Life magazine ran a photo series back in 1953 depicting the sweltering New York City summer and what the locals did to keep cool. It remains the warmest year to date in New York history thanks to a heat wave that brought temperatures as high as 102 degrees in September. Click through and spend the rest of your day wishing you could run under a fire hydrant like these kids — and perhaps fearing what the rest of this summer will bring…

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A death mask, as the name suggests, is a wax or plaster cast made of a person’s face following death. While the Ancient Egyptians used them as part of the mummification process, Westerners adopted the tradition as a way to document what a person looked like, before photography became more popular. Life Magazine just posted a slideshow of 12 rather famous ones, and we’ve picked five of our favorites for you to ID after the jump. But don’t get cocky. Thanks to slight distortions caused by the weight of the plaster during the making of the mold, subjects can sometimes be hard to recognize. So we’ll give you a few hints. There are two famous poets (one Italian, one English), one American president, an Austrian painter, and one playwright who you probably read in high school more than once. Good luck!

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Google is now hosting millions of photos from LIFE Magazine in an online archive that goes back to 1860. Yes history buff, that’s the year that the Civil War started. Aside from being an amazing educational resource, it’s also a fun spot for browsing and searching for cool but completely random stuff — like flipping through old magazines at a flea market without the sneeze factor.

After the jump, we let Flavorpill staffers loose in the archive and asked them to send us the first photo that they stumbled across in the vault. Leave us a link to your own finds in the comments area.

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