Stories behind the prints
Every print on our front page changed something. These are their stories.
PosterThe black cat of MontmartreSteinlen's 1896 poster for the Chat Noir cabaret gave Montmartre a black cat that still looks out from souvenir shops along the Seine.1896Read the story
PosterA flock of birds for a newspaper's first morningE. McKnight Kauffer's flight of birds announced the relaunch of the Daily Herald in 1919 and became the design he was known for.1918Read the story
PhotographThe day the Earth roseOn 24 December 1968, orbiting the Moon on Apollo 8, Bill Anders photographed the Earth rising over the lunar horizon.1968Read the story
DiagramWhat really killed the soldiersFlorence Nightingale's 1858 diagram showed that in the Crimean War far more British soldiers died of preventable disease than of their wounds.1858Read the story
PamphletPlain words for independencePublished anonymously in Philadelphia in January 1776, Thomas Paine's Common Sense made the case for American independence.1776Read the story
PosterThe poster that made Lautrec's nameToulouse-Lautrec's first poster, made for the Moulin Rouge in 1891, turned a dance-hall advertisement into the work that made his name known.1891Read the story
BroadsideTheses for a debate that never happenedLuther wrote 95 Latin theses on indulgences for a debate in Wittenberg in 1517. Printers spread them; this Nuremberg sheet is one of very few left.1517Read the story
PaintingA town inside a wheel in spaceDon Davis's 1975 painting for NASA Ames shows the inside of a ring-shaped space settlement designed for 10,000 people.1975Read the story
PosterCircles and squares for the Bauhaus's first showA student's poster of circles and squares announced the first big Bauhaus exhibition in 1923, hung in 120 German railway stations.1923Read the story
MapThe whole world, printed in IstanbulThe world in two hemispheres, from Kâtip Çelebi's Cihannüma, printed in Istanbul in 1732 by İbrahim Müteferrika, founder of the first Turkish press.1732Read the story
PhotographHome, from six billion kilometres awayOn 14 February 1990 Voyager 1 looked back from about 6 billion km and caught the Earth as a speck smaller than a pixel, at Carl Sagan's urging.1990Read the story
Poster and programmeA programme that would not sit stillRed and black letters running every way: the poster and programme for the Dada tour of the Netherlands in early 1923.1922Read the story
Woodblock printThe wave that went around the worldHokusai's Great Wave was a woodblock print of the early 1830s, made by the thousand. It is now the most famous Japanese print in the world.1831Read the story
BroadsidePrinted overnight: the first DeclarationOn the night of 4 July 1776 John Dunlap printed the Declaration of Independence as a single sheet. Of perhaps 200 copies, 26 are known today.1776Read the story
PhotographThe whole Earth, lit from end to endOn 7 December 1972 the Apollo 17 crew photographed the fully lit Earth on the way to the Moon, from Africa down to the Antarctic ice.1972Read the story
BroadsideDeath takes the electric tramPosada's Gran Calavera Eléctrica mocked Mexico City's new electric trams for the Day of the Dead. Broadsides like it sold for a centavo.1900Read the story
MapCounting the dead, street by streetThe 1855 map of cholera deaths in Soho, made for a parish inquiry into the outbreak that John Snow had traced to the Broad Street pump.1855Read the story
PlaqueA note left on the MoonThe steel plaque Apollo 11 left on the Moon in July 1969: two hemispheres, four signatures and "We came in peace for all mankind".1969Read the story
BookThe little book that opened the skyIn 1610 Galileo published what his telescope showed: a rough Moon, countless stars and four moons of Jupiter. This is the Frankfurt printing.1610Read the story
PosterA poster for a dance made of lightJules Chéret's 1893 poster of Loïe Fuller, the American dancer who swirled silk under coloured electric light at the Folies-Bergère.1893Read the story
MapReading the Moon's history in its faceThe 1971 USGS geologic map of the Moon's near side sorted its plains, craters and mountains by age, drawn from Lunar Orbiter photographs.1971Read the story