Triumphant dog sitting atop a gun surrounded by gunners, France, during World War I

Portraits of Pets, Portraits of People with Pets

In many countries, army regiments often kept official and unofficial pets that were popular amongst soldiers in wartime. Sometimes pets took part in military activities – that’s how messenger dogs trained for delivering messages emerged. Mascots cheered up soldiers and helped to cope with stress and personal loss, common emotions during the war. Some countries implemented the practice of bringing animals that served as national symbols to the frontier so as to remind soldiers what are they fighting for. For instance, shots below illustrate kangaroos in Egypt, that were brought by Australian army. The collection includes images from Australian War Memorial, US Library of Congress and National Library of Scotland.

Stereographs are devices capable of building a three-dimensional​ image out of two photographs that have about two and a half inches difference between them so that it could imitate the two eyes’ real field of view. Combining these images into a single one with the help of stereoscope, a person can experience the illusion of the image’s depth. Stereoscope uses the same principle as in human binocular vision. Our eyes are separated by about two inches, so we see everything from two different angles. When the brain combined those views in a single picture, we get the spatial depth and dimension. Stereographs were extremely popular between 1850 and 1930 all around the world. Millions of stereographs were made during that time. There was a broad range of themes: landscape, travel, historical moments, nature disasters, architecture and many others. Nowadays, simply launch this collection full screen and put your mobile device in Google Cardboard Viewer.

World War I (WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War, or the Great War, was a global war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. World War I Images From National Library of Schotland. These photographs form part of the papers of Field Marshal (Earl) Haig (1861-1928), held by the National Library of Scotland. More information is available from the Library's Digital Archive. Like many World War I generals, Haig remains a controversial figure. The collection contains diaries, papers and photographs from every part of Haig’s career, the Great War diaries being of special importance to historians. Photographs in the "Official Photographs" series (which were destined for publication and have captions on the back describing the image) are in black-and-white. World War I saw the development of a system of 'official’ reporting by professionals especially recruited into the forces. Initially reluctant to allow cameras near the fighting, it took some time for the authorities to appreciate the propaganda and recording potential of photography. These photographs provide us with an invaluable record of how the Government and Military wanted the war perceived. Official photographers were encouraged to record morale-boosting scenes of victory and comradeship. Despite the restrictions placed on them, official war photographers succeeded in giving the most comprehensive visual account of the war. It is important to remember that these images were propaganda; few that could depict the war in a disheartening or disconcerting way passed the censors. As a result the photograph taken was often posed. They were intended to reassure those at home and boost morale. They were printed in newspapers, and were intended to confirm that 'Tommy' was winning the war.

A very large dataset of various big guns, howitzers, mortars, columbiads, all types of canon-like things - everything besides machine guns and rockets. This collection as well as all massive collections on Picryl.com required two steps: First, we picked a set to train AI vision to recognize cannon artillery, and after that, ran all 25M+ images in our database through our image recognition network. All media in the collection is in the public domain. There is no limitation on the dataset usage - educational, scientific, or commercial.