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I’ve always been a bit obsessed with history, and nothing pulls me in faster than a good old photograph. Books and documentaries are great, but there’s something different about seeing a real moment captured from decades, or even a century ago.
A street full of people going about their day, kids playing, workers on the job… little snapshots of what life actually looked like back then.
Old photos have a way of shrinking the distance between us and the past. Suddenly those eras we read about don’t feel so far away anymore.
These vintage historical photos offer a rare glimpse into everyday life from long ago. Here are some fascinating moments frozen in time.
1. This is a mold made from George Washington’s face while he was still alive, capturing the features of the first president in remarkable detail
2. Here’s Marilyn Monroe pumping iron sometime in the 1950s, wearing jeans like that one old guy at the gym
3. In the 1950s, stewardesses flying for United Airlines had to adhere to a very specific list of pre-flight grooming “responsibilities”
4. These are the items President Lyndon B. Johnson had in his pockets the day he died in 1973
5. Pictured here is a proto-type space suit, the Hardsuit AX-3, developed in the 1970s
6. After World War I, sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd led a team that crafted realistic masks to restore the faces of injured soldiers. Here she is putting the finishing touches on a facemask
7. Here’s a picture from the very first opening ceremony of the very first modern Olympics, held in Athens, Greece, in 1896
8. Here’s Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, aka “The Father of National Parks,” at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park in 1903
9. This is a group of soldiers from the Harlem Hellfighters posing with a puppy they rescued during World War I
10. This is the enormous traffic jam in Germany near the Brandenburg Gate two days after the fall of the Berlin Wall
11. Here’s Admiral William H. P. Blandy having the time of his life cutting a cake shaped like a nuclear bomb explosion after the successful Operation Crossroads tests at Bikini Atoll
12. The New York Times asked Pablo Picasso what he had to say about the moon landing in 1969. Let’s just say, he was… unimpressed
13. This is a photo of a young, unnamed Italian boy arriving in the USA at Ellis Island after a journey from Europe
14. Pictured here are a lifeboat full of Titanic survivors getting ready to board the Carpathia after spending the night adrift
15. Even Civil War veterans got a bit silly at times. Here’s one Union soldier doing a classic thumb-to-nose maneuver
16. Here’s a woman getting a tattoo of a butterfly on her leg from artist George Burchett circa 1930
17. Here’s some women posing next to a “constipated” car circa 1926
18. Before bathrooms were common in homes in England, kids had to go to specialized bathhouses to get clean at “cleansing stations.” Here are a few kids getting, well, cleansed
19. This is a picture of an atomic bomb going off, taken one second after detonation during a test. You can see several battleships next to the explosion, taking the brunt of it of the whole thing
20. This is most likely the first photograph ever taken of the Great Sphinx of Giza, snapped in 1852 before the monument had been fully uncovered from the sand
21. This is perhaps the world’s earliest “BEWARE OF DOG” sign. It’s a tile design inside a home in Pompeii from the 2nd century BC, and it reads “Cave Canum,” which, obviously, means “beware of dog”
22. This is astronaut Sergei Krikalev, a Russian cosmonaut who was in space during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and, as a result, was effectively stranded in orbit for over 300 days
23. Here’s a woman voting in the first contest to allow women to vote, the 1920 election
24. Here’s an American soldier casually resting in the bed of top Nazi leader Hermann Goering toward the end of the war
25. Here’s an aerial view of Ellis Island during its heyday, pictured here with the New York City skyline in 1933
26. Here’s Claude Monet in his studio surrounded by his work
27. This is the safety net that was installed under the Golden Gate Bridge during its construction in the 1930s. The net saved 19 people through the duration of the work
28. Speaking of the Soviet Union, here’s former leader Nikita Khrushchev on top of the Empire State Building, oohing and ahhing at the big giant spire
29. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 tore through the city for two days, destroying thousands of buildings in the process and leaving the city looking like this in the immediate aftermath
30. This is a group of American soldiers capturing a handful of Germans attempting to establish a radio base in Greenland during World War II
31. This is a haunting photo of a soldier inside a trench at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in September 1916 during World War I, possibly experiencing what was then referred to as shell shock
32. And here’s a handful of soldiers very excited to be in the news after capturing Germans who were trying to set up radio‑weather stations in Greenland during World War II
33. This, in all its glory, is the ship cat Convoy taking a brief rest aboard the HMS Hermione during World War II
34. On the other hand, here’s a handful of Boy Scouts demonstrating very casually how to wear gas mask
35. Here’s President Jimmy Carter shoveling some peanuts at the peanut farm during the 1970s
Mike Primavera is a Chicago-based comedy writer even though he doesn't HAVE to work. He lives comfortably off of his family's pasta fortune. Follow him on all social media at @primawesome
English (US)