Yahoo Lifestyle My Mind Is Absolutely Blown By These 39 Photos That Are Making Me Look At History And Time Very Differently
1.These photos, taken in 1946, are the first photos of Earth taken from space:
They were able to achieve this by launching a V-2 missile carrying a 35-millimeter motion picture camera into space. The camera was protected in a steel case, which allowed it to survive when the missile crashed back down to Earth:
2.This photo, taken in 1910 at Mount Wilson Observatory, California, is one of the very first photos of Halley's Comet. It was the first time that it could be photographed as it only appears every 75–80 years, and the last time it appeared in 1835, it could only be sketched:
For comparison, this is a photo that was taken of Halley's Comet when it last appeared in 1986:
Halley's Comet won't appear again until 2061.
3.Taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius, this self-portrait is considered the first selfie. It is also the first portrait of a person. (Though it's not the first photo with a person in it.) French photographer Louis Daguerre captured the first photo with a person in it in 1838 when he took a picture of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris from above and captured a small blurry image of a man getting his shoes shined below.
The long exposure time needed to take very early photos made it difficult to photograph people. Daguerre's photo took seven minutes, but the man getting his shoes shined stood in place long enough to be captured by his photo.
4.The photo below, taken in 1852, is of Conrad Heyer, a Revolutionary War veteran who was 103 years old when it was taken. He is not only one of the earliest-born people to have been photographed alive but also one of a few Revolutionary War veterans to ever be photographed:
5.There were still Civil War veterans alive during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. In fact, in 1938, Roosevelt met with them at a ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (as seen in the photo below), at which he gave a speech to dedicate the Eternal Light Peace Memorial. The ceremony was also captured on film and shown on newsreels in movie theaters:
6.In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first US president to appear on TV — FDR gave a speech to open the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, which was televised (you can see a screenshot of it below). It also wouldn't be the only time he appeared on TV:
7.Here's a color photo of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon shaking hands ahead of their first debate — which also happened to be the first televised presidential debate — in September of 1960:
Bettmann / Bettmann Archive, Photo 12 / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
8.Here's a behind-the-scenes color photo of Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and William Frawley filming the iconic "California, Here We Come!" car scene in 1955:
Of course, this is what the scene looked like to us watching:
9.This Coca-Cola ad from 1900 features Hilda Clark, a light opera and dance hall singer, who was the brand's first celebrity endorsement:
10.No photos of the Titanic's Grand Staircase exist (well, at least before it sank). The photos we see of the Grand Staircase are actually from the Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic, which had an identical staircase. The two ships were built side-by-side and were nearly identical:
11.This is a photo of Titanic survivors on lifeboats being rescued by the Carpathia:
12.This is a photo of the real-life Christopher Robin (yes, his name is Christopher Robin) and Winnie-the-Pooh (named Winnie after a bear Christopher saw in the London Zoo). Winnie-the-Pooh author A. A. Milne, who was Christopher's father, was inspired by him to write the books.
According to Christopher, it was actually his mother who created the Winnie-the-Pooh world, saying, "'It was my mother who used to come and play in the nursery with me and tell him about the things I thought and did. It was she who provided most of the material for my father's books.''
13.No, this is NOT a photo of Betty White in the 1940s. This is actually Betty dressed up in '40s clothes to promote her hosting the 75th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade (which was in 1964). As part of the promotion, Betty dressed up in different eras during which the parade was held...
...like the 1890s and 1920s:
Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
14.Much like we'd throw '90s, '80s, or '00s nostalgic-themed parties today, people in the '50s threw 1920s-themed parties. Below are a couple of photos from the '50s of a 1920s-themed party, complete with everyone wearing period-appropriate costumes and the woman on the left doing the "Charleston":
Graphic House / Getty Images
15.Here's a photo of how they used to record music for Mickey Mouse cartoons:
16.During World War II, Walt Disney Studios was brought into the war effort by helping create propaganda for the homefront. This included art for posters, films, and cartoon shorts. Below are posters for two of the shorts: Der Fuehrer's Face (in which Donald Duck has a nightmare that he is a Nazi soldier living in Germany) and Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (which parodied Hitler and Nazi ideology, while also telling the story of a German boy and his parents forced to follow orders):
Galerie Bilderwelt / Getty Images, Lmpc / LMPC via Getty Images
17.NBC's Meet the Press has had a lot of politicians and world leaders appear on the program over its 77-plus years on air. But you might not know that Fidel Castro was among them. In 1959, Castro appeared on the program while on a visit to the US a few months after taking power during the Cuban Revolution. Below is a screenshot of him on the show, where he claimed he wasn't a communist:
18.Here's a photo of Castro during that same 1959 visit, laying a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial:
19.The iconic Hollywood sign was actually built in 1923 to advertise the Hollywoodland real estate development in the hills below it. The sign was originally only supposed to be up for 18 months, but it became a visual symbol of Los Angeles. Throughout most of the Golden Age of Hollywood, the Hollywood sign read "Hollywoodland" (as you can see in the pic below) with the "land" part only being removed in 1949:
20.When it first opened in 1922, the Hollywood Bowl — as seen in the photo below — did not have its trademark dome shell. The first shell wouldn't be installed until four years later, in 1926:
Also, the name Hollywood Bowl has nothing to do with the shell. It's called that because of the bowl-shaped hill area it's in.
21.This photo is not for anyone scared of heights. It's a construction worker walking on a wooden catwalk being built for the construction of the cables on the Golden Gate Bridge in 1935:
22.This is a photo of Times Square around circa 1908:
23.Here's a photo of the head of the Statue of Liberty on display at the Champ de Mars park in Paris during the 1878 Exposition Universelle. It was placed there to help with fundraising for the construction costs of the statue:
24.Here's a photo of the Champ de Mars nearly a decade later, in 1887, and it may be hard to make out, but those are two of the steel struts of the Eiffel Tower (early in its construction):
25.If this house looks familiar, it's because it's the Dibble House, which is featured in the background of Grant Wood's iconic painting, American Gothic. This is how the house looked like in 2005:
However, since then, the Iowa house has been repaired and looks just as it did in the 1930 painting. You can actually visit and tour it:
26.Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney might strike you as the unlikeliest of friends. However, the two were not only good friends who mutually admired each other, but they also had a lot in common. Here's a photo of them when Walt went to visit him in Spain in 1957:
27.Here's a photo of Martin Luther King Jr., along with his kids, Yolanda and Martin Luther III, in 1964, riding the Ford Magic Skyway attraction that was built by Disney for the New York World's Fair:
28.It's A Small World was actually an attraction that Disney originally built for the 1964 New York World's Fair, and this is what the exterior of the ride looked like:
Scott Mcpartland / Getty Images, Morse Collection / Gado via Getty Images
29.The Victorian era is so, so far removed from us now that it would be impossible to know people from that era. However, in the '70s, there were still some Victorian people alive! Below is a screenshot of Frances "Effy" Jones — who was in her 90s at the time and had been a teenager in the 1890s — she was part of a 1970 BBC interview about what it was like to live in Victorian England:
30.Here's a photo of Albert Einstein and his wife, Elsa, with Charlie Chaplin at the premiere of his film City Lights, which was held at the Los Angeles Theater in LA:
BTW, the theater is still standing and has been used in many movies and music videos.
31.This is a screenshot from the first TV drama, The Queen's Messenger, which aired in 1928. For context, that was the same year Mickey Mouse was introduced to the world. The production was an experiment between GE and a station in Schenectady, New York:
And yes, television sets existed in the 1920s, but they were extremely rare and had very tiny screens.
32.Here's a photo of people in the 1920s enjoying a movie on a plane — yes, people have been watching movies on flights for at least a 100 years!
33.Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth were both born in the same year, 1926. Here is a photo of the two meeting in 1956, when Marilyn was filming The Prince and the Showgirl in the UK:
34.If you were on TikTok last year, then you might have stumbled upon a video of some younger people who didn't know that we used to have commercial supersonic planes. This is a photo of Queen Elizabeth on a chartered Concorde on her way back to London in 1977, after her Silver Jubilee tour of Canada and the West Indies:
35.Coveting Gucci bags goes back a long time. Below are two photos from Vogue magazine of models modeling Gucci purses in 1956:
Horst P. Horst / Conde Nast via Getty Images, Frances Mclaughlin-gill / Conde Nast via Getty Images
36.The design for this Alice in Wonderland poster has an interesting backstory. Walt Disney really hated how Alice in Wonderland turned out and refused to re-release the movie during his lifetime. However, in 1971, five years after Walt's death, the movie became a head film, and it had a huge cult following among college students, who would rent the 16-mm film and set up viewing parties. The movie's renewed popularity convinced Disney to re-release the film in 1974, where they really leaned into the psychedelic side of it in the re-release poster and even used Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" in the radio ads for it:
37.This is a photo of Steve Jobs at the very first Apple event in January of 1984, where he unveiled the first Macintosh:
38.This is a photo of Oprah Winfrey hosting her very first talk show, AM Chicago, in 1984:
39.And lastly, here is a phot of Judy Garland's daughters, Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft, watching the very first TV showing of The Wizard of Oz in 1956:
