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This is Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, a ruler known, among other things, for his rather large forehead:
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“Surely his forehead can’t be that large,” you think. Well, this is what he looked like in real life:
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Last week, President Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House to make way for a massive new ballroom. Here’s what the East Wing looked like right after it was constructed in 1902:
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And here’s what it looks like today, post-demolition:
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Yesterday afternoon, the massive Category 5 Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica. Here’s an incredible and terrifying shot of what it looked like from inside the eye of the storm:
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By now, you’ve probably heard about the massive heist at the Louvre in France, where millions of dollars’ worth of priceless jewels were stolen just a week ago…
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Well, among the pieces stolen from the museum is Empress Eugénie’s pearl tiara, containing over 200 pearls and thousands of diamonds:
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Here’s that same tiara pictured (well, painted) here on Empress Eugénie in the mid-1800s:
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Here’s another piece that was stolen from the museum, Empress Marie Louise’s emerald necklace and earrings:
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And here’s Empress Marie-Louise depicted here wearing that necklace in 1810:
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In case you forgot or just want to pretend it doesn’t exist, the clocks go back this weekend. Here’s a scene from one of the first Daylight Saving Time observances, with these helpful folks showing others how it worked:
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Hate Daylight Saving Time? You’re not alone. People have been annoyed by it for decades… Just look at these little protesters from the 1960s:
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Pictured in the center is Armi Kuusela, Miss Finland and the winner of the very first Miss Universe pageant in 1952:
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Here’s Armi ten years later with a big lamp above her head:
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Here’s a young woman dressed as “NIGHT” for Halloween in the early 1900s:
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This is the Coffee Queen of 1940, Peggy Van Vliet, posing inside the “world’s largest iced coffee glass” with, well, an iced coffee:
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Before RADAR was invented, people had to get creative to listen in on the battlefield… really creative. We’re talking “wear-giant-cones-on-your-head” creative:
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Or use enormous Looney Tunes-esque listening devices creative:
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Or use devices called “WAR TUBAS” to listen in:
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Here’s what a similar machine to that one looks like today:
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One of the biggest fads of the 1950s was “phonebooth stuffing,” where-in a bunch of people would, well, stuff themselves into a phonebooth:
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Here are two Union Civil War soldiers messing around in a picture and holding each other’s cigar:
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This is an absolutely ENORMOUS tower that was built entirely out of alcohol confiscated during Prohibition:
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Among the more unusual events at the 1908 Olympics was the sport of Bicycle Polo. Here are the German and Irish teams facing off in a match for the ages:
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This is an actual political cartoon from the early 1900s, warning against the dangers of electricity:
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This is Frank “Cannonball” Richards performing his signature feat: being struck in the stomach by a 140 pound cannonball:
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This strange looking guy is Gharial, an endangered species of crocodile with an incredibly narrow snout found in India:
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Here’s another angle of my man Ghary:
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I’m sure you’re familiar with Queen Victoria, Britain’s maybe-most famous monarch who ruled for 60s years during the 1800s…
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Well, did you know she was only 4 feet 11 inches tall? Here’s what I presume to be an average-sized man standing with some of her dresses:
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In 2022, NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this strange cylindrical object on the surface of Mars:
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This is Mrs. Priscilla Boatwright, a former slave born in 1846. She’s pictured here at age 108 using the old-fashioned stove she apparently used three times a day:
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Here’s a mother and son casually watching a nuclear bomb test in the distance:
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For one brief, magical moment top-loading dishwashers were a thing:
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And, finally, this is what ordering Pizza Hut online looked like back in 1994: