35 Rare Historical Photos That Taught Us More Than Public School Even Tried To
I went to public school, and like a lot of people, I got the highlight reel version of history. You know the drill: a few big dates, a couple famous names, and then we move along before things get too complicated.
The problem was I actually liked history, which meant I eventually had to start digging into it on my own to get the full story. Once you do that, you realize how much of the interesting stuff never really made it into the textbook.
That’s why I love rare historical photos. A single image can reveal more about how people lived, worked, and struggled than a whole chapter ever did. These photos taught me more than my classes ever tried to.
1. The Arctic ocean photographed in the same place, 107 years ago vs today.
2. Osama Bin Laden at Oxford in 1971. He is approximately 14 in this image.
3. The picture of John and Yoko standing next to the bed as the help changes the sheets and cleans the room is a great picture of the reality of the situation.
4. This mirror portrait was taken 110 years ago in Japan.
5. A Buddha statue in Afghanistan before its destruction in 1992.
6. An Inuit girl descending into her home, an ice igloo, in Arviat, Nunavut (Northern Canada), 1949.
7. The death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor. This is the most authentic depiction of his features we possess.
8. JFK poses his lifelong friend Lem Billings, 1933.
9. Mecca in 1953 and 2025: A 72-Year Comparison
10. President Clinton composing the first presidential email, 1993.
11. Arnold Schwarzenegger with his older brother Meinhard, 1967. Meinhard, died in a car crash on May 20, 1971. He was driving drunk and died instantly. Arnold did not attend his funeral.
12. Father and son crying as they say goodbye to their relatives who are boarding a boat to Buenos Aires in search of a better life during the economic hardship in Spain. (1957)
13. Four transgender individuals stand outside Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Weimar-era Germany (early 1920s)
14. 21-year-old Bernie Sanders protesting segregation and getting arrested in Chicago. August 1963.
15. A western tourist who paid to take a photo with Samurai armor on. 1890. Probably the first documented weeb in history.
16. Hillary Clinton listens intently as her husband denies having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, USA, 1998.
17. Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton at Yale Law School, 1972. They met in 1971 and got married in 1975.
18. Malcolm X holding a Rifle while guarding his family, 1964.
19. Remember Ahmed Mohamed? He’s likely in his 20s now. Back in 2015, the young inventor from Texas made headlines when he brought a homemade clock to school to show his teacher but was wrongfully accused of bringing a bomb.
20. Pamela Anderson appeared at a 2008 London fashion show alongside a mysterious masked companion, rumored by many to be Michael Jackson in disguise.
21. US soldiers playing Xbox in Saddam Hussein’s Palace. (2003)
22. 1500 year old ceramic Mayan figure with removable helmet.
23. Judy Garland at age 46 in Copenhagen, March 1969.
24. The ice man delivering a 25lb block of ice. Houston, Texas, 1928.
25. This girl’s birthday was being celebrated during 9/11. (2001)
26. In 1989, Russian President Boris Yeltsin visited a Houston grocery store and was astonished by the abundance, later describing it as a moment of despair for the Soviet people.
27. Laika, the first dog in space. No provisions were made for her return, and she died there. 1957.
28. Ruth Lee, a Chinese restaurant hostess, displays a Chinese flag while sunbathing in Miami during her days off after the Pearl Harbor attack, to avoid being mistaken as Japanese. 1941
29. Captain Mikkelsen and Engineer Iversen endured twenty-eight months stranded in the Arctic after their ship, the Alabama, was trapped and destroyed by ice while they attempted to recover records from Mylius-Erichsen’s 1906 expedition.
30. In 1946, soviet children gifted a carved great seal replica to the us ambassador, unknowingly hiding a listening device called ‘the thing.’ It was found in 1952 during a counter-surveillance sweep.
31. In 1991 Bernie Sanders delivered a speech to an empty U.S congress, advising against military intervention in the Gulf War.
32. Pictured here is an ancient Egyptian pyramid capstone. Only a few have survived into the present day.
33. A stone drawing of a woman thousands of years old found in France.
34. U.S. President Obama bowed and U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama curtsied to the Japanese Emperor in 2009 and 2015, respectively. It faced a lot of criticism.
35. President George W. Bush giving president-elect Barack Obama a tour of the White House, (Nov 10, 2008)
