64 Rare Historical Photos of Famous People, With the Real Stories

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Bill Gates for driving without a license, 1977

Old photographs travel the internet in big bundles, usually with a one-line label and no explanation. This collection brings together 64 of those images: rock stars before they were famous, film sets, landmarks under construction, sporting moments, and a few scenes of war and loss. Most are genuine and well documented. A handful carry labels that are wrong or impossible to confirm, and the captions below say so plainly.

The pictures are grouped by theme, so you can go straight to music, film, sport, politics, war, engineering or science. For each one you will find who or what it shows, when it was most likely taken and why it matters. Where a popular caption contains a mistake, such as a stadium that had not yet been built or a computer that was not really the first of its kind, the correction comes with a source.

Viral photo lists rarely say where an image came from, and a date or name copied from one website to the next can quietly harden into "fact". Read the identifications here as the best available reading of each photo, and enjoy the chance to see famous people as younger, off-duty or ordinary versions of themselves.

Music legends before and behind the fame

The Beatles in Hamburg, 1960

The Beatles, 1960

This early line-up shows the Beatles with drummer Pete Best and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, the two members who left before the band broke through. It is widely credited to the German photographer Astrid Kirchherr, who photographed the group at a Hamburg fairground in late 1960; the ride behind them carries the name "Hugo Haase, Hannover". Long, exhausting club residencies in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962 are often described as the place where the Beatles learned to be a real band.

The Beatles meet Cassius Clay, 1964

The Beatles and Muhammad Ali. 1964

On 18 February 1964, during their first American visit, the Beatles were taken to a Miami Beach gym to meet the young boxer then still known as Cassius Clay. He was a week away from his title fight with Sonny Liston, and photographers staged a mock knockout with all four musicians toppling like dominoes. After beating Liston on 25 February he dropped his birth name, and on 6 March 1964 Elijah Muhammad announced his new name, Muhammad Ali.

Waiting for the Abbey Road shot, 1969

The Beatles before making their most historical picture
The Beatles before making their most historical picture

These two frames come from the morning of 8 August 1969, outside EMI's studios on Abbey Road in London, around the session that produced the cover of the album Abbey Road. Photographer Iain Macmillan stood on a stepladder in the middle of the street while a police officer held up the traffic, and he had only a few minutes to get the picture. The zebra crossing has since become a listed landmark and a pilgrimage site for fans.

The rooftop performance, 1969

The Beatles’ last concert

The usual label calls this the Beatles' last concert, which is almost right: it was their last public performance. On 30 January 1969 the band played for 42 minutes on the roof of the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row in London, until the Metropolitan Police came up and asked them to turn the volume down. Their last real concert, with a stage and ticket holders, had taken place on 29 August 1966 in San Francisco.

Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger

Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger

Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger share a bench in a bare backstage room. The picture is usually dated to 1969, the year the Rolling Stones toured America and Hendrix closed Woodstock, but the concert where it was taken is not recorded with the image. The two moved in the same London circles from the moment Hendrix arrived in Britain in 1966.

Hendrix on Fehmarn, 1970

Jimi Hendrix’ last concert. Love and Peace Festival, Germany. 1970

Hendrix faces a huge crowd at the Love and Peace Festival on the German island of Fehmarn on 6 September 1970. Bad weather and organisational trouble reportedly marred the event, and it turned out to be the last full concert of his life. He died in London twelve days later, on 18 September 1970, at the age of 27.

The Rolling Stones, 1963

The Rolling Stones,1963

A very young Rolling Stones lounge around a beer barrel on a street corner, all of them in their early twenties. 1963 was the year they signed with Decca and released their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry's "Come On". Street-style publicity shots like this helped sell them as the scruffier, edgier alternative to the Beatles.

Bob Marley and his football

Bob Marley playing with a soccer ball

Bob Marley was a devoted footballer who played whenever he could, including on tour, where band members and crew joined kickabouts in car parks and corridors. This frame catches him mid-kick indoors, apparently backstage. In 1977 a toe injury, reportedly picked up during a game, led doctors to find the melanoma that caused his death in 1981.

On the Aberdeen road sign

Kurt Cobain & Krist Novoselic

A young man climbs a road sign listing Elma, Montesano and Aberdeen, small towns in Washington State, while a friend holds him up from below. The picture circulates as Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, who both grew up around Aberdeen and formed Nirvana there in 1987. The faces are partly hidden, so the identification rests on how the photo has been shared rather than on a published credit.

Kurt Cobain's booking photo

Kurt Cobain being Arrested

This is a booking photo from the Aberdeen Police Department, with a 1986 date on the name board. Cobain, then about 19, was reportedly arrested for trespassing in an empty building. Five years later Nirvana's album Nevermind (1991) made him one of the most famous musicians in the world.

Johnny Depp with Oasis

Johnny Depp dan Oasis

Johnny Depp stands with members of Oasis, including Noel and Liam Gallagher, in the mid-1990s. Depp was friendly with the band at the height of Britpop and played slide guitar on "Fade In-Out", a track on their 1997 album Be Here Now. (The old label read "Johnny Depp dan Oasis"; "dan" is simply Indonesian for "and".)

Depp and a Gallagher, off duty

Johnny Depp and Noel Gallagher

A playful snapshot from the same friendship: Depp gives the camera a double middle finger while walking beside a man in a white vest who is identified online as Noel Gallagher. Cheeky paparazzi-style pictures like this were the stock in trade of 1990s music magazines, which loved any meeting between Hollywood and Britpop.

Robert Downey Jr. and Slash

Robert Downey Jr, and Slash

Robert Downey Jr. and Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, wearing a Metallica T-shirt, laugh for the camera at what looks like a late-1980s or early-1990s party. Both were fixtures of Los Angeles nightlife at the time, and both later spoke openly about overcoming addiction. Downey went on to one of Hollywood's great comebacks, starting with Iron Man in 2008.

Film, television and the people behind them

Robin Williams with the cheerleaders

Robin Williams joining the cheerleaders team, 1980

This shot of a cheerleading squad running onto an American football field is linked to Robin Williams, who was then starring as the alien Mork in Mork & Mindy, a sitcom set in Boulder, Colorado. The story usually told is that he joined the Denver Broncos cheerleaders as a stunt around 1979 or 1980. It fits his habit of turning any public appearance into a comedy routine, though the photo itself does not make him easy to pick out.

Filming Batman's wall climb, 1966

The making of Batman 1966

Adam West and Burt Ward film one of the famous "Bat-climb" scenes from the Batman TV series. The trick was simple: the building wall was laid flat on the studio floor and the camera was turned on its side, so the actors only had to lean forward on a rope while appearing to scale a skyscraper. The series ran from 1966 to 1968, and its bright, comic style shaped the public image of Batman for decades.

Ian Fleming meets his James Bond

Ian Fleming and Sean Connery

Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, chats with Sean Connery, apparently on location for Dr. No, the first Bond film, which was shot partly in Jamaica in 1962. Fleming was said to be unconvinced by the casting at first but came round, and he later gave Bond a Scottish father in his books. He died in August 1964, having seen only the first two films released.

Marilyn Monroe and Sammy Davis Jr.

Marilyn Monroe and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Marilyn Monroe perches on the bonnet of a Singer roadster while Sammy Davis Jr. leaps across the frame. It appears to be a staged publicity picture from the early 1950s, when both were rising stars. Davis was famous for the energy of his dancing, and the jump captures it perfectly.

Early Mickey Mouse sketches

The early Micky Mouse drawing by Walt Disney

A sheet of early pencil studies shows Mickey Mouse with round ears, a pear-shaped body and rubbery limbs. Mickey was created in 1928 by Walt Disney together with animator Ub Iwerks, who did much of the actual drawing, and the character's breakthrough came with the sound cartoon Steamboat Willie in November 1928. Model sheets like this kept a character looking the same across thousands of drawings by different artists.

Steven Spielberg inside the Jaws shark

Steven Spielberg, Jaws, behind the scene.

A young Steven Spielberg lounges in the mouth of the mechanical shark on the set of Jaws, filmed off Martha's Vineyard in 1974. The crew nicknamed the shark "Bruce", and its frequent breakdowns in salt water forced Spielberg to show it much less than planned. That restraint is now credited with making the 1975 film so frightening, and Jaws is often called the first summer blockbuster.

Heath Ledger and Christian Bale

Heath Ledger and Christian Bale

Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, the Joker and Batman of The Dark Knight, smile from a dinner table. Ledger died in January 2008, six months before the film opened, and was awarded a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role.

Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein, 1931

Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein

Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein appear in evening dress at the Los Angeles premiere of City Lights in early 1931. Einstein was visiting the California Institute of Technology at the time and had asked to meet the comedian. A witty exchange about fame that is often quoted alongside this picture has no reliable source, so enjoy the photo and treat the quote as folklore.

Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee

Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee

Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee, friends and fellow martial artists, pose arm in arm. Lee cast Norris as his opponent in The Way of the Dragon (1972), whose final duel set in Rome's Colosseum became one of cinema's best-known fight scenes. Lee died the following year, in July 1973, at only 32.

Bruce Lee on the dance floor

Bruce Lee on a dance floor

Before he was a film star, Bruce Lee was a keen and skilled dancer; he reportedly won a Hong Kong cha-cha competition in 1958, shortly before leaving for the United States. Here he dances with a young woman at what looks like a social evening around that period. The light, precise footwork of dancing is easy to recognise in his later fight choreography.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Marlon Brando

Martin Luther King,Jr and Marlon Brando (The Godfather)

Martin Luther King Jr. and Marlon Brando sit side by side, deep in conversation. Brando was one of the most visible Hollywood supporters of the civil rights movement and attended the March on Washington in August 1963, where King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The exact date of this picture is not recorded; the note "(The Godfather)" on the old label simply refers to Brando's later 1972 role.

Sporting moments and sporting heroes

Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan

Muhammad Ali & Michael Jordan, 1992

Muhammad Ali, wearing a Chicago Bulls jacket, poses with Michael Jordan. The photo is usually dated to 1992, when Jordan's Bulls were winning back-to-back NBA titles and Ali, retired since 1981, was living with Parkinson's disease, diagnosed in 1984. Each man is still regularly named the greatest ever in his sport.

Ali talks a man down from a ledge, 1981

Muhammad Ali and a man who tries to commit suicide

In January 1981 a young man threatened to jump from the ninth floor of an office building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Ali, who lived nearby, came to the scene, leaned out of a window and talked with him for a long time until he agreed to come inside; according to press reports, Ali then went with him to hospital. It is one of the most humane images of a fighter better known for his fists.

A Barcelona match, wrongly labelled Camp Nou 1925

Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona, 1925

The old caption calls this Camp Nou in 1925, which cannot be right, because Camp Nou did not open until 24 September 1957. In the 1920s FC Barcelona played at Camp de Les Corts, which opened in May 1922 with room for about 20,000 spectators and was enlarged several times, so this match is most likely there. The crowd packed onto the hillside is a reminder of how informal stadium seating still was in that era.

Boxing at Yankee Stadium, 1923

Boxing in Yankee Stadium, 1923

A boxing ring sits in the middle of a packed Yankee Stadium, with spectators filling the field as well as the stands. The ballpark opened in April 1923 and staged big fights from its very first summer. Outdoor title bouts were among the largest sporting events of the 1920s, drawing crowds no indoor arena could hold.

Kobe Bryant at 18, 1996

Kobe Bryant when he was 18. 1996

Kobe Bryant holds up a Lakers jersey with his name on it at his introduction to Los Angeles in 1996. He went straight from high school to the NBA, was drafted 13th overall by the Charlotte Hornets and was traded to the Lakers, still only 17 on draft night; he turned 18 later that summer. He won five championships with the club and died in a helicopter crash in January 2020.

Runners and the first Olympic marathon, 1896

Marathon on the first summer Olympic, Athens,Greece. 1896

The label links this picture to the first modern Olympic marathon, run to Athens on 10 April 1896. Seventeen athletes started, thirteen of them Greek, and Spyridon Louis won in 2 hours 58 minutes 50 seconds, becoming a national hero overnight. The three men on the dusty road may be competitors or local runners of the period; the photo's exact origin is not documented.

Golf on a steel beam

Playing golf on a skyscraper. 1932

A golfer swings from a steel girder high above a city while a worker sits a few feet away. Pictures like this were staged publicity stunts, in the same spirit as the famous 1932 "Lunch atop a Skyscraper" photograph taken at the Rockefeller Center building site in New York. The city and the 1932 date on this one are not confirmed.

Queenie, the water-skiing elephant

Queenie, the first ski elephant. 1950s

Queenie was a young performing elephant who "water-skied" on a pair of wide skis towed by a boat, with human skiers on either side, in Florida shows of the 1950s. Water-ski spectacles were a big tourist draw in the state at the time, and an elephant was the ultimate novelty act. Today, using elephants for entertainment is widely criticised by animal welfare groups.

Leaders, activists and politics

Fidel Castro and Malcolm X, 1960

Fidel Castro and Malcolm X, 1960

Fidel Castro and Malcolm X talk during Castro's visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly in September 1960. After a row with a midtown hotel, the Cuban delegation moved to the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where Malcolm X came to see him. The meeting was a deliberate gesture towards Black Americans and a pointed snub to Washington.

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro,1965

Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Fidel Castro share a laugh in uniform. The 1965 date on the label is uncertain, as the two were photographed together many times after the 1959 revolution. By 1965 Guevara had given up his posts in Cuba to fight in the Congo and later in Bolivia, where he was captured and executed in 1967.

The judo photo said to show Osama bin Laden

Osama Bin Laden and his judo mates

Three men in judo uniforms pose in a sports hall, and the man on the right is often said to be Osama bin Laden. No reliable source supports that identification, so it should be treated as unconfirmed. The man in the centre wears a Taiwanese flag patch, which suggests the picture comes from a judo club or international event rather than anything connected with bin Laden's later life.

A teenage Vladimir Putin?

Vladimir Putin as a teenager

A group of teenage boys in winter coats poses outdoors, with one of them often identified as Vladimir Putin. Putin was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) in 1952 and grew up there; school photographs of him have been published, but the source of this particular image is unclear.

Barack Obama on his school basketball team

Barrack Obama as a teenager

This is part of a team photo of the Punahou School basketball squad in Honolulu, with a teenage Barack Obama in the middle. He played on the Punahou side that won the Hawaii state championship in 1979, his final year of high school. His love of the game stayed with him into the White House.

George W. Bush hears the news, 11 September 2001

President Bush receiving a news on 9/11/2001

On the morning of 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush was reading with second-grade pupils at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, when his chief of staff Andrew Card leaned in to tell him a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. Bush stayed calm in front of the children for several more minutes, a choice that was debated for years afterwards. The image became one of the defining photographs of that day.

Mahatma Gandhi in London, 1931

Mahatma Ghandi in London

Mahatma Gandhi stands in his shawl and sandals at a London doorway. He spent the autumn of 1931 in Britain for the Second Round Table Conference on India's future, choosing to stay at Kingsley Hall, a community centre in the East End, instead of a hotel. The talks failed to agree on self-government, but his visit won him considerable public sympathy in Britain.

Charlie Chaplin meets Gandhi

Charlie Chaplin and Mahatma Gandhi

During the same visit, on 22 September 1931, Gandhi met Charlie Chaplin at a house in Canning Town, east London, while crowds waited outside. Chaplin asked why Gandhi opposed machinery, and Gandhi explained that his objection was to machines that kept India dependent on Britain. Chaplin is said to have carried the conversation with him into his film Modern Times (1936).

Tears at Roosevelt's farewell, 1945

An accordion player cries at FDR’s funeral

U.S. Navy musician Graham Jackson weeps as he plays the accordion while Franklin D. Roosevelt's body leaves Warm Springs, Georgia, in April 1945, the day after the president died there. Jackson had often played for Roosevelt at his Georgia retreat. The photograph, widely credited to Ed Clark of Life magazine, became one of America's best-known images of national grief.

War, disaster and loss

Titanic off Queenstown, 1912

The last picture of Titanic taken before sinking, 1912

Titanic lies off Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, on 11 April 1912, with a small tender boat in the foreground. It is generally regarded as one of the last photographs of the ship, which struck an iceberg on the night of 14 April and sank early on 15 April with the loss of more than 1,500 lives. Several passengers who left the ship at Queenstown, among them a young Jesuit named Francis Browne, took photographs that have become priceless records.

A survivor in Nagasaki, 1945

A woman survived in Nagasaki, 1945

A young woman looks out from the ruins of Nagasaki after the atomic bombing of 9 August 1945, with a damaged church tower, probably the Urakami Cathedral, rising through the haze behind her. The bomb killed tens of thousands of people at once, and many more died of injuries and radiation sickness in the months that followed. Survivors, known in Japan as hibakusha, spent decades sharing their stories to argue against nuclear weapons.

A Japanese soldier surrenders

A japanese troop surrenders in front of US Armies

A Japanese soldier with raised hands walks out of a ruined building towards U.S. Marines during the Pacific War. Surrenders like this were rare, because Japanese troops were taught that capture was shameful and many fought to the death. The battle is not named with the image; similar scenes were photographed on Okinawa and other islands in 1945.

Hachikō, the faithful dog, 1935

Hachikō before his burial

Mourners, including station staff and a monk, gather around the body of Hachikō, the Akita famous in Japan for his loyalty, after he died in Shibuya on 8 March 1935. His owner, Professor Hidesaburō Ueno, died suddenly in May 1925, and for more than nine years Hachikō returned to Shibuya Station almost every day. About 60 people attended his funeral, and a bronze statue at the station, replaced after the war, is still a favourite meeting point.

A child with artificial legs, 1898

Historical Photo Collection: People, Places and Caption Corrections

A child stands in a photographer's studio beside a doll, wearing a pair of artificial legs held on with leather straps. Prosthetic limbs became more common in the late 19th century, when demand after the American Civil War and new manufacturing methods pushed makers towards lighter, jointed designs. The 1898 date and the child's story are not documented, but the portrait is a rare record of how disabled children were fitted for everyday life at the time.

Landmarks and machines under construction

William Harley and Arthur Davidson

William Harley and Arthur Davidson, 1914

The two men on the motorcycles are identified as William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson, co-founders of Harley-Davidson. They began building motorcycles in a small shed in Milwaukee in 1903, and Arthur's brothers Walter and William soon joined them. By the 1910s the firm was one of the largest motorcycle makers in the United States.

The Statue of Liberty's face in Paris

The Statue of Liberty before being sent to America

Liberty's face, at full scale, stands in a Paris workshop yard with visitors dwarfed beside it. Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi built the statue in sections of thin copper over an iron framework designed by Gustave Eiffel, and the head was put on show at the Paris World's Fair of 1878. The finished statue was formally presented in Paris on 4 July 1884, shipped to New York in crates in 1885 and dedicated on 28 October 1886.

The Eiffel Tower rising

Eiffel Tower Under Construction. 1880s

The Eiffel Tower's four legs have met at the first level, but the upper tower is still missing. It was built between 1887 and 1889 for the Exposition Universelle marking the centenary of the French Revolution, and on completion it was the tallest man-made structure in the world. Many Paris artists signed a protest against it during construction; within a generation it had become the city's symbol.

The Golden Gate Bridge takes shape

Golden Gate under construction, San Francisco. 1937

The Golden Gate Bridge's towers and main cables are complete, and sections of the roadway deck are reaching out from the towers. Work began in January 1933 and the bridge opened on 27 May 1937, so this view most likely dates from 1936 rather than 1937. Its main span of about 1,280 metres was the longest of any suspension bridge in the world when it opened.

Carving Mount Rushmore

Mt. Rushmore under contruction,1939

Workers hang in harnesses against the half-finished faces of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum began the project in 1927, removing most of the rock with dynamite, and his son Lincoln finished it in 1941 after Borglum's death. The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota people, which is why the monument remains controversial.

A Ford assembly line, 1926

The first car factory in US, Ford Inc. 1926

Workers stand beside a line of car chassis inside a Ford plant in a photo dated 1926. The old label, "the first car factory in the US", is wrong: American companies were building cars in factories in the 1890s, and Ford itself was founded in 1903. What Ford did pioneer, from 1913, was the moving assembly line, which cut the time needed to build a Model T dramatically and helped make the car affordable.

A parking tower

Parking System in New York, 1930

Cars are stacked one above another in a steel tower squeezed between city buildings. Mechanical garages that lifted cars onto racks appeared in American cities in the 1920s and 1930s as car ownership outgrew kerb space. The "New York, 1930" label is plausible but unconfirmed; the idea faded after the war and came back decades later as the robotic garage.

A one-wheeled vehicle, 1931

One wheel vehicle introduced by M. Goventosa de Udine , Italia. 1931

A man in a hat sits inside a giant motorised hoop and steers with a car-style wheel. The label credits the machine to M. Goventosa of Udine, Italy, in 1931. Monowheels were an inventors' craze from the late 19th century into the 1930s, but they balance poorly at low speed and are hard to steer and brake, so they never went beyond shows and experiments.

Chicago's elevated railway, 1967

Chicago, 1967

An elevated "L" train curves through Chicago's Loop, with a canyon of buildings, neon signs and taxis below. The Loop takes its name from the ring of elevated track that has circled downtown Chicago since the 1890s. The picture captures the city in the late 1960s, before many of the old signs and buildings were swept away.

Science, technology and everyday curiosities

Bill Gates' booking photo, 1977

Bill Gates for driving without a license, 1977

The name board in Bill Gates' booking photo from the Albuquerque Police Department is dated 13 December 1977. Microsoft, which he founded with Paul Allen in 1975, was based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, until it moved to the Seattle area at the start of 1979. The arrest is generally reported to have been for a traffic offence, often described as speeding and driving without a licence.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

Steve Jobs, in a striped shirt, and Bill Gates sit together in a relaxed home setting. The photos are usually said to come from a 1991 magazine shoot, when Jobs was running NeXT after being forced out of Apple in 1985 and Microsoft's Windows was outselling the Mac. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, and the long-time rivals shared a stage for a rare joint interview in 2007.

Einstein in fluffy slippers

Einstein and his furry shoes

Albert Einstein sits on a porch step in a sweatshirt and a pair of fur slippers, a famously relaxed image of the physicist. He was known for dressing simply and for disliking socks. The photo is usually linked to his years in Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived from 1933 until his death in 1955.

The Pilot ACE computer, 1950

The first computer in England, 1950

The sign reading "DSIR ACE Pilot" identifies this machine as the Pilot ACE, built at Britain's National Physical Laboratory as a cut-down version of a design by Alan Turing. It first ran on 10 May 1950 and was one of the fastest of the early British computers. It was not "the first computer in England", though: the Manchester "Baby" ran the world's first stored program in June 1948, and Cambridge's EDSAC was working by 1949.

A 10-megabyte computer for $5,995

A computer ad, 1980s

An advert offers IMSAI's "10-Megabyte Computer System", complete for $5,995, with a 10 MB hard disk, 64 KB of memory and the CP/M operating system. IMSAI was one of the first microcomputer makers, and the slogan "Thinking ahead for the 80's" suggests the advert dates from around 1979 or 1980. A cheap phone today holds thousands of times that storage.

Buzz Aldrin's space self-portrait, 1966

Buzz Aldrin doing a space selfie. 1966

Buzz Aldrin took this picture of himself during Gemini 12 in November 1966, the final flight of NASA's Gemini programme, which he flew with Jim Lovell. His three periods of extravehicular activity on that mission added up to about five and a half hours and showed that astronauts could work outside a spacecraft without exhausting themselves. It is often called the first space selfie.

The space chimp and his newspaper

Jack, posing with a newspaper about himself

The old caption calls him "Jack", but the headline "Space Chimp Lives" refers to Ham, the chimpanzee launched on NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2 flight on 31 January 1961. Ham's flight of 16 minutes and 39 seconds tested the Mercury capsule before Alan Shepard flew in May 1961; he later lived at the National Zoo in Washington and died in 1983. The picture looks posed for the press, and whether the chimp shown is Ham himself is not confirmed.

"Little Halloween people", around 1900

Halloween 1900

Three children in homemade masks sit together in a snapshot captioned by hand "Little Halloween people". Around 1900 Halloween costumes were usually homemade from cloth, paper or papier-mâché, and many aimed to look eerie rather than cute. Vintage Halloween photos like this have become hugely popular online precisely because they look so unsettling to modern eyes.

Bananas arriving in Norway, 1905?

The first banana arrived in Norway,1905

Men gather around a horse-drawn wagon marked "Banana" on a cobbled street, in a photo labelled as the first bananas to reach Norway in 1905. Refrigerated shipping was turning bananas into a mass import in Europe in the early 1900s, but neither the "first" claim nor the location can be confirmed from the image. It still shows how exotic fruit was moved by hand and horse before modern supply chains.

How to read viral history photos with care

A few habits make collections like this more rewarding. First, look for details that test the label: a stadium that did not exist yet, a computer with its real name painted on the side, or a newspaper headline that names a different animal. Second, be wary of the word "first"; it is the claim most often added without evidence. Third, run a reverse image search and check large archives such as Wikimedia Commons or national libraries, which often hold the original with a photographer's name and date.

None of this spoils the fun. A picture of Bruce Lee dancing or Spielberg sitting in a rubber shark is more interesting when you know the story behind it. For more history told through photographs, see Women in Historical Photographs: Achievements and Everyday Presence.

Sources: Photos as compiled on Imgur and TrueActivist; individual photographers are credited where known. Background: Wikipedia: Camp de Les Corts; Wikipedia: Pilot ACE; Wikipedia: Gemini 12; Wikipedia: Ham (chimpanzee); Wikipedia: Hachikō; Wikipedia: Statue of Liberty; Wikipedia: Spyridon Louis; Wikipedia: The Beatles' rooftop concert; Wikipedia: Muhammad Ali; Wikipedia: Bill Gates; Wikipedia: Monowheel.

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COMMENTS

BLOGGER: 2
  1. Mind blowing - yet it's history!

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  2. wow ... seeing those pictures was a privilege :) thanks alot for posting them :)

    ReplyDelete