Vietnam

The Britannic Observer · Jul 5, 1940

The Week That Moored a Continent: Sixty Years Since the Bayonne Understanding

London

Picture Desk

Scenes from other centuries

A 1910s silver‑gelatin photograph at the Huancavelica works showing workers moving iron mercury flasks across wet boards in a storage yard

Four Centuries Since Lima’s Coup: The Compacts That Built an Andean Commonwealth
Arrivée de familles en provenance de Luanda à Marseille, 1976

Portugal 1974–2026: la nuit interrompue et les décennies qui ont suivi
Mid-1950s identification room where a clerk studies fingerprint cards under a lamp between rows of steel cabinets.

Sixty Years on File: From Oskaloosa’s Inked Cards to a National Identity Regime
A cartographer studies a deck log against a coastal chart with acetate overlays and a magnifier at a drafting desk.

Fifty years after the fire, the state asks for proof it helped burn
1977 aerial black-and-white photograph taken from a light helicopter over the palatine quarter of Compiègne during the millennial ceremonies; shot on Kodak Tri-X 400 with a Nikon F2 and 35mm f/2 lens at 1/500s; fine-to-medium film grain, slight motion blur at frame edges, gentle atmospheric haze; asymmetrical framing with the Romanesque mass of Saint-Corneille off to the left, the palatial and parliamentary wings to the right; the Place des Plaids below showing a bending civic procession with a brass band turning a corner, scattered spectators, police cordons, and tree-lined ceremonial axes; classic stone facades catching soft spring light; incidental details like parked service vans and litter near a curb; no visible text or signage; realistic documentary style.

Compiègne, mille ans d’un style de gouvernement
A matron and nurses attend patients in a newly opened NHS ward in 1947.

The Biscay Shock and the Attlee Settlement
French cruisers under escort approach Alexandria harbor, smoke trailing as small waves break against their bows.

The Algiers Choice, seventy years on
Silver gelatin print from dry-plate glass negative, circa 1898, oblique interior view from the rear platform of a New Orleans streetcar with Black and White passengers seated together; 8x10 view camera, 180mm rectilinear lens; mid-contrast tonal range, visible fiber-based baryta paper texture, slight silver mirroring at edges, minor corner wear; natural window light with uneven exposure and faint motion blur at the open windows; asymmetric composition centered on an older Black woman with a wicker basket on her knees while a younger White clerk across the aisle leans back with one forearm over the seat; scuffed wooden bench slats, metal fare box by the conductor, ceiling fans and leather hand straps; humid street glimpsed through windows; no legible signage or text anywhere; authentic period clothing and distinct faces with natural skin texture.

La République des sièges partagés: Plessy, Harlan et un siècle d’intégration américaine
Fog and headlights shroud guards and vehicles on Glienicke Bridge during the 1963 exchange, with two civilians mid-handover at the span’s center.

From Life to Exchange: The Rosenberg Sentences and the Birth of a Rules-Bound Spy Trade
Le parquet de la Bourse fédérale des États-Unis à Philadelphie dans les années 1980, écrans lumineux et traders au téléphone.

Broad Street, deux siècles de référence: comment la Bourse fédérale a façonné le capitalisme américain
An idle grader sits beside a milled strip on Farmington Road under low clouds, barricades and cones still in place.

Ames’s First Signals at St. Louis Stir Rate Talk Along the River
Pre-dawn view of Augusta Canal’s Lock 3 with the keeper’s hut lit, wet stone, and halted gate work under mist.

From Lock 3 to the customs gate: a week in the freeze
Archival black-and-white press photograph taken in Brussels, 1965, inside the Council meeting room during the Empty Chair period. Oblique viewpoint from behind a pillar onto a long conference table strewn with microphones, ashtrays, water carafes, and folders; one prominently empty chair at a place of honor while delegates from West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg confer in low voices. Mid-century chandeliers and heavy curtains in background; a coat draped over a chair back; a messenger hurrying past in the corridor beyond a half-open door. Shot on Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed to 800 with a Leica M3 and 35mm lens at f/2.8; pronounced film grain, slight motion blur on a gesturing hand, mild vignetting, uneven exposure near ceiling lights. Asymmetric, candid composition. No visible text, signage, nameplates, or lettering anywhere in frame.

1966, la ligne de fracture: comment la « Communauté des Cinq » et l’Union latine ont façonné l’Europe à deux vitesses
Black-and-white press photograph, silver gelatin print, July 1960, Elisabethville provincial parliament chamber during a heated session. Shot with a Leica M3 and 50mm Summicron on Kodak Tri-X 400; on-camera flashbulb creates harsh highlights and falloff, visible film grain and slight edge vignetting. Asymmetric composition from the left aisle: Moïse Tshombé mid-speech at a wooden lectern crowded with mid-century microphones, right hand raised, papers curling in his left hand; behind him hang plain flags and a row of uniformed officers in peaked caps. Suited officials sit on scuffed wooden benches in the foreground, one man fanning himself; parquet floor worn, dust motes caught in the flash, an oscillating fan with chipped blades in the background. No lettering, signage, or numbers visible anywhere.

Katanga, soixante ans d’un pari confédéral: mines, sécurité et corridor du cuivre
Vue depuis Saliout 6 d’un amarrage avec un module de commande Apollo modifié au-dessus du limbe terrestre, 1978.

Saliout 1, Soyouz 11 et un demi-siècle de vie en orbite