1.
Movie theater etiquette has always been a top priority for Americans. This slide, circa 1912, would be shown before movies to remind filmgoers to maintain some decorum:
2.
Notre Dame cathedral used to have a parking lot out front:
3.
After the sinking of the Titanic, survivors of the disaster became minor celebrities. Here’s a Titanic survivor signing an autograph for a very happy fan:
4.
This is what Abu Dhabi looked like circa 1961…
5.
And this is what Abu Dhabi looks like today:
6.
Here are a bunch of listings for apartments in Manhattan from the 1930s. You can see some for as little as $6 a week:
7.
Pictured here are the new female trainees of the Los Angeles Police Department practicing shooting guns, circa 1948:
8.
This picture shows the French army testing out the relatively new technology of flamethrowers during World War I:
9.
In 1910, Paris flooded so badly that it could have been mistaken for Venice, Italy:
10.
Here’s another picture from the Great Flood depicting a man who I’m sure is wishing he had brought his big ol’ yellow rain boots:
11.
This picture from 1853 is often cited as the first example of a photobomb. You can see the little rascal in the back left, making mischief all over the photo:
12.
And while we’re at it, this picture is often cited as the first smile ever captured on film. It’s of a boy named Willy in 1853, and he’s, well, smiling:
13.
This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the age of two, sporting long hair and wearing a dress, which was apparently common for young children at the time:
14.
These people are lining up for what was once the world’s longest bus ride, a route that ran between London, England, and Calcutta, India:
15.
This is William Hutchings, one of the last surviving American Revolutionary War veterans, at the tender age of 100 in 1864:
16.
This map from 1860 shows the Southern states with the heaviest populations and concentrations of enslaved people before the Civil War:
17.
The effects of 400 years of slavery are still evident in our country. This map from 2019 shows the distribution of Democratic versus Republican voters in the USA, and you can see some clear similarities to the map above:
18.
This big ol’ blob is the “Elephant’s Foot” of Chernobyl, created after nuclear fuel mixed with concrete, sand, and other materials. Immediately after the disaster, standing just three feet away from it for two minutes would have been fatal:
19.
This is what Sydney Harbour in Australia looked like in 1932:
20.
And this is what Sydney Harbour in Australia looks like today:
21.
Here’s a picture of two men working on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, clearly following all safety protocols and ensuring their survival:
22.
People did what they had to do during Prohibition. Here’s an enterprising young woman pouring liquor out of a secret compartment in her cane into a cup, circa 1922:
23.
This is Ham, the first chimpanzee in space, enjoying a celebratory apple after successfully making it 160 miles above Earth:
24.
This is Hannah Stilley Gorby, the oldest person to ever have been photographed:
25.
For as long as we’ve had the ability to take photos, people have been editing and retouching them. This picture shows an example of “proto-Photoshop” used in the 1800s to alter an image:
26.
Interracial marriage didn’t become legal in Mississippi until 1970. Here are Roger Mills and his new wife Berta Linson, the first interracial couple married in Mississippi, leaving the courthouse in August 1970:
27.
This very relaxing and not at all terrifying picture shows two women wearing special gigantic masks made for a Mardi Gras celebration in Venice Beach, California in 1932:
28.
This truly wild painting shows one of the earliest uses of rockets in battle, when Tipu Sultan’s forces in southern India launched them during the Anglo-Mysore Wars against the British East India Company in the late 1700s:
29.
Here’s what one of those rockets looked like in real life:
30.
On the lighter side of history, here are two kids in Scotland using a system of pulleys and ziplines to cross a river to get to school instead of walking five miles around the river:
31.
This picture, taken in 1898, shows what was once the oldest house in all of Hamburg, Germany, dating back to 1504:
32.
And, finally, this is the Ain Sakhri figurine, an 11,000-year-old sculpture that is the world’s oldest depiction of a couple being… intimate:
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