When was the last time you had the opportunity to look through some old photos? It’s amazing when you see things that you haven’t seen in many years.
It’s also interesting when you are able to look through photos that you have never seen before but they contain images that are still somewhat familiar to you. That is the case with these old historical photos that have been unearthed for your viewing pleasure.
Each one of these pictures is certainly worth a thousand words and is likely worth many more. It’s a great way to spend some time, because you can learn about history and maybe even about yourself.
1. In the 1930s, flour mills noticed women repurposing their sacks to make clothes for their children, so they started producing sacks with flower-patterned fabric. (1939)
2. A police officer halts traffic in New York to let a mother cat safely carry her kitten across the street, circa 1925.
3. Albert Einstein, challenging the racial climate of the era, visited Lincoln University in Pennsylvania—the first Black college in the US to grant degrees—to teach a class.
4. This image captures 100,000 Iranian women protesting against the hijab law in Tehran, 1979.
5. Charles Thompson meets his new classmates at Public School No. 27 in September 1954, just four months after the Supreme Court declared racial segregation unconstitutional. He was the only African-American student at the school.
6. A remarkable photograph of a German soldier defying orders to assist a young boy in crossing the newly erected Berlin Wall after being separated from his family, 1961.
7. Princess Diana, known as the “people’s princess,” shakes hands with an AIDS patient without wearing gloves, 1991.
8. Meet the “Night Witches,” brave Russian female pilots who conducted nighttime bombing missions in 1941.
9. This is a photo that would outshine today’s social media profile pictures.
10. This 1901 photo, titled “Happiest Man in China,” was taken by British anthropologists documenting the Chinese. Unaware of photography’s seriousness, the man playfully posed with a smile.
11. A somber moment in history that serves as a reminder for us all.
12. In Mogadishu, 1993: An Italian soldier offers food to a local orphan.
13. Kind-hearted American soldiers care for a wounded dog on Orote Peninsula, 1944.
14. They were breaking barriers even back then.
15. Margaret Hamilton stands with the handwritten navigation software her MIT team developed for the Apollo Project, 1969.
16. A man takes a stand against apartheid by riding a bus in Durban designated for white passengers only, 1986.
17. This is how a Ukrainian immigrant celebrated Stalin’s death in 1953.
18. Guide Samson Beaver of the Stoney First Nation poses with his wife Leah and their daughter Frances Louise, 1907. Photo by Mary Schäffer.
19. Here’s a glimpse of an Iranian beach just months before the Islamic Revolution, 1979.
20. Bodybuilding icon and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger shows support for disabled athletes in 1983.
21. Tokyo residents mourn Hachiko in 1935. Hachiko faithfully waited for his owner, Professor Ueno, at Shibuya Station every day for 9 years, even after Ueno’s death in 1925.
22. This man was arrested for cross-dressing and is shown emerging from a police van in New York, 1939.
23. Here’s Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to attend a white elementary school in the Deep South, 1960. (Colorized)
24. Six-year-old Austrian boy Werfel receives a new pair of shoes donated by the Junior Red Cross in America at the Am Himmel Orphanage. (Colorized) Published in Life magazine, 1946.
25. Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father, revisits the attic where they hid during the war. He was the only member of the family to survive. (1960)
26. Eighteen-year-old Keshia Thomas shields a man, believed to be affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, from an angry mob of anti-Klan protesters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1996. Photo by Mark Brunner.
27. Three fashionable women walk the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1972.
28. Young Queen Elizabeth works as a mechanic during World War II, circa 1939.
29. A man protects his family from cannibals during the Madras Famine of 1877 under British rule in India.
30. Albert Einstein, with his secretary Helen (left) and daughter Margaret (right), becomes a U.S. citizen in 1940 to avoid returning to Germany.
31. Nakano Takeko, an Onna-Musha of the Aizu Domain in Japan, fought in the Battle of Aizu in October 1868 during the Boshin War. She was killed in battle on October 16th by a rifle shot. Pictured in full samurai armor, circa 1860-1868.
32. During the Battle of Saipan in July 1944, an American soldier cradles a wounded Japanese boy in an airplane cockpit, shielding him from the rain as they wait to be transported to a field hospital.
33. A group of African-American boys celebrate Easter morning in Southside, Chicago, Illinois, April 1941. (Colorized)
34. A San Francisco policeman reprimands a man for not wearing a mask during the 1918 influenza pandemic, 1918.
35. A Russian inmate points accusingly at a particularly cruel guard in Buchenwald camp. (Colorized)
36. British soldiers, interrupted during drag show rehearsals by a German raid, man a BL 6-inch Mk VII naval gun at Shornemead Fort, England, in 1940.
37. A German soldier returns to his home in Frankfurt in 1946, only to discover his family is gone. Photo by Tony Vaccaro.
38. On that historic day in 1945, the Red Army discovered and liberated Auschwitz.
39. In November 1989, as communism collapsed in East Germany, West German schoolchildren stop to talk with East German border guards at a newly opened section of the Berlin Wall.
