1.
Here are two men testing a bulletproof vest in the absolute safest way possible:
2.
This is a picture of a meeting of the New York chapter of the “Fat Men’s Club” circa 1930:
3.
This is a real photo of two people, Gladys Roy and Ivan Unger, playing tennis on top of a plane flying at 3000 feet:
4.
Here’s photographer Jack Reilly prancing about the 74-story-tall Bank of Manhattan while it was under construction in 1929:
5.
This is what a typical children’s playground looked like in 1908:
6.
These are some of the floats from the 1939 edition of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade:
7.
Before modern car washes were invented, one particularly wacky idea was for cars to drive around through water in a circle:
8.
This is Marcia Pinkenfield, winner of the “Most Beautiful Child In America” contest in 1927:
9.
Here’s the contestants of the World’s Most Beautiful Legs competition in 1951:
10.
This is pilot Charles Godefroy flying his plane through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris:
11.
Here’s a totally safe and not concerning picture of a baby playing with a ton of baby alligators at a California alligator farm:
12.
Here’s a photo of a horse casually jumping over a table of soldiers eating lunch:
13.
After World War I, a bunch of officers got together to pay tribute to the fallen horses lost in battle:
14.
Speaking of which, here’s another “living photograph” featuring over 20,000 men paying tribute to Woodrow Wilson:
15.
This picture from the 1927 Tour de France shows riders Julien Vervaecke and Maurice Geldhof taking a quick cigarette break while competing:
16.
One of the biggest fads of the 1950s was “phonebooth stuffing,” where-in a bunch of people would, well, stuff themselves into a phonebooth:
17.
Back when people were so inclined to do so, this was one way to board and travel by blimp:
18.
This is a picture of German Shepherd police dogs facing the ultimate challenge: remaining perfectly still while a cat sits right in front of them:
19.
This smiling fellow is a lab technician hired to observe couples kissing in order to gauge the durability of lipstick:
20.
This is beautician Max Factor with his invention, the beauty calibrator, a device designed to show which parts of a woman’s face needed more or less make-up:
21.
This is what was known as an “auto-thriller,” basically a rollercoaster for your car:
22.
The Michelin Man not only used to be absolutely terrifying, but he used to run with a gang of several other musically inclined Michelin men:
23.
The man on the right is Johnny Eck, a popular sideshow performer who was born without a bottom half:
24.
Here’s a circus performer wrestling an alligator inside a tank:
25.
This is H.L. Bowdoin with the deep sea diving suit he invented:
26.
This is Danish clothier Christian Troelstrup and the building he covered with over a thousand coats to attract buyers:
27.
During WWI this church in France stacked sandbags throughout the entirety of the structure to protect it:
28.
Due to part to the modern discovery of King Tut’s tomb, Egypt was so popular in the UK that there were even pharaoh themed gas pumps:
29.
This was a short-lived way to transport prisoners on motorcycle:
30.
This is Civil War veteran Jacob Miller, a man who was shot right between the eyes and lived for 17 more years:
31.
This is Jacques Plante, who in 1959 became the first goalie to ever wear a protective face mask:
32.
During World War II, babies in England were fitted with baby-sized gas masks that were comically large:
33.
In 1933, A.L. Kahn caught a 5,000-pound manta ray off the coast of Florida:
34.
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:
35.
This is one very, very, very safe example of what a baby’s car seat used to look like in the 1950s and 60s:
36.
Here it is in action:
37.
This bad boy is Zach T. Wilcox, owner of the world’s longest beard, in 1922:
38.
This is what an early design for an electric hair dryer looked like:
39.
This is what some of the first New York City tour buses looked like in 1904:
40.
This is the Brewster armor suit, one of the first fully functional suits of body armor designed for World War I combat:
41.
This is President Lyndon B. Johnson driving a Amphicar, a, well, amphibious car designed to operate on land and sea:
42.
This is inventor Joe Gilpin looking dapper as ever while riding his motorized surfboard circa 1948:
43.
This is actress Jessie Mathew and her very modestly sized headdress:
44.
Here’s the 1930 “Queen Of The Vineyards” Wilma Smith buried head to toe in a bunch of grapes:
45.
Before he retired from baseball, the legendary Lou Gerhig auditioned for the role of Tarzan. They made him carry and a spear and everything:
46.
France used to have these public urinals known as “pissoirs”:
47.
This vehicle was the car being driven when the first ever speeding ticket was given to Walter Arnold in 1896:
48.
This camouflage, known as “dazzle camouflage,” was extremely popular during World War I:
49.
This is a champagne inspector wearing a champagne-inspecting mask in case of any champagne-related explosions:
50.
And finally, apparently, back in the day, peanut sellers would, well, wear suits with a ton of peanuts sewn into them:
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