39 Fascinating Photos Collected From History

1.

Portrait of Margot Frank (standing) and her famous sister Anne Frank (laying in the sand) from August 1940. The picture was taken from Anne’s photo album, Zandvoort. Anne Frank famously documented her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II from 1942-1944. She died sometime in February or March 1945.

2.

President Abraham Lincoln visits the famous sight of Antietam in 1863. He is accompanied by Allan Pinkerton and Major General John A. McClernand. The photo was taken in front of the headquarters tent of the U.S. Secret Service according to archives in the Library of Congress.

3.

Former President Bill Clinton is seen here in these early photos from his childhood. In the image with the pony, Clinton is 4 or 5 years old. The other image was taken in the 1950s.

4.

This early American photograph shows two men standing atop a massive pile of bison skulls. The skulls are going to be ground up and turned into fertilizer.

5.

Bonnie and Clyde were the infamous American gangsters of the Great Depression. Their exploits have been glamorized through the years, but the duo’s gang most often robbed small stores and rural gas stations. The two met a bloody demise when they were ambushed by law officers near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, in 1934. Their bullet-riddled car is seen here.

6.

On Jan. 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. Witnesses on the ground react to watching the heartbreaking scene.

7.

A children’s gas mask shaped in the likeness of popular Disney cartoon character Mickey Mouse seen here on display at a museum.

8.

In this photo dated to 1949, Ernest Hemingway takes a bath aboard the S.S. Jagiello. Hemingway often wrote about his time in World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II.

9.

Hitler practices a speech and mannerisms in front of a photographer so he can study his movements and dramatic impact. Hitler was famously a rousing public speaker.

10.

This startling and heartbreaking image shows a young girl who survived but was blinded by the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. The bombing killed an estimated 90,000-146,000 people in Hiroshima in total.

11.

The propeller and lower shell of the Hindenburg Zeppelin are seen soaring above Berlin stadium during the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. Less than a year later, in Manchester Township, New Jersey, the aircraft caught fire and was destroyed during an attempt to dock with its mooring mast.

12.

On March 24, 1958, Elvis Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army as a private at Fort Chaffee. A media frenzy swarmed the celebrity’s recruitment. Here Presley operates a gun in the back of a jeep. Presley stayed in the Army until 1960.

13.

On Aug. 14, 1936, in Owensboro, Kentucky, 20,000 people gathered around a scaffold to witness the public hanging of Rainey Bethea. A media frenzy ensued after some foul-ups in the execution. It would lead to nationwide changes and be the last public hanging in the country.

14.

Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower is accompanied by General Omar N. Bradley and General George S. Patton, Jr., as they inspect stolen art hidden in a German salt mine by Nazi soldiers.

15.

Famous German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is seen here with his wife (front) and a group of their friends.

16.

A crowd listens to President Abraham Lincoln giving his famous Gettysburg Address, a speech given at the dedication of the Civil War cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on Nov. 19, 1863.

17.

The photo on the left was taken in Beardstown, Illinois, (that’s not a joke) in 1858 and shows the famous 16th president of the United States before he grew out his signature beard. Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1858 and was elected president two years later. The image on the right shows Lincoln still without his beard in 1860.

18.

John Quincy Adams was an American statesman and member of the House of Representatives before becoming the sixth president of the United States. Here, Adams sits in a chair for a photograph in the later stages of his life in 1843.

19.

In this famous photograph, leader of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev uses his own cigarette to light the cigarette of Indonesian President Sukarno, the first president of the nation, serving from 1945 to 1967.

20.

Joseph Ambrose, a World War I veteran, sits at the official dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., in November 1982. Ambrose holds the American flag that covered the coffin of his son who died in the Korean War in 1951.

21.

A Sangley is an archaic term that was used in the Philippines, beginning after the Spanish Colonial Period, to classify a person of pure Chinese ancestry. A mestizo de sangley (pictured) refers to a person of mixed Chinese and indigenous Indio/Filipino ancestry. This image was taken in 1875 by Francisco Van Camp.

22.

Vladmir Ilyich Lenin sits beside Joseph Stalin near Moscow, USSR, sometime around 1922. Lenin founded the Soviet state and was succeeded by Stalin, who would reign with a more dictatorial method of governance.

23.

On Aug. 8, 1936, Jesse Owens set an Olympic record in the long jump competition at the Summer Olympics to take home the gold medal. Owens proudly stood atop the medal podium with a military-style salute as German Luz Long gave a Nazi salute with his arm extended.

24.

Famed and often under-appreciated inventor Nikola Tesla sits amidst his lab as his magnifying transmitter high voltage generator emits bolts of electricity in December 1899. At least 278 patents worldwide are attributed to Tesla, with many scholars saying other inventions are not properly attributed to Tesla, or that Tesla never took credit for their creation.

25.

Men in suits ride a large, circular portion of pipe to be used in the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam began construction in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River in 1931 and was completed in 1936.

26.

Experts in the Allied Army examine the remains of German dictator Adolf Hitler’s war bunker in 1945. As Allied troops drew closer, the Nazi leader committed suicide by placing a revolver in his mouth.

27.

Singer, songwriter, actor, and social activist Harry Belafonte cracks a joke that hits home for civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in this photo from the 1960s.

28.

Workmen are seen here carving details in the granite of the face of George Washington on the Mount Rushmore monument in Rushmore, South Dakota, in 1932. Construction on the monument ended in October 1941.

29.

Orville Wright, one of the inventors of the airplane, boards a plane for his last flight, piloted by Howard Hughes.

30.

Ferdinand Porsche (left) amuses German dictator Adolf Hitler by showing him a model for the Volkswagen car where the engine is in the rear, also known as the “boot.”

31.

SS Chief Heinrich Himmler walks through a POW camp for Russian prisoners of war. The man staring down Himmler was reportedly a Jewish man.

32.

The Wright Glider has a bumpy landing and stands upright on the ground at Kitty Hawk in 1911. Orville Wright climbs out of the glider as Alec Ogilvie (left) and Wilbur Wright steady the aircraft.

33.

Early 1900s loggers hold a 28-foot saw and stand in the cut out trunk of a massive Redwood tree in California in this hand-colored photograph dated to 1907.

34.

President Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to fly in a plane. Here he sits beside a pilot at the controls before takeoff. This photo was taken in 1907.

35.

The Russian leader Joseph Stalin goofs around in front of the camera in this collection from the Russian State Film and Photo Archive.

36.

In this file photo from NASA, the sun sets behind the rocky terrain of Earth’s neighboring planet, Mars.

37.

A moving image captures the aftermath of the Titanic disaster as a priest says blessings for victims of the famed “Unsinkable” ship. In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. More than 1,500 people were killed.

38.

Theodore Roosevelt riding a moose. While the picture itself is real, the contents actually represent one of the first times “Photoshop” was used. This was a cut/paste of Roosevelt to put him on a moose, representing his Progressive Bull Moose presidential party.

39.

A liberated Frenchman lights the cigar of England’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill following the defeat of the German army. Churchill arrived in Cherbourg on June 10, 1944, a few days before Allied forces landed on Normandy beaches as reinforcements during D-Day.