21 Fascinating Historical Photos

1. Thelonius Monk, 1959

2. Members of the Harlem Hellfighters in 1919. The “Harlem Hellfighters” were the first African American regiment in WWI who were assigned to the French forces. None were captured, never lost a trench, or a foot of ground to the enemy. They returned to the U.S. as one of the most successful regiments of World War I

3. Shortest, tallest and fattest men in Europe play cards. 1913

4. A 17-year old Frida Kahlo poses for a family photo wearing a traditional gentleman’s 3-piece suit, 1924

5. 8th grader Kurt Cobain playing drums at an assembly at Montesano High School, 1981

6. Private James Hendrix of the 101st Airborne, playing guitar at Fort Campbell Kentucky in 1962

7. Earliest known photo of Elvis Presley, with parents Gladys & Vernon in 1938

8. Samurai in Training, 1860

9. Enlisted men aboard an American ship hear the news of Japan’s surrender. 1945

10. A photo taken in secret of the Supreme Court in session, one of only two ever taken. 1932

11. The only known photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, before giving his famous address. November 19, 1863

12. A large crowd, made up of many African Americans, mourn the death of Abraham Lincoln outside the Courthouse in Vicksburg, Mississippi

13. Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin, 1931

14. In 1939 20,000 Nazi supporters held a rally in Madison Square Garden

15. Times Square, 1957

16. Paper boys at 2 A.M. about to start their morning rounds. February 12, 1908

17. The Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre, 1911. Two years went by before the true culprit was discovered, an Italian petty criminal called Vincenzo Perugia who had moved to Paris in 1908 and worked at the Louvre for a time. He went to the gallery in the white smock that all the employees there wore and hid until it closed for the night when he removed the Mona Lisa from its frame. When the gallery reopened he walked unobtrusively out with the painting under his smock, attracting no attention, and took it to his lodgings in Paris. It was not until November 1913, calling himself Leonardo Vincenzo, that Perugia wrote to an art dealer in Florence named Alfredo Geri offering to bring the painting to Italy for a reward of 500,000 lire. He travelled to Florence by train the following month, taking the Mona Lisa in a trunk, hidden beneath a false bottom. After booking into a hotel, which subsequently shrewdly changed its name to the Hotel La Gioconda, he took the painting to Geri’s gallery. Geri persuaded him to leave it for expert examination and the police arrested Perugia later that day. Perugia apparently believed, entirely mistakenly, that the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Florence by Napoleon and that he deserved a reward for doing his patriotic duty and returning it to its true home in Italy. That was what he said, at least. Many Italians welcomed the masterpiece home; people flocked to see it for a time at the Uffizi Gallery, some of them weeping with joy, and Perugia served only a brief prison sentence. The great painting was duly returned to the Louvre and has hung there safely and enigmatically ever since.

18. A war-weary French woman pours a British soldier a cup of tea during the fighting following the Allied landings in Normandy. 1944

19. Adolf Hitler speaking with Princess Olga of Yugoslavia, 1939

20. Men working in the rigging of the three-masted steel barque Garthsnaid, 1920

21. Prince Charles and Princess Diana on vacation in Bahamas, 1982