In 1949, LIFE magazine sent famed photographer Nina Leen to document the daily life of a sassy troupe of young women who had run off and joined the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, Fla. What developed was a portrait of a sisterhood formed over acrobatics that mixed high-flying wire acts with fashionable high-waisted shorts. Sarasota was once considered “the home of the American circus”. Here: an aerialist smoking while rehearsing for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, FL in 1949. (Photo By Nina Leen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Gas-masked men of the British Machine Gun Corps with a Vickers machine gun during the first battle of the Somme, 1916. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Pfc. Sebastian Rodriguez, machine gunner, Weapons Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, fires an M240 machine gun during a night squad-attack exercise, here, May 22, 2013. (Photo by Sgt. Sarah Fiocco/U.S. Marines)

Florence Welch of Florence And The Machine performs at Spark Arena on January 30, 2019 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Dave Simpson/WireImage)

A dog dressed as a Zoltar fortune telling machine participates in the Halloween Dog Parade in New York. (Photo by Timothy Clary/Getty Images)

People look at the “Dragon de Calais” by Francois Delaroziere and La compagnie La Machine during a rehearsal in the harbour of Calais, France on October 30, 2019. (Photo by Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)

Fire blows from a fogging machine as a worker sprays fumigation vapour to stem the spread of dengue virus along a street in Peshawar, Pakistan, October 18, 2021. (Photo by Fayaz Aziz/Reuters)

Kent Josephso organizes his 8mm tracer rounds during the Big Sandy Shoot in Mohave County, Arizona March 23, 2013. The Big Sandy Shoot is the largest organized machine gun shoot in the United States attended by shooters from around the country. Vintage and replica style machine guns and cannons are some of the weapons displayed during the event. Picture taken March 22, 2013. (Photo by Joshua Lott/Reuters)