30 Cool Rare Historical Photos That Didn’t Make The Textbooks
Historical photos tend to show the famous moments (the ones everyone learned about in school). But there are also unusual angles on those moments and smaller scenes that never became famous because they weren’t dramatic enough.
These cool rare historical photos are both: big events from perspectives you haven’t seen, and everyday moments that quietly faded from memory. Some you’ll recognize, others are the unremarkable in-between stuff that usually gets skipped.
History is made up of highlights and everything else, and both are worth seeing.
1. “Empire State Building construction workers in the 1930s.”
2. “Bottling ketchup at the Heinz factory, Pittsburgh, 1897.”
3. “Building the hand and torch of the Statue of Liberty, Paris, 1876.”
4. “Henry Ford in the first car he ever built, 1896.”
5. “A policeman issues a ticket to a woman for wearing a bikini, 1957”
6. “A young man demonstrating against low pay for teachers, ca. 1930. ‘I left school to earn $21 a week. My teacher’s pay is $17.78 a week.’ Photo: Paul Thompson.”
7. “A protestant husband and his catholic wife were not allowed to be buried together. Here are their headstones reaching across the two cemeteries in 1888.”
8. “A family with their covered wagon. Kansas, 1908.”
9. “A Vietnam veteran throws his war medal at the Capitol building in protest of the war. April 23, 1971.”
10. “A 2,000-year-old ‘fast food’ restaurant that was uncovered in Pompeii.”
11. “This photo from 1902 shows French knife grinders. They would work on their stomachs in order to save their backs from being hunched all day.”
12. “Demonstrating how bulletproof vests work, 1923.”
13. “Wojte, the Polish bear who fought in WW2.”
14. “Two women, minutes after voting, London, 1929.”
15. “Painting The Eiffel Tower – 1932”
16. “Audrey Hepburn with her pet deer Pippen, 1958”
17. “Mother and son pose for a portrait. Ireland. 1890.”
18. “No Dog Biscuits Today. London, 1939”
19. “Newspaper girl and newspaper boy, also known as ‘newsies,’ New York City, circa 1896. Newsies were not employees of the newspapers. They ran their own business. Each morning they would get up and buy newspapers. Then they would find a good corner with lots of traffic and sell the papers for a profit.”
20. “The absolutely massive chain for the Titanic’s anchor, c. 1909.”
21. “People stop to watch the ‘Seinfeld’ finale in Times Square in 1998. Photo by Ken Murray.”
22. “A woman plays a piano designed for people undergoing bedrest, 1935.”
23. “A meeting of the Mickey Mouse Club, California, c. 1930.”
24. “The tallest man to ever live, Robert Wadlow, poses with his family in 1935. Robert reached an astonishing height of 8’11” and reached the weight of 439 pounds before his death at age 22.”
25. “An American soldier chats with a sunbathing German girl in postwar Berlin, Germany, in 1945.”
26. “Lumberjacks pose with a Douglas fir tree in Washington, 1899.”
27. “Mobsters hide their faces at Al Capone’s trial 1931.”
28. “A group of samurai in front of the Sphinx, Egypt, 1863.”
29. “A photo by Berenice Abbot of a woman wiring an IBM computer, 1948. I have a hard enough time tying my shoe, then you see this.”
30. “An Austrian boy receiving new shoes during WWII.”
