Children in English schools wore gas masks in 1939, practicing for a war that would soon reach their homes. The photograph is one of many glimpses into the past, a scattered collection of moments preserved in time. The nineteenth century closed with New York City rush hour in pure chaos, while in 1877 Stonehenge stood as it had for thousands of years, its modern counterpart captured again in 2019. A New York policeman hung from a steel girder in 1920.
Ancient Roman mosaics from the third and fourth centuries were unearthed in Verona, Italy. From the windows on the world atop the World Trade Center North Tower in 1976, the city stretched out below. Some images are harder to look at. A Chinese woman with bound feet, photographed in the late 1800s.
Bandits Roost Alleyway at 59 and a half Mulberry Street, New York City, 1888, where a group of men stared into the camera with hard eyes. Dale Creek Bridge in Wyoming slowed trains to four miles per hour in 1885. The first known photograph of a cat dates to around 1845. Frank Hayes won a horse race posthumously in 1923, the only jockey to do so.
A champagne inspector wore a protective mask against bottle explosions in California in 1933. Robert Earl Hughes, the world’s heaviest man at 1,071 pounds, could still walk unaided. A first-class cabin aboard a Japan Airlines Boeing 747-100 in the 1970s showed how far air travel had come. A shoemaker posed for a portrait in 1850.
A smiling young boy was captured in a portrait 134 years ago. Ancient human footprints found in White Sands, New Mexico, dated back 21,000 to 23,000 years. An immigrant family arrived at Ellis Island in 1904. A New York City street scene was captured in 1928.
The period between the wars held its own strange beauty. The crescent moon hairstyle was popular in the late 1800s. The armor of a 19-year-old Napoleonic soldier killed at Waterloo in 1815 survived the battle. The real-life Peaky Blinders posed in Birmingham in 1910.
Annie Oakley showed off a rifle gifted by Buffalo Bill in 1922. People dressed up for a casual midday walk in 1915, their hats and long coats a marker of a different time. US Marines offered a cigarette to a buried Japanese soldier in 1945. After the Berlin Wall fell, East Berlin soldiers refused to shake hands with West Berliners.
The Titanic was compared in size to a modern cruise ship. Queen Victoria photobombed her son’s wedding, dressed in mourning. The only known photo of Concorde flying at Mach 2 was taken. Rose Kennedy was photographed shortly before her forced lobotomy.
The final photo of Timothy Treadwell and Amy Huguenard was taken in 2003 before their fatal bear attack. Crystal Cave lay 984 feet underground in Mexico. A young Soviet boy captured a German general during World War II. Malunka Savage, the youngest Serbian soldier in World War I, enlisted at age eight.
John Wayne dressed as the Easter Bunny in 1972. A third atomic bomb was prepared for Japan but never dropped. The original Taco Bell building now sat behind company headquarters in a parking lot. The weight of history pressed through other images.
A reconstructed face of a stone age woman was built from a 4,000-year-old skull. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon called their moms after winning Oscars in 1997. A Monet painting sold for 13. 4 million after fetching just $330,000 in 1978.
La Bella Principessa, a clearer Mona Lisa copy, was uncovered in 2012. A massive piece of cable from the Golden Gate Bridge survived. Electric elevator desks were in use in Prague in 1937. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, later known as Lady Gaga, was photographed in 2004.
Daniel Sterne unknowingly photographed Robin Williams as a mime in Central Park in 1974. Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn stood backstage at the Oscars in the 1950s. Pope Francis washed women’s feet in a Rome prison from a wheelchair. US special forces once deployed with W54 nuclear warheads via parachute.
A hippie father strolled with his daughter in Amsterdam in 1968. Paul Newman visited Venice in a candid photo from September 1963. Humphrey Bogart used shoe lifts in Casablanca to match Ingrid Bergman’s height in 1942. Judy Garland’s screen test for The Wizard of Oz was filmed when she was 16 in 1938, and she was shunned by her co-stars, befriended only by the actress who played the Wicked Witch.
Paul Alexander died at 78 after spending 70 years in an iron lung due to polio. Barack and Michelle Obama appeared with newborn Malia in their living room in 1998. Theodore Roosevelt was photographed at age 19 during his freshman year at Harvard in 1877. Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in history, stood at 8 feet 11 inches.
A French knife grinder worked lying on his stomach, known as a yellow belly, in 1902. Chicago appeared as it did 129 years ago. Jimmy Carter was photographed working on his peanut farm before his presidency in 1960. Daylight revealed the destruction from the Baltimore Bridge collapse.
A 13-year-old girl was arrested in 1959 for taking her mother’s car. General Charles de Gaulle’s daughter Anne, who had Down syndrome, called him papa. Ruth Graves Wakefield created the chocolate chip cookie in 1938. In the 1960s, Istanbul used drunk baskets to carry intoxicated patrons home.
Albert Einstein taught physics at Lincoln University, a black college, in 1946. Marie Curie’s tomb was lined with lead due to radiation from her remains. A young soldier hugged his mother before leaving for World War I in 1917. Princess Diana wore her famous revenge dress the night Charles confessed, in 1994.
The same man, house, and car were photographed 50 years apart. A British woman calmly sipped tea after a London bombing raid in 1944. The Merchesen meteorite, the oldest material ever found on Earth, was 7 billion years old. The Sweet Track, a 5,830-year-old Neolithic timber walkway, stretched through Somerset, England.
Stephen Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1965. An orangutan walked through the ruins of its former rainforest. Windswept trees bent permanently along New Zealand’s rugged coast. BF109s blended seamlessly into the desert camouflage of North Africa during World War II.
A payment list showed how much artists earned at Woodstock in 1969. Robert De Niro at age 80 posed with his 10-month-old daughter. British and German soldiers shared a Christmas truce on the battlefield in 1914. Two Armenian women posed with rifles before battle in 1895.
David Hensley, crippled by polio, wore leg braces in 1948. Maud Wagner became the first female professional tattoo artist in the US. Valentine Tapley never cut his beard again after 1896. The real outfits worn by doctors treating plague patients in the 1600s look like something from a nightmare.
A circus strong woman balanced a piano on her chest in 1920. A woman charged her electric car in her garage in 1912. In 1907, Annette Kellerman was arrested for wearing her bathing suit. Harrison Okene survived three days in a sunken tugboat off Nigeria’s coast before being rescued.
The nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, was captured from the ground. Hans Langa, a German World War I veteran, was photographed in 1998. A teenager at an Elvis Presley concert was captured on April 6th, 1957. Anatoli Golimfki, a decorated Soviet veteran, lost his legs and survived to see 1989.
A French girl kissed an American soldier on Valentine’s Day in 1945. New York children slept on fire escapes to stay cool at night. The Statue of Liberty stood in Paris before its journey to New York. Bruce Lee performed a two-finger one-armed push-up in the 1970s.
The last known photo of the Titanic afloat was taken on April 12th, 1912. The violin of Wallace Hartley, band leader on the Titanic, survived. Neil Armstrong’s Gemini 8 space capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean. The Michelin man’s original design was terrifying.
Competitors gathered at the 1980 Space Invaders World Championship. The first ever photograph of the moon was taken. Galileo drew the phases of the moon in 1610. Robert Wadlow, the tallest man who ever lived, appeared again.
The end of the 13,000-mile Great Wall of China stretched into the distance. Queen Jenipel, the Last Queen of Mongolia, posed in 1920. The 1944 eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the landscape.
School girls in gas masks repeated the image from 1939, a reminder that the world had once been a much darker place.