When you read a history article or story, you usually get mostly dry facts and your imagination. However, an amazing photograph provides something unique. It shows you how everything actually looked, allowing you to better understand the historical moment. Whether it’s a historical landmark, a famous person, or random old pictures from the past, they all have fascinating stories to tell, and we’re about to show you some of them.
The brave photojournalists who captured these fascinating images witnessed the carnage of wars, documented the development of an atomic bomb, and captured stills of the most magnificent structures under construction. You may be unaware that Tel-Aviv was once nothing more than sand dunes, or that someone looks after literally falling from space. Continue scrolling to see Bored Panda’s collection of rare historical photos that may change your perspective on these pivotal moments.
Have you ever wondered how historical black-and-white photos would look if they were restored in color?
#1 Dorothy Counts, the first black girl in the United States to attend an all-white school, was teased and taunted by her white male peers at Charlotte’s Harry Harding High School in 1957.
#2 Nikola Tesla in his laboratory, holding his “Magnifying Transmitter”
#3 During WWII, an Austrian boy receives new shoes
#4 Jewish Prisoners Following Their Liberation From A Death Train, 1945
#5 A Catholic Woman and Her Protestant Husband’s Graves, Holland, 1888
#6 A Solitary Man Refusing To Do The Nazi Salute, 1936
#7 Race organizers try to prevent Kathrine Switzer from running in the Boston Marathon. She was the first woman to complete the race in 1967.
#8
#9 Job Seeking in the 1930s
#10 The First Morning After Sweden Switched From Driving Left To Driving Right, 1967
#11 German Soldiers React to Concentration Camp Footage, 1945
#12 Residents of West Berlin Show Children to Their Eastern Side Grandparents, 1961
#13 Acrobats Balance On The Empire State Building, 1934
#14 In 1884, the Statue of Liberty was under construction in Paris.
#15 After being arrested in Florida by undercover cops, an exotic dancer demonstrates that her underwear was too large to have exposed her.
#16 16 Mafia boss Joe Masseria is found dead on the floor of a Brooklyn restaurant, holding the Ace of Spades, in 1931.
#17 Lesbian Couple At Le Monocle, Paris, 1932
#18 Bolaji Badejo, A Nigerian Design Student And Former Actor, Wearing His Costume From The Now Classic Sci-Fi Thriller Alien, 1978
#19 The Most Beautiful Suicide – Evelyn Mchale Leapt From The Empire State Building In 1947
#20 The Astronaut Vladimir Komarov’s Remains, A Man Who Fell From Space, 1967
#21 New York Hats, 1930
#22 In 1956, a German child meets her father, a WWII soldier, for the first time since she was a year old.
#23 Wounded Combat Dog Wounded During Action On The Orote Peninsula, 1944
#24 Frida Kahlo in a Boy Suit, 1924
#25 A Mother Shows A Photograph Of Her Son To A Returning POW, 1947
#26 Scottish Piper in a Kilt on a Battlefield During WWI
#27 After WWII, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre.
#28 Titanic Survivors Board the Carpathia in 1912.
#29 Eiffel Tower Painting, 1932
#30 A Rare Photograph of Winston Churchill as a Young Man, 1895
#31 Norway’s First Bananas, 1905
#32 On July 28, 1931, #32 Robert Williams Wood, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein sat in the front row of a Physical Society session in Berlin.
#33 In 1909, approximately 100 people take part in a lottery to divide a 12-acre plot
#34 Mount Rushmore Carving Eye, 1930s
#35 Tsar Nicholas II Allows Grand Duchess Anastasia, His Daughter, to Smoke
#36 Marilyn Monroe Performing Her Iconic Scene From The Seven Year Itch. To generate hype, this shot was taken in New York in front of a large crowd of bystanders and press in 1954.
#37 Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger at Jagger’s 29th birthday party in July 1972.
#38 The Last Public Guillotine Execution, 1939
#39 Hungarian Jews Being Selected By Nazis To Be Sent To The Gas Chamber At Auschwitz Concentration Camp, May-June 1944, Auschwitz Album
#40 Hoover Dam Columns Being Filled With Concrete, February 1934 (Looking Upstream From The Nevada Rim)
#41 On April 17, 1943, the US Coast Guard Cutter Spencer destroys the Nazi submarine U-175.
#42 The Last Photograph of Vladimir Lenin He’d had three strokes by this point and was completely deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deaf
#43 Eduard Bloch, The Hitler Family’s Jewish Physician, In His Office, C. 1938. Hitler Later Called Bloch A ‘Noble Jew,’ and He Stood Under His Personal Protection.
#44 After capturing Berlin in 1945, Soviet troops scribbled graffiti in the Reichstag.
#45 A Jewish woman with her face hidden sits on a park bench labeled “Only For Jews,” Austria, 1938.
#46 The Gadget, 1945, The First Atomic Bomb
#47 On April 10, 1924, Minneapolis police arrested Jennie Macgregor for dispensing alcoholic beverages from life-preserver flasks.
#48 The Japanese Carrier Zuikaku’s Crew Gives One Last Banzai Cheer Before Sinking, 1944
#49 Boxing Match On The USS New York, July 3, 1899
#50 Putting the finishing touches on the Fat Man atomic bomb, which was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. It had the acronym “Jancfu”- Joint Army-Navy-Civilian F*** Up- scribbled on its nose.
#51 A Young Hitler Celebrates the Beginning of World War One, 1914
#52 During the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, the Eiffel Tower was destroyed
#53 During the 1975 evacuation of Saigon, an American evacuee punches a South Vietnamese man for a seat on the last chopper out of the US Embassy.
#54 Men Posing in Front of Lynch’s Slave Market, St. Louis,
Credits: bananalanguage.com