Apple is known for its incredible product design, led by Jony Ive.

But Apple's hardware has come a long way to the sleek minimalism it's known for today.

Apple products used to be bulky, boxy devices that took up your entire desk.

Some devices turned out to be duds.

Now they make smartphones and tablets recognizable worldwide.

Apple's first device was a computer, released in 1976. It all began with this.

The Apple II, by comparison, was much better-looking than its predecessor.

Fast-forward to 1980, when Apple released the Apple III. It was considered a failure by many.

John Hollyday served in the War of 1812, where the British invaded the fledgling United States and almost reconquered the territory they had lost only three decades before.

In a touching letter to his wife, Eleanor, Hollyday offers a unique view of the war.

John had recently joined his father, a Presbyterian pastor, in the territory that would later become the state of Ohio. Living on the banks of the Buckskin River with his wife and their son Wilson, he enlisted in the military in the spring of 1813. The war, mostly skirmishes at this point, was dragging on and the need for more troops was evident.

Within a few months, John found himself on banks of the Sandusky River. From the unseasonably cold barracks at Fort Stephenson, John paints a grim picture of the situation. “There is a grat deal of confusion in the camp” because the barracks commander had recently been discharged. Apparently it was politically motivated, since the governor was involved.”

Unlike our professional military, discipline and cohesion fluctuated wildly across units. “18 of our men deserted this morning” because their commanding officer, obviously respected, had been replaced.

John was having none of it. He was a proud American soldier and recognized the consequences of desertion for his future prospects: “I think it is best to stay to such time as I can go home in safety and with some honor.”

Nothing is sugarcoated for his wife, Eleanor. She was a obviously a strong and capable military spouse in the finest American tradition. Despite her youth and family obligations, the corn was planted and everything else is in order.

She was steadfast and dependable, as so many have been during harsh years of warfighting.

John had no way of knowing how long the war would last, or how bad it would get. Two months after his letter was written, the American forces at Fort Stephenson would repel a daring attack by the British.

About a year later, the British dispatched an army of 4,000 to Washington, burning down the entire city save for the Marine Corps barracks. Men like John would continue to march, though, protecting the republic in its early years.

His letter closes ominously. Both the danger and love are palpable: “I remaine your affecionate husband till death.” Such is the life of an American soldier.

Original copied from the Sandusky County Scrapbook.

May the 27th 1813

Fort Stephens Lore Sandusky

Affectionate Companion: I received your letter this morning of the 23rd instent Which gave me a grate deal of satisfaction to hear that you are well and that Wilson is a good boy

It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to hear that the corn is planted and that you expect it will be tended for I did not look for that to be done

Our troops at this place is generaly well but at this time there is a grat deal of confution in the camp and I do not know what it will end in the governor has discharged Major Harper and sent another Officer to comand the fort and we are of opinion it was an arbetery act and in consequences of this there is 18 of our men diserted this morning

It was reported that the queen Sharlote was at the mouth of the river and would atact this place but our speyes that we sent out on that ocation is returned from the bay and we find that account to be groundless they likewise stat that they believe that thar was not an Indian within forty miles of this place

We have plenty to eat and drink but the weather is very cold for the season we have frost in the mornings at this place yet and the wind blows very cold

I would be desireous to get home but I cant any way to get to without doing as them that has gon and I think it is best to stay to such time as I can go home in safety and with some honor as I cant think to lose my time for nothing and be farther back than when I started

I have nothing of importance to write to you I comit you to the ruler of all the earth whom trus will keep us from all danger and bring us together again to injoy each others company which will be a very desireable time to us I trust

Remember me to my frends and to all that may think fit to inquire after me nothing more at present but remaine your affectionate husband till death

John Hollyday

William Treseder works for BMNT Partners, a government-focused technology incubator in Silicon Valley. He served in the Marines between 2001 and 2011, deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

SEE ALSO: Entire wars have hinged on these once-revolutionary techniques for keeping soldiers healthy

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India, in 1869.

He was assassinated in 1948. 

Though in school he was rated as only"good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography," he would go on to become a lawyer and spend twenty years in South Africa before returning to a still-colonial India. 

There he led the Indian independence movement, which culminated to the Indian Independence Act of 1947. 

His philosophy of satyagraha— or mass nonviolent protest — would become a tool of oppressed people around the world, inspiring the likes of Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

For this we call him Mahatma, or great soul. 

On nonviolence

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary."

["Satyagraha Leaflet No. 11," 1919]

On religion

"In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals."

["Hind Swaraj," 1908]

On practicing law

"I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder."

["Gandhi's Experiments With Truth", 2006]

“Seven days,” wrote Witold Rybczynski in the August 1991 issue of The Atlantic, “is not natural because no natural phenomenon occurs every seven days.” The year marks one revolution of the Earth around the sun.  Months, supposedly, mark the time between full moons.  The seven-day week, however, is completely man-made.

If it’s man-made, can’t man unmake it? For all the talk of how freeing it’d be to shave a day or two off the five-day workweek, little attention has been paid to where the weekly calendar came from. Understanding the sometimes arbitrary origins of the modern workweek might inform the movement to shorten it. 

The roots of the seven-day week can be traced back about 4,000 years, to Babylon. The Babylonians believed there were seven planets in the solar system, and the number seven held such power to them that they planned their days around it. Their seven-day, planetary week spread to Egypt, Greece, and eventually to Rome, where it turns out the Jewish people had their own version of a seven-day week.  (The reason for this is unclear, but some have speculated that the Jews adopted this after their exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C.) At the very latest, the seven-day week was firmly entrenched in the Western calendar about 250 years before Christ was born.

The earliest recorded use of the word “weekend,” Rybczynski notes, occurred in 1879 in an English magazine called Notes and Queries:

In Staffordshire, if a person leaves home at the end of his week’s work on the Saturday afternoon to spend the evening of Saturday and the following Sunday with friends at a distance, he is said to be spending his week-end at So-and-so.

Some 19th-century Britons used the week's seventh day for merriment rather than for the rest prescribed by scripture. They would drink, gamble, and enjoy themselves so much that the phenomenon of “Saint Monday,” in which workers would skip work to recover from Sunday's gallivanting, emerged. English factory owners later compromised with workers by giving them a half-day on Saturday in exchange for guaranteed attendance at work on Monday.

It took decades for Saturday to change from a half-day to a full day’s rest.  In 1908, a New England mill became the first American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to accommodate Jewish workers, whose observance of a Saturday sabbath forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in the Christian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend, and other factories followed this example.  The Great Depression cemented the two-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy to underemployment.

Nearly a century later, mills have been overtaken by more advanced technologies, yet the five-day workweek remains the fundamental organizing concept behind when work is done. Its obsolescence has been foretold for quite a while now: A 1965 Senate subcommittee predicted Americans would work 14-hour weeks by the year 2000, and before that, back in 1928, John Maynard Keynes wrote that technological advancement would bring the workweek down to 15 hours within 100 years.

There’s reason to believe that a seven-day week with a two-day weekend is an inefficient technology: A growing body of research and corporate case studies suggests that a transition to a shorter workweek would lead to increased productivity, improved health, and higher employee-retention rates.

There’s reason to believe that a seven-day week with a two-day weekend is an inefficient technology

The five-day workweek might be limiting productivity. A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that those who worked 55 hours per week performed more poorly on some mental tasks than those who worked 40 hours per week.

And Tony Schwartz, the author of Be Excellent at Anything, told Harvard Business Review that people work best in intense 90-minute bursts followed by periods of recovery.

Taken together, these findings suggest that with the right scheduling of bursts and rests, workers could get a similar amount of work done over a shorter period of time.

Moreover, there’s some anecdotal evidence that a four-day workweek might increase productivity. Google’s Larry Page has praised the idea, even if he hasn’t implemented it. And Jason Fried, the CEO of Basecamp, has his employees work four-day, 32-hour weeks for half of the year. “When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important.  Constraining time encourages quality time, ” he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times. “Better work gets done in four days than in five,” he concluded.

Beyond working more efficiently, a four-day workweek appears to improve morale and well-being. The president of the UK Faculty of Public Health told the Daily Mail that a four-day workweek could help lower blood pressure and increase mental health among employees. Jay Love of Slingshot SEO saw his employee-retention rate shoot up when he phased in three-day weekends. Following this line of thought, TreeHouse, an online education platform,implemented a four-day week to attract workers, which has contributed to the company's growth. 

That said, the five-day workweek might already have so much cultural intertia that it can’t be changed. Most companies can’t just tell employees not to come in on Fridays, because they'd be at a disadvantage in a world that favors the five-day workweek. 

The five-day workweek might already have so much cultural inertia that it can’t be changed

But there’s a creative solution to this problem. David Stephens, a consultant based in Houston, detailed in a post on LinkedIn the clever system devised at a company he used to work for.

The company was divided into two teams.  One would work from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. from Monday to Thursday, and the other would work those hours from Tuesday to Friday.  The teams would switch schedules every week, so every two-day weekend would be followed by a four-day weekend. 

The results, Stephens reports, were positive.  The company was open five days a week, from 7-to-6 instead of 8-to-5. He claims that morale skyrocketed.  Employees took fewer sick days, visiting the doctor in off hours rather than during the workday.

In this scenario, employees still work 40-hour weeks, but they do so over the course of four days rather than five. This arrangement still sounds sub-optimal, though, as working at full capacity for 10 hours is more demanding than doing so for eight. Despite that, the employees at Stephens’s company still preferred 40 hours in four days to 40 hours in five days. They might be even happier—and work even better—if they worked fewer hours in addition to fewer days.

Given the ongoing conversation about how most of the old ways are just sitting there, waiting to be disrupted, it’s surprising that the traditional workweek remains wholly intact. On top of that, one would think that the slew of corporate perks deployed to attract top talent would have by now extended to a re-envisioning of the two-day weekend. But it hasn’t.

Of course, the upsides of a four-day weekend have yet to be truly borne out, but there’s a lot of evidence that suggests it’s a good idea. So, for now, there appears to be an untapped way for companies to bring on and retain high-quality employees: Shorten the work-week. And figure out a way to do that before everyone else does.

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When Ebola first arrived in Europe on Sept. 29, 1976, the vials of the virus were carried from Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a shiny blue thermos on a passenger flight.

Three lab workers in Antwerp, Belgium, received the thermos and prepared to open it on a lab bench. The precautions they took and the room they were in were appropriate for handling organisms like salmonella or tuberculosis, with none of the security procedures or body suits that we now associate with manipulating Biosafety Level 4 pathogens like Ebola.

All the lab team knew was that it was receiving blood samples from an unusual epidemic that was suspected to possibly be some form of "yellow fever with hemorrhagic manifestations," according to Peter Piot, one of the three in the room and a co-discoverer of the Ebola virus. Piot wrote about the experience in his book "No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses."

Wearing latex gloves and no other protection, they opened the cheap plastic thermos that was supposed to hold two glass vials of blood that had been drawn from a Flemish nun who was too sick to be evacuated from the Congo.

One of the vials was broken — the thermos hadn't been stored carefully enough on the passenger plane that carried it from Kinshasa.

Blood and broken glass mixed with half-melted ice. Piot, who was a 27-year-old medical school graduate and junior lab worker at the time, describes that moment:

We didn't even imagine the risk we were taking. Indeed, shipping those blood samples in a simple thermos, without any kind of precaution, was an incredibly perilous act. Maybe the world was a simpler, more innocent place in those days, or maybe it was just a lot more reckless.

If the team had any idea what Ebola was at the time, the virus would have been shipped to one of the three non-Soviet labs that were considered able to handle hemorrhagic viruses.

But because the team had no idea of exactly what it had received, Piot's two coworkers, postdoc student René Delgadillo and Guido Van Der Groen, reached into the soupy viral mess and picked out the intact vial.

"It makes me wince just to think of it," Piot writes.

To isolate the virus, the three — still maskless and with no protection but gloves — injected the blood into cell cultures and into the brains of adult and baby mice ("I never liked this aspect of the work," Piot writes).

They tested the blood, cell cultures, and mice over the next several days for known hemorrhagic diseases like yellow fever and Lassa fever, but antibodies for those diseases never turned up. Their boss, Stefaan Pattyn, looked into the outbreak at the time and found a village called Yambuku that seemed to be the origin.

The Flemish nun had died on Sept. 30, and pieces of her liver were flown to Belgium on yet another passenger flight.

Pattyn thought the virus must be a new rare hemorrhagic fever, a disease that causes the seemingly constant bleeding that accompanies some Ebola cases, and the sort of fever that the lab was not certified as safely equipped to handle — but they wanted to keep investigating anyway.

Piot says that at this point, he was "inflamed" with interest and "loved the detective thrill." His medical school adviser had told him to stay away from infectious diseases because they had "all been solved."

This one had not been solved, though, and it seemed like the chance to both discover something new and to save lives.

Piot still did not know how incredibly deadly the virus was — that it was a hemorrhagic fever was strongly suspected but still not confirmed — but all evidence pointed to something grave. The World Health Organization ordered the samples shipped to one of the only labs equipped for hemorrhagic viruses, Porton Down in Britain, and from there they were sent to the CDC in Atlanta, considered the reference library for these types of diseases.

But Pattyn kept a few samples. "By this point for him to keep us working on these samples was sheer folly," Piot writes. "He knew we were not equipped to do the work in safety."

Piot doesn't know why exactly — perhaps Pattyn was reluctant to send away what his team had been first to examine. "It was new, it was exciting — just too exciting to hand it over to the Brits or, in particular, to the Americans," he writes. They kept a few cell cultures and some newly infected mice, Pattyn saying they needed a few more days before they were ready for transport. And they kept examining them to see what they could find.

Before long, something went wrong. Pattyn, who was in charge but was a little clumsy in the lab, Piot said, dropped an Ebola vial on the floor, where it shattered onto Delgadillo's shoes.

"Godverdomme," or goddamn, Pattyn said. They disinfected the floor and removed the shoes.

Only then did Piot realize how dangerous their behavior might have been and the risks they were taking.

After the cells they had kept were ready for analysis, the lab technicians took a sample and took pictures with an electron microscope. The virus was huge. Piot said they saw "very large, long, wormlike structures: nothing like yellow fever."

Pattyn realized that it looked like the longest known virus in existence, a rare lethal hemorrhagic fever called Marburg that had killed a number of lab workers in Germany nine years before, after they had handled infected monkeys.

They finally realized their folly and sent the rest of the samples to the high-security CDC labs. If the virus were Marburg or something related, they knew that they lacked the equipment to study it.

And they started looking for money to go to Zaire and see the outbreak for themselves.

Confirmation soon arrived from the CDC that the virus was not Marburg; it was something new. This was the first time the world recognized the virus that came to be known and feared as Ebola. That 1976 Zaire outbreak gave the virus its name, and it killed 88% of those infected, 280 people — the most of any outbreak until the current one.

NOW WATCH: 5 Scary Things Scientists And Economists Think Could Happen By 2050

SEE ALSO: The Real Reason This Ebola Outbreak Is So Big

DON'T MISS: Our ongoing Ebola coverage

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The Turkish government has officially ordered the demolition of new skyscrapers in Istanbul because they marred the city's historic skyline, according to Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman (via Dezeen).

Istanbul's Council of State recently rejected a pair of appeals and approved the cancellation of permits and the demolition of new skyscrapers in the Zeytinburnu neighborhood in order to protect views of historic buildings like the Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace, and Blue Mosque.

The new residential towers, designed by Alpar Architecture, were part of a larger development to the west of the city. Their heights varied from 27 to 36 stories tall. 

The drastic decision this wasn't completely out of the blue. Campaigners had criticized buildings even  even during their construction. 

One of the critics was UNESCO, which threatened to strip the city of its World Heritage Site status and "add it to its list of endangered sites after repeated warnings," according to DeZeen.

SEE ALSO: 21 Buildings You Need To See In Your Lifetime

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In 1958, archaeologists were digging through the ruins of a burned Iron Age citadel called Hasanlu in northwestern Iran when they pulled a spectacular, albeit crushed, golden bowl from the layers of destruction.

The 3,000-year-old bowl became an object of fascination once word got to the press. The next year, it graced the pages of Life magazine in a full-color spread alongside an article about the discoveries at Hasanlu.

But the story behind the prized find is less glossy. The bowl was uncovered just beyond the fingertips of a dead soldier and two of his comrades, who were crushed under bricks and burned building material around 800 B.C. Scholars have debated whether these three men were defenders of the citadel or enemy invaders running off with looted treasures. A new interpretation suggests the soldiers were no heroes.

Hasanlu is sometimes described as the Pompeii of the ancient Near East, because of its so-called "burn layer," which contains more than 200 bodies preserved in ash and rubble, explained Michael Danti, an archaeologist at Boston University. The archaeological evidence provides a rather disturbing snapshot of the closing hours of the siege of the citadel. [Preserved Pompeii: See Images of a City in Ash]

Located on the shores of Lake Urmia, Hasanlu seems to have been first occupied about 8,000 years ago. But by the ninth or 10th century B.C., there was a bustling, fortified town at the site.

Within the town's walls were houses, treasuries, horse stables, military arsenals and temples, many of which had towers or multiple stories. The mudbrick architecture likely resembled the adobe buildings of the American Southwest, but many roofs, floors and structural supports at Hasanlu consisted of timber and reed matting — all of which would have been tinder in a blaze, Danti said.

Other central details about life at Hasanlu are less clear. Archaeologists don't know the ethnicity of the people who lived there or what language they spoke.

"Despite the really rich material record, they didn't really find any indigenous writing at all," Danti said.

The burn layer at Hasanlu suggests a surprise attack destroyed the citadel. Archaeologists who excavated the site in the 1950s, '60s and '70s found corpses that were beheaded and others that were missing hands. Danti said he has seen a fairly clear example of a person who was cut in half. [8 Other Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

"The students that were working there would have nightmares at night, because they were spending hours and hours out there excavating murder victims," Danti told Live Science. Many of the victims were women and children. And in mass graves on top of the burned layer, excavators found the remains of people who tended to be very young or old and seemed to have suffered fatal, blunt-force trauma head wounds. These victims likely survived the initial attack only to be killed when their captors realized they would be of little use as slaves, Danti said.

"This was warfare that was designed to wipe out people's identity and terrify people into submission," Danti said.

Danti, who has been piecing together a history of the site from excavation archives as part of a larger, more daunting project, published a study on Hasanlu in the September 2014 issue of the journal Antiquity. The site was primarily excavated between 1956 and 1977 under the direction of Robert H. Dyson, who led a team from the University of Pennsylvania, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Archaeological Service of Iran. Because of security pressures and the overwhelming amount of material found at the site, the pace of their work was often hurried, and their record-keeping methods were not always meticulous. Some artifacts were pulled from the ground before they were documented or photographed in situ. There are no photographs of the gold bowl before it was taken out of the ground, for example.

In revisiting Hasanlu, Danti has taken a closer look at the three warriors. He said it seems likely they were climbing up a wooden staircase inside of a home when the building collapsed. The men fell through what was probably a waste-disposal chute and were buried by debris. Besides the gold bowl, there are other treasures scattered around their bodies, including textiles, fancy armored belts, metal vessels and delicately carved cylinder seals.

The outfits and weapons of the warriors look like standardized military equipment, Danti said. The men wore crested helmets with earflaps, and they carried spiked maces. They appear to have been well-prepared for battle.

"I doubt these men were rescuing a valued bowl and many other fine objects with little hope of egress as the citadel burned and its remaining occupants were slaughtered or taken captive," Danti wrote in his conclusion.

Danti's interpretation supports a hypothesis that the warriors hailed from the Urartu kingdom that grew out of an area in modern-day Turkey. Historical texts indicate the ancient Urartu kingdom was expanding into the region around Hasanlu during the Iron Age through a brutal military campaign. Sometime after the citadel was abandoned, an Urartian fortification wall was built on top of the ruins of Hasanlu.

Still, Danti said he hopes other researchers will test his hypothesis and perform bioarchaeological analyses on the skeletons of both the warriors and the slain people who lived at Hasanlu. Diet and drinking water leave telltale biomarkers in a person's skeleton, and a bone analysis could help confirm where the warriors came from, and whether they died trying to protect or steal the town's riches.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• Photos: New Archaeological Discoveries in Northern Iraq
• 7 Stunning Archaeological Sites in Syria
• Gallery: Ancient Chinese Warriors Protect Secret Tomb

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SEE ALSO: Researchers Think They've Found Christopher Columbus' Famous Ship

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Back in the dreamy pre-cash days of 1999, PayPal was still mainly a product that let you send money from one PalmPilot to another — an idea so heinous that it earned a "top ten worst business idea of the year" designation. 

Accepting the fact that not enough people had PalmPilots, then-CEO Peter Thiel and his pirate crew thought to use an increasingly commonplace communications technology: email. 

In his new book "Zero to One," Thiel says that while the pay-via-email product was working well, the year-old startup faced slow user growth and increasing expenses. 

If PayPal was going to work, he says, it would need a "critical mass" of 1 million users. 

"Advertising was too ineffective to justify the cost," he says. "Prospective deals with big banks kept falling through. So we decided to pay people to sign up." 

Thiel recalls the program going like this: 

We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend. This got us hundreds of thousands of new customers and an exponential growth rate. Of course, this customer acquisition strategy was unsustainable on its own — when you pay people to be your customers, exponential growth means an exponentially growing cost structure. 

Inviting those kinds of costs might sound crazy, but Thiel (and history) show that the strategy was sane. 

"Given a large user base," he says, "PayPal had a clear path to profitability by taking a small fee on customers' transactions." 

The pay-the-customer scheme gave PayPal the userbase it needed. Then, a well-timed round of financing in March 2000 — just before the dot-com bubble popped — gave the company the cushion it needed to absorb the financial hit that all those costs invited. 

Hurdle cleared, PayPal continued its upward trajectory, going public in February 2002 and getting acquired by eBay in August 2002 for about $1.5 billion. 

SEE ALSO: Why Peter Thiel Doesn't Hire MBAs, Hates Suits, And Thinks Silicon Valley Can Be Awful For You

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We could all be dinosaurs. The Economist predicts that robots are going to replace telemarketers, accountants, and retail workers, and Bill Gates says software bots will take even more jobs.

This isn't the first time that whole swaths of the labor market have gone extinct: The Industrial Revolution did away with gigs that your great-great-grandparents might have had that sound preposterous to us today.

Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistic's occupational classification list from 1850, an awesome video from Mental Floss, and some research of our own, we found several bizarre-sounding occupations that are now totally extinct. 

This is an update of an article that previously ran. Additional reporting by Vivian Giang. 

Pin Setter

Before mechanical pin setters came out in 1936, boys were hired to set the pins — you called them Pin Setters.

Phrenologist

Before it was dismissed as a racist, awful pseudoscience, lots of people went to Phrenologists, who could "read" your intelligence by the shape of your head.

Ice Cutter

Before you could get ice from your fridge, you had to cut it from a lake. You'd hire an Ice Cutter to do so.

When actor John Malkovich takes on a role, he really goes for it.

So, when longtime friend and collaborator, photographer Sandro Miller, who goes by his first name, decided he wanted to recreate his favorite iconic images as tribute to his most beloved photographers, he knew who to ask to be the stand-in model for the images.

" [Malkovich's] belief and trust in my work is unprecedented, granting me many opportunities to work with him. Over the past 17 years I would approach John with various personal projects... he has never said no, and has always been open to my ideas," says Sandro. 

The resulting series, shot over the course of three days in April, exactingly recreates 30 legendary photographs by 28 master photographers, all featuring Malkovich assuming many different roles in the frame.

Entitled "Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters," the resulting images will be on display at the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago in November. Sandro has plans to tour the show to Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Italy, and Dallas in the near future. Also, be on the lookout for exclusive interviews with John Malkovich about the project coming soon in French publication 7-POST and French newspaper Libération. 

The series began two years ago, when Sandro came up with the idea to pay homage to his hero, Irving Penn, by recreating one of his iconic images, a photograph of the author Truman Capote, kneeling on a chair wedged in a corner created in Penn's studio. He realized that Malkovich looked a bit like Capote, so he asked him to stand in as the model. The feedback was great.

Because of the success of the first photo, Sandro decided to pay tribute to more of the photographers who had influenced him over the years. He flew to Paris to meet with Malkovich, prepared with 30 images he wanted to recreate.

"After consuming two bottles of wine with John, I showed him my idea and he fell in love," Sandro says.

Today's traders are spoiled by their online discount brokerage accounts and their Bloomberg terminals.

Before broadband fired live quotes and analysis at the speed of light to our smartphones, people used read bid-ask spreads off of chalkboards and historical data off of miles of ticker tape.

We went way back to see how trading was done in the pre-Bloomberg terminal era. We even went back before ticker tape was a thing.

With the help of images from the Museum of American Finance in New York, we put together a brief, visual history of trading technology, from ticker tape to the present. 

Editor's Note: Former Business Insider writer Rob Wile contributed to the original version of this feature.

Brokers called the main trading room downtown "The Curb Exchange." This was before it became the American Stock Exchange.

Photo from 1915.

Much of the time, deals would be conducted out of windows to traders on curbs.

And traders were hardcore. Here they are on the Curb Exchange during a snowstorm.

Bill Gates wants to change how students learn history.

As a recent feature in The New York Times Magazine details, the Microsoft founder and current richest man in the world went on a mission to change history curricula in the US after he became enamored with "Big History"— a series of DVD lectures from Australian professor David Christian.

The DVD series "put forward a synthesis of history, biology, chemistry, astronomy and other disparate fields, which Christian wove together into nothing less than a unifying narrative of life on earth," writes The Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin.

In short, it's a holistic approach to history, rather than a strictly chronological one.

A lesson on the Big Bang theory, for example, "offered a complete history of cosmology, starting with the ancient God-centered view of the universe and proceeding through Ptolemy's Earth-based model, through the heliocentric versions advanced by thinkers from Copernicus to Galileo and eventually arriving at Hubble's idea of an expanding universe," Sorkin writes.

Watch the first "Big History" lesson on the Big Bang below:

Since discovering the videos in 2008, Gates has personally invested $10 million in the Big History Project, in the hopes of eventually creating an integrated history course for high schools around the country.

The program launched in 2011 in just five high schools, Sorkin reports, but has surged in the three years since its inception. This fall, Big History is being taught in around 1,200 schools — from Brooklyn to Ann Arbor to, Sorkin notes, Gates's alma mater, Lakeside Upper School in Seattle. The number of schools implementing Big History curricula is expected to continue to climb over the next two years.

One issue that Gates and Christian initially faced seems the stem from the academic outsider nature of their course.

"We didn't know when the last time was that somebody introduced a new course into high school ... How does one go about it? What did the guy who liked biology — who did he call and say, 'Hey, we should have biology in high school?' It was pretty uncharted territory. But it was pretty cool," Gates told Sorkin.

According to Gates, schools were not prepared to handle the hybrid course — which would likely involve them having to either retrain teachers or revise longstanding lessons.

"You've got to get a teacher in the history department and the science department — they have to be very serious about it, and they have to get their administrative staff to agree. And then you have to get it on the course schedule so kids can sign up," Gates said.

Gates is no stranger to the world of education, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars to push through projects such as the Common Core Standards Initiative. The Big History Project, Gates tells Sorkin, allows for the philanthropist to move past solely funding high-level education policy changes, and actually have a tangible impact on the evolving nature of the classroom — which has seen much less of the influence of technology compared to most other aspects of life.

"I wanted to explore how you did digital things ... That was a big issue for me in terms of where education was going — taking my previous skills and applying them to education," Gates said.

Below, a slide from a lecture Christian gave this year uses Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" as a platform to show the various disciplines that Big History incorporates:

According to Christian, all of these different elements come together to tell a full story. "This captures very nicely and very simply the ambition of Big History — to connect disciplines," Christian says in his lecture.

The "Big History" classes also seem to be resonating with current students. Sorkin visited a classroom in Brooklyn where high school students were learning about "extinction events"— "why and how various life-forms have died out," Sorkin writes.

Here's a "Big History" video on evolution and extinction:

As one student told Sorkin, "At first I hated it, because I was like, 'I hate science.' But it actually just opened my perspective that I never knew about. I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, and then I grew to love the class."

Read more about Bill Gates' efforts to put "Big History" in America's classrooms at The New York Times Magazine >>

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Technology and manpower never guarantee a military victory by themselves. And neither can tactics and strategy — sometimes, it takes an extra measure of trickery and subterfuge to swing the tide on the battlefield. 

A group of Quora users sought to answer the question "What are the most mind-blowing tricks used during any war?" The answers provide a fascinating insight into some of the minds responsible for the most ingenious successes in the history of war. 

1. Operation Mincemeat

During World War II, the British launched a successful disinformation plan called Operation Mincemeat. The operation was created in an effort to convince the Germans that the Allies planned on invading Sardinia and Greece — instead of Sicily, where they actually landed in July of 1943. 

The operation was carried out successfully by obtaining the corpse of a homeless man in London, who was then given a false identity as a Major in the Royal Marines. This man was then given false plans documenting an invasion of Sardinia and Greece, before being thrown to the tide off the coast of Spain. 

The British alerted the Spanish, who were nominally neutral during the war, to be on the lookout for a British Marine carrying documents that had to be recovered. The papers were promptly handed over to the Nazis by the Spanish, and convinced Hitler to reposition troops away from Sicily. 

2. Heroin-Laced Cigarettes 

The British and Ottomans were locked in extremely slow-moving trench warfare during World War I's Palestine Campaign. Eventually, the British learned that the Ottomans had run out of cigarettes. In an attempt to demoralize their enemy, the British began sending cigarettes wrapped in propaganda to the Ottomans. 

Instead of surrendering, the Ottomans threw away the propaganda and smoked. So, before the British scheduled one raid, they switched tactics and threw over cigarettes laced with heroin.

The British met little opposition from the Ottoman forces during their assault.

3. Moving A Naval Fleet Over Land

During the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the invading Turks faced a major challenge. The Byzantines had erected a giant chain across the Golden Horn, a stretch of water that connected Constantinople to the sea. This chain effectively blocked the Ottoman navy from making their way to the enemy capital.

In order to overcome the chain, the Ottomans moved their navy overland using log rollers. This allowed the Ottomans to bypass the chain and attack the Byzantines from multiple fronts, ultimately aiding in the capture of the city that's now called Istanbul. 

4. Cats!

In 525 B.C., the Persians were pushing their empire into Egypt. Knowing that the Egyptians held cats in extremely high regard — and even considered them to be sacred animals — the Persians made use of the felines as a weapon of war, at least according to one ancient source. 

During an invasion of Egypt, the Persians painted cats on their shields and brought hundreds of actual cats and other sacred animals onto the front lines during the siege of the Egyptian city of Pelusium.

The Egyptians refused to attack the Persians out of fear that the might injure the cats, allowing the Persians to seize the city.

5. High-Class Treatment Of POWs — With A Twist

During World War II, the British housed captured senior Nazi officials in a country mansion in England as opposed to a prison camp. The officers were given plenty of food and drink, were allowed to listen to German radio, and were allowed to speak to each other freely. 

Unbeknownst to the Nazis, the British had wired the entire mansion and had intelligence personnel working in the basement recording their conversations. The British learned about Nazi strategy and tactics, as well as about relationships between commanders and Hitler within the Nazi army. 

6. Deceptive Marching

During the American Civil War, Confederate General John B. Magruder faced off against Union General George B. McClellan at the Siege of Yorktown. Magruder and the confederate forces were outnumbered by an estimated 4 to 1. In order to overcome the Union forces, Magruder marched his troops in a repetitive back-and-forth in an effort to convince Union scouts that the Confederate force was larger than it appeared. 

The Union was deceived, and halted the assault instead of pushing its advantage. This allowed Magruder time to reinforce his position, leading what would have been a certain Union victory to an inconclusive finish. 

SEE ALSO: 7 unbelievable military weapons most people have never heard of

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With all the interest surrounding Hong Kong in the past few days as pro-democracy protests continue to erupt, it's easy to forget how much change the city has seen in the past 50 years. Hong Kong has undergone major growth, moving from a small city to one filled with massive skyscrapers, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Photographer Nick DeWolf captured daily life in Hong Kong during a trip to Asia in 1972. His photos show just what it was like in a time when the Pearl of the Orient was still transitioning into what it is today.

DeWolf has shared his photos with us below. Check out what Hong Kong was like more than 40 years ago.

Here's what the harbor looked like then. Those fairly modest buildings have grown to more than 1,200 skyscrapers.

As it is now, the harbor was a busy place full of people.

Here's what it looked like along the coast and the waterfront.

Much development and change has happened since then.

Here is Hong Kong's Pok Fu Lam village, where the city's first dairy farm once sat.

This is Queen's Road Central, near where much of the protesting is occurring.

Hollywood Road, also in close proximity to the demonstrations, has no connection to the neighborhood in California.

Another street in the heart of the city, where much of the protesting is happening, is Morrison Street.

Neon signage was everywhere, much of which remains today.

City life was busy and bustling, even with 3 million less people living there, compared to current population figures.

In 1972, there was around 4.1 million people living in Hong Kong. Today, there's around 7.2 million.

SEE ALSO: What It's Like To Be An Expat In Hong Kong

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A buried tooth has rewritten our thinking about how the apex predators of the Triassic interacted. Modern clashes between crocodiles and lions have nothing on what occurred where land met sea more than 200 million years ago. This discovery could help explain a mystery of the era's ecology.

Just as the extinction of the dinosaurs gave mammals a chance to flourish, a previous extinction event removed dominant species and allowed the dinosaurs to take over the planet. Before the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, Rauisuchians topped the food chain in most terrestrial environments. Meanwhile, "Phytosaurs were thought to be dominant aquatic predators because of their large size and similarity to modern crocodylians," says Dr Michelle Stocker of Virginia Tech.

Paleontologists doubted these two giants interacted much.

In Naturwissenschaften, Stocker and Dr Stephanie Drumheller of the University of Tennessee report finding a phytosaur tooth lodged in the thigh bone of a rauisuchid they estimate at 8m long. 

"Finding teeth embedded directly in fossil bone is very, very rare," Drumheller says. "This is the first time it's been identified among phytosaurs, and it gives us a smoking gun for interpreting this set of bite marks."

The tooth broke off in the battle and embedded 5cm deep into the bone, which then healed over, indicating the rauisuchid lived for a long time after surviving the attack. Other puncture marks can also be detected.

The discovery is a reminder of the value of specimens waiting to be studied in museums, in this case the University of California Museum of Paleontology. "There are many bones that get dug up, not all are immediately processed, prepared, and studied. No one had recognized the importance of this specimen before but we were able to borrow it and make our study,” says co-author Dr Sterling Nesbitt of Virginia Tech. The team used CT scans and a 3-D printer to replicate the bone, concluding that the rauisuchid was attacked by a phytosaur on at least one other occasion.

The same paper also reports another specimen from the same 220-210 million year old formation that provides insight into feeding behavior. A second femur shows unhealed bite marks, which the authors write, indicates “the animal either did not survive the attack or was scavenged soon after death.” The shape and spacing of the marks indicate a phytosaur was responsible in this case as well.

The authors add, “These marks provide an opportunity to start exploring the seemingly unbalanced terrestrial ecosystems from the Late Triassic of North America, in which large carnivores far outnumber herbivores in terms of both abundance and diversity.”

“Both of the femora we examined came from some of the physically largest carnivorous species present at both locations. Yet they were targeted by other members of the region—specifically phytosaurs,” says Drumheller. “Thus, size cannot be the only factor in determining who is at the top of the food chain.” 

SEE ALSO: Supermassive Dinosaur Fossils Found In Argentina

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The first known Ebola outbreak devastated a small village called Yambuku and the surrounding area in the north of the Congo in 1976.

When it started to kill patients in a missionary hospital, a Flemish nun was infected, and samples of her blood were sent to Belgium. Scientists soon realized they were dealing with something unknown.

After a harrowing experience with the virus in the lab, Peter Piot, a 27-year-old doctor who was one of the first to examine Ebola, left his pregnant wife in Belgium and set off for the Congo, then called Zaire, to track down the source of the outbreak. There he joined researchers from around the world for a terrifying hunt for the origin of the disease.

Piot wrote about the experience in his book "No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses." Using photos from the CDC's Public Health Image Library, we've illustrated their several expeditions into the Congo.

Immediately upon arrival, Piot was swept through the airport — avoiding customs, because his passport wasn't valid — and rushed to meet the others who planned to track down the virus’ source. He’s the third from the left in the middle row here, wearing the colorful shirt.

Their mission was in Yambuku, 700 miles northeast. Stories of birds dropping out of the sky, sick with fever, and of human bodies by the roadsides had terrified pilots who at first refused to fly the team to the closest airfield in Bumba, a town of 10,000 on the edge of the epidemic zone.

After some cajoling, pilots agreed to drop the team and their Land Rover off if they could immediately depart for safety. Hundreds of scared locals surrounded the plane upon arrival, hoping for a way out, but military police beat them back so the researchers could unload.

"My God, what have we done," Enola Gay copilot Robert Lewis reportedly said as the Superfortress was making its way back to base on August 6, 1945, after dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

World War II had ended with grisly evidence of what atomic warfare actually was. But just weeks after its end, the Pentagon was already hypothesizing about what an entire wave of nuclear attacks could achieve.

American defense planners came up with the following "estimated bomb requirements for the destruction of Russian strategic areas" in September of 1945:

In September 1945, US planners decided it would take 204 atomic bombs to destroy the Soviet Union. pic.twitter.com/6IhxDevZOu

— OperationDesertPeace (@Nytzschy) October 3, 2014

The estimated amount of firepower needed to destroy each target city ranges from one to six atomic bombs, depending on the target's size. Sixty-six cities were identified in total, and it was determined that it would take 204 atomic bombs to put them all out of commission.

Historian and author Paul Ham cites similar numbers in his book Hiroshima Nagasaki. A US Army Air Force study found that the bombs would "obliterate most of Russia's population and industry — chiefly its capacity to refine oil and produce aircraft and tanks."

Alex Wellerstein, who blogs about the history of nuclear weapons and secrecy, explained some of the context of this 1945 assessment. He wrote that the Pentagon's finding actually called for more than 204 atomic weapons, for the simple reason that many of the bombs sent in this scenario would fail to destroy their targets.

"They assume, based on World War II figures, that a certain number of the bombers will get shot down, have technical problems, miss the target, or simply drop duds," Wellerstein wrote. "So they calculate that all of those bombs will only be 48% effective anyway, and thus they’ll need just over double the total number. So instead of about three bombs per city, they’ve allocated six." 

In other words, it wasn't that 204 atomic bombs were deemed necessary to wipe out the Soviet Union. The US needed 204 atomic explosions (see the document above).

Below is a contemporary map of the intended targets.

The US probably wasn't planning a nuclear sneak-attack, and the 1945 study seem like more of a worst-case contingency than an operational plan. But the Cold War was clearly already underway mere weeks after World War II ended. The conclusion that America and Russia would be the world's leading military powers led to a fearful mentality even in a time before the Soviet Union was known to have nuclear arms.

In Deputy Chief of Air Staff Lauris Norstad's own phrasing, according to Ham's book, the salvo of 204 atomic bombs might be needed "to insure our national security."

SEE ALSO: North Korea claims it's making alarming progress towards building a usable nuclear weapon

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Language discrepancies naturally arise in different geographic regions, like the raging “pop” vs. “soda” debate.

But the South undoubtedly takes the cake.

Conversations south of the Mason-Dixon line will befuddle anyone not born there.

We chose 15 of the most ridiculous Southern sayings — and tried to explain them.

1. “We’re living in high cotton.”

Cotton has long been a key crop to the South’s economy, so every harvest farmers pray for tall bushes loaded with white fluffy balls in their fields. Tall cotton bushes are easier to pick and yield higher returns. If you’re living “in high cotton,” it means you’re feeling particularly successful or wealthy.

2. “She was madder than a wet hen.”

Hens sometimes enter a phase of “broodiness” — they'll stop at nothing to incubate their eggs and get agitated when farmers try to collect them. Farmers used to dunk hens in cold water to “break” their broodiness.

You don’t want to be around a hormonal hen after she’s had an ice bath.

3. “He could eat corn through a picket fence.”

This describes someone with an unfortunate set of buck teeth. They tend to stick up and outward, like a horse’s teeth. Imagine a horse eating a carrot, and you’ll get the picture.

4. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

A pig’s ear may look soft, pink, and shiny, but you’re not fooling anyone by calling it your new Marc Jacobs bag. A Southerner might say this about her redneck cousin who likes to decorate his house with deer antlers.

5. “You look rode hard and put up wet.”

No, this isn’t Southern sexual innuendo. The phrase refers to a key step in horse grooming — when a horse runs fast, it works up a sweat, especially under the saddle. A good rider knows to walk the horse around so it can dry off before going back to the stable. A horse will look sick and tired if you forget this step, much like a person who misses sleep or drinks too much.

6. “He’s as drunk as Cooter Brown.”

Cooter Brown is an infamous character in Southern lore. Legend tells that he lived on the Mason-Dixon line — the border between the North and South — during the Civil War. To avoid the draft on either side, Cooter decided to stay drunk throughout the entire war, making him ineligible for battle.

Inebriated Southerners have measured their drunkenness by him ever since.

7. “She’s as happy as a dead pig in the sunshine.”

When a pig dies, presumably in a sty outside, the sun dries out its skin. This effect pulls the pig’s lips back to reveal a toothy “grin,” making it look happy even though it’s dead. This phrase describes a person who’s blissfully ignorant of reality.

8. “She's got more nerve than Carter's got Liver Pills.”

Carters Products started as a pill-peddling company in the latter part of the 19th century. Specifically, Carters repped its “Little Liver Pills” so hard a Southern saying spawned from the omnipresent advertisements.

Alas, the Federal Trade Commission forced the drug-group to drop the “liver” portion of the ad, claiming it was deceptive. Carter's “Little Liver Pills” became Carter's “Little Pills” in 1951, but the South doesn't really pay attention to history. The phrase stuck.

9. “I'm finer than frog hair split four ways.”

Southerners mostly use this phrase to answer, “How are you?” Even those below the Mason-Dixon know frogs don't have hair, and the irony means to highlight just how dandy you feel.

The phrase reportedly originated in C. Davis’ “Diary of 1865.”

10. “He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.”

On farms (not just in the South) roosters usually crow when the sun rises. Their vociferous habit wakes up the house, signaling time to work.

An extremely cocky rooster might think the sun rises simply because he crows. Similarly, an extremely cocky man might think the same when he speaks — and also that everyone should listen to him.

11. “That's about as useful as tits on a bull.”

Only female dairy cows produce milk. Male cows are called bulls. And even if you could “milk anything with nipples,” bulls tend to be rather ornery. Good luck with that.

12. “That thing is all catawampus.”

Catawampus adj: askew, awry, cater-cornered.

Lexicographers don't really know how it evolved, though. They speculate it's a colloquial perversion of “cater-corner.” Variations include: catawampous, cattywampus, catty wonkus. The South isn't really big on details.

13. “He's got enough money to burn a wet mule.”

In 1929, then-Governor of Louisiana Huey Long, nicknamed “The Kingfish,” tried to enact a five-cent tax on each barrel of refined oil to fund welfare programs. Naturally, Standard Oil threw a hissy fit and tried to impeach him on some fairly erroneous charges (including attending a drunken party with a stripper).

But Long, a good ole' boy, fought back. He reportedly said the company had offered legislators as much as $25,000 for their votes to kick him out of office — what he called “enough money to burn a wet mule.”

We Northerners may not know what that means, but at least we know where it comes from.

Bonus: Bless Your Heart

Almost everyone knows Southern women drop this phrase constantly. But it might not mean what you think it means.

In reality, the phrase has little to do with religion and more to do with a passive-aggressive way to call you an idiot. Depending on your inflection, saying “bless your heart” can sting worse than any insult.

Now Watch: People From Across America Reveal Their Favorite Regional Sayings

SEE ALSO: Maps That Show Americans Pronounce Things Totally Differently

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The horrors of war have affected nearly every part of the globe throughout history, but China has seen more than its share of bloody combat. 

Of the 10 most damaging wars in history based on combatant and civilian deaths, five started in China. This does not even include the horrors that China faced during World War II, when parts of China suffered under an incredibly brutal Japanese occupation.

China wars often stemmed from internal revolts and might have influenced modern China's heavy-handed approach to internal dissent. Indeed, Beijing's heavy emphasis on order and societal peace in particular could shed light on the current tumult in Hong Kong, where protesters have demonstrated against the central government's attempts to strip the territory's autonomy. 

Below are the five deadliest conflicts that started in China, in descending order of estimated death toll.  

1. The Qing Dynasty Conquest Of The Ming Dynasty

1618 to 1683, with an estimated 25 million casualties

The Qing conquest of the Ming dynasty was a period of extreme political turmoil in China. The conquest started with a rebellion against Chinese imperial authority in Manchuria, in far northeastern China. As the rebellion gained speed and approached Beijing, a series of smaller peasant revolts broke out through the rest of China. 

By 1644, the Qing were in control of Beijing. However, southern China and Taiwan rebelled against Qing authority and sided with Ming loyalists.

It took until 1683 — nearly another 40 years — for the Qing to establish their authority throughout China. During this time, almost 25 million people died in the hostilities.  

2. The Taiping Rebellion 

1850 to 1864, with an estimated 20 million casualties

The Taiping Rebellion was a Christian millenarian movement aimed at unseating the Qing Dynasty. The rebellion, led by Hong Xiuquan, took the major Chinese city of Nanjing as its capital. At the height of the rebellion, Hong and his Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ruled over 30 million people. 

The rebellion focused on social reform, demanding the abolition of foot-binding and land socialization and opposing strict gender separation. Hong also claimed he was Jesus' little brother. His army, which was made of largely irregular forces, scored a number of victories through brutal methods and religious zeal.

The rebellion took an estimated 20 million lives, and the French and British eventually had to intervene to help the Qing restore order.

3. The An Lushan Rebellion 

755–763, with casualties estimated at 13 million

The An Lushan Rebellion was sparked when General An Lushan declared himself emperor of Northern China, which was directly opposed to the leading Tang Dynasty. This conflict lasted through the reigns of three Tang emperors before ending in 763 with the fall of the Yan Dynasty that An Lushan had created.

The war had a lasting impact on the economic and social systems, and a million people died from the mass starvation and diseases the conflict triggered.

4. The Dungan Revolt

1862-1877, with an estimated 10 million casualties

The Dungan Revolt, also referred to as the "Hui Minorities' War" and the "Muslim Rebellion," was a mainly religious uprising that overlapped with the Taiping Rebellion by two years.

The main goal of this war was to establish a Muslim country near the western bank of the Yellow River. When the revolt failed, there was a mass exodus of Dungan people into Imperial Russia.

5. The Chinese Civil War 

1927–1950, with casualties estimated at 7.5 million

Without a signed peace treaty, there is still some debate about whether the Chinese Civil War between the Republic of China and the Communist Party of China ever legally ended because the nationalist forces fled to Taiwan and established a competing government.

Lasting more than 20 years, the conflict led to the creation of the Republic of China (in Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (in mainland China), with both claiming to be the sole legitimate government of China. 

Meanwhile, as the US prepared to entered the Korean War, President Harry Truman announced goals for a "strong, united, and democratic China" and ordered the Navy's Seventh Fleet into the region. But by 1954, opposing armies disbanded and the Chinese Civil War began to fade.

SEE ALSO: This map shows why the South China Sea could lead to the next World War

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Macau is the world's gambling Mecca — a place that exploded from nothing at the end of the 1990s, to averaging 19% growth for the last decade.

That is nothing short of wild success.

But now it seems the island's fortunes are turning. A corruption crackdown and a massive heist have slowed the flow of high-rollers onto the island.

Moreover, the Chinese economy is slowing across the board as the government sticks to its commitment to tighten monetary policy. All of this is making it harder for middle class gamblers to spend on games of Baccarat.

Wells Fargo analysts expect Macau to post a 20%-23% year over year decline in casino revenue for October. That's worse than the decline in revenue experienced during 2009, while the financial crisis was rocking the globe.

All of that said, Macau is still one of the world's most amazing growth stories. It is no small thing that what was once a sleepy Portuguese colony jas turned into the world's gambling center of sin.

In the summer of 1980, Leroy W. Demery, Jr., an expert in Asian transportation, visited the country (then still a Portuguese protectorate) and documented his journey. 

He posted his copyrighted photo collection to flickr, and with his kind permission we have reproduced the snapshots here.

Click here to see the photos >

Here is his introduction to the collection:

I traveled by overnight ferry from Hong Kong to Macao, spent the day (1980 July 16) in Macao, then returned to Hong Kong by overnight ferry.

"Overnight ferry" for a 60 km distance?

Yes, one boarded the vessel about 10 p.m. The fare included a bunk in an air-conditioned dormitory - "Spartan" but very comfortable. The vessel sailed after midnight and certainly arrived within 3-4 hours. Passengers were awakened at about 6 a.m., as I remember.

Yes, catamarans and jetfoils were much faster, but fares were higher, and the overnight ferry permitted one to save the cost of overnight accommodation.

Macao, in 1980, was quiet. Very quiet. It had a distinct "small town" atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the Central District of nearby Hong Kong. Much has changed since then. Remarkably, the land area has nearly doubled, from about 16 square km to nearly 29 square km. Many of the images in this set are certainly "vanished scenes."

I regret that do not have a 1980 street map of Macao, and so am not able to locate some of these images.

Anyway, read on to take the journey to Old Macau.

(Rob Wile contributed to an early version of this report)

Just to get you started, here's what Macau looks like today.

And here's what it looked like back in the day. This is Leal Senado, legislative seat during Portuguese rule, now home to the Institute of Civic and Municipal Affairs.

This section of the harbor is now reclaimed land, Demery says.