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The Olympics are finally back! Here’s a picture from the very first opening ceremony of the very first modern Olympics, held in Athens, Greece, in 1896:
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Speaking of which, did you know that some wrestling events during the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Italy, were held at the ancient Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine? It looked very, very cool:
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Here’s one last photo of an absolutely enormous crowd of onlookers watching the ski jump at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway:
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In the 1950s, stewardesses flying for United Airlines had to adhere to a very specific list of pre-flight grooming “responsibilities”:
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Here’s an American soldier casually resting in the bed of top Nazi leader Hermann Goering toward the end of the war:
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Pictured here is a proto-type space suit, the Hardsuit AX-3, developed in the 1970s:
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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:
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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:”
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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:
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This is a photo of a young, unnamed Italian boy arriving in the USA at Ellis Island after a journey from Europe:
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Speaking of which, here’s an aerial view of Ellis Island during its heyday, pictured here with the New York City skyline in 1933:
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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:
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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:
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For one brief, wondrous moment, a fashion trend of giant proto-JNCO, extremely wide-legged pants known as Oxford Bags took England by storm:
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Can you guess what this boy is sitting on? Well, it’s a sea mine that washed up on shore at the start of World War II. As you can see, it’s the perfect place to enjoy some ice cream:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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This is a group of American soldiers capturing a handful of Germans attempting to establish a radio base in Greenland during World War II:
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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:
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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:
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On the other hand, here’s a handful of Boy Scouts demonstrating very casually how to wear gas mask:
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This is an unnamed Union soldier from the Civil War posing for a portrait with his favorite pistol:
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This is evidently where the Republican Party got its start in Wisconsin in 1854:
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Here’s President Jimmy Carter shoveling some peanuts at the peanut farm during the 1970s:
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Back when people were so inclined to do so, this was one way to board and travel by blimp:
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These are the shoes (well, shoe) Marie Antoinette wore to her execution during the French Revolution:
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Here’s a couple making do inside their Ohio home during the Great Depression:
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This is the Dale Creek Bridge, an bridge built in Wyoming in the 1800s that was so rickety that trains had to slow down to 4 miles per hour to cross it safely:
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This just might be the first mirror selfie ever taken, and you can see the three of them are absolutely thrilled about it:
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And, finally, the late 1800s, a train overran the tracks in Connecticut, so naturally people took some time to pose with it: