41 Important Historical Photographs And Pictures That Might Change How You View Humanity, As Shared On This Online Page
Interview With Owner
One of the key thoughts about history as an educational discipline is the idea that humans, a species that puts so much focus on progress and improvement, could learn from the people and events of the past.
But the fact that we still have wars, plagues, and everything else that’s wrong with the world, reinforcing the another popular idea that history is cyclical, means we have learned very little. At least to an extent that it would be considered significant progress.
Still, the fact that these lessons land on deaf ears doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to try. Incidentally, there is a subreddit called r/DragonUtopia that’s all about showing the interesting parts of history. I use 'interesting' loosely as the content that’s featured there lands somewhere on the spectrum between uneasy, raw, and uncut.
So, while you’re scrolling through our carefully curated list of the best posts the subreddit has to offer, give the various submissions an upvote, encourage discussion, and check out our exclusive interview with the person behind the subreddit, u/myrmekochoria.
This post may include affiliate links.
Ron Cobb, Thanksgiving In America, 1975
The Most Dangerous Animal In The World. Exhibition In The Bronx Zoo, 1960s
Senegalese Soldier Who Lost Both His Arms Writes A Letter With His New Prosthetic Limbs. At Vocational Rehabilitation School For Amputees, Paris 1918
I'm glad to see that his prosthetics match his skin tone! That's awesome!
To give you an overview of the subreddit, it introduces itself as a platform that covers a variety of aspects in history: famous figures and events, art, archaeology, overviews of museum inventory, architecture, technology, as well as biology, science fiction, covering old magazine and comic book excerpts, screenshots and the like.
It is important to note that, just like history is bloody, some of the posts are deemed not safe for work (or even not safe for life), but it’s an unavoidable part of history that ought to be learned from.
The subreddit is run by just one person, u/myrmekochoria, with whom Bored Panda got in touch for an interview, who makes sure a steady stream of interesting facts, tidbits and other forms of historical enlightenment reaches a community of over 37,700 people.
Nurse From The "Red Cross" Writing Down Last Words Of Mortally Wounded Soldier, 1917
This must've been a heartbreaking job! Not to take away how horrible the soldiers were treated and how terrible war is in general ofc
Activists Picketing Outside Of A Segregated Swimming Pool, Ohio 1960s
Viktor Yushchenko Before And After His Poisoning By Vladimir Putin In 2004. He And His Family Believe The Assassination Attempt Was Ordered By Moscow When He Attempted To Steer Ukraine To Closer Integration With Europe
Myrmekochoria recalls hearing from a friend about old-time diarists like Samuel Pepys and the like. They can’t recall the exact name, but there was one who never missed a single day without writing something in his diary. But unlike many contemporaries, instead of focusing on world events, he noted the everyday grind and epiphanies of an unimportant person in this cruel world, a la In Search of Lost Time, but without any hope of care from others.
“It was like a statement of a single person against the uncaring world. But I tried to do it as an intellectual footprint of the mind through time—not a personal drama,” elaborated the creator of the subreddit. “I do not work in any intellectual circles or related jobs, so this is how I keep up my interest, instead of becoming a mindless consumer of sorts.”
“Also, my teacher once told me that these kinds of diaries help with inspiration and provide rabbit holes that lead into books and help broaden one’s own intellectual horizon. I have been creating this sort of content for a long while, even before Reddit on another Polish website, but people there were not that nice, and the content was not really tailored for them. On Reddit, it found its niche.”
Theodore Roosevelt's Diary The Day His Wife And Mother Died, 1884
American World War I Veterans At A Reunion In 1978
Queen Genepil The Last Queen Consort Of Mongolia. Killed During Stalinist Purges In 1938
An East German Guard Throws A Ball Back To A Child Playing On The West German Side Of The Berlin Wall. 1962
this would look like he was throwing a cartoon bomb or something if it wasnt for the caption
I bet you’re wondering why Dragon Utopia? Well, in the beginning of it all, Myrmekochoria explained that they used to channel two types of content: old art-themed posts called Starszezwoje, or Elder Scrolls (“hopefully, no lawsuit pending,” joked OP), and Smoczautopia, or Dragon Utopia, which was aimed at sharing objects from museums, letters from Mesopotamia, armor, weapons, that sort of thing.
“The name of the subreddit always comes up in conversations. It is a reference to a game called Heroes of Might and Magic III. There is a building called Dragon Utopia, and after fighting with a powerful dragon you are rewarded with powerful artifacts. In concept, this subreddit was destined to be dedicated to old artifacts and objects from online museums. But there is already a great subreddit for that, so I switched directions and merged the two types of content into one. The name remained.”
Man In A Bar (Saturday Night) In Craigville, Minnesota 1937
Japanese Nurse Dressed In Black During The Russo-Japanese War, 1905
Earliest Known Photo Of A Surfer, Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1890
How do we know it’s a surfer, though? He could just be about to wash his small door.
President George W. Bush Is Interrupted By Chief Of Staff Andrew Card While Reading To Schoolchildren In Sarasota, Florida, On September 11th, 2001
He did a lot of things wrong but continuing to read the story to the children was not one of them
children pick up on emotions quick kinda like dogs lol. his best option was to remain calm around them and act as tho nothing was wrong. once the story was done and he left he could go into prez mode
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Bush was incompetent at best, and a mediocre president. He lied to get us into the war in Iraq, and now paints pictures of veterans, trying to atone for all the deaths and injuries he caused.
I remember this moment. I had little to no respect for George. He proved himself that day, and the days that followed. I remember him sitting with our Olympic team a few months later, I cried out of pride. In retrospect, George had issues..but unlike trumptard, he has a soul.
150,000 dead bodies in Iraq might disagree. 9-11 was horrible, but it was 3,000 people.
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I didn't care for his politics, but I cannot imagine the strength it took not to re-act hysterically in front of the children.
I suspect it wasn't strength, more likely he was dumbfounded and had no idea what to do other than to keep reading a children's book. Not a bright man.
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I think he said something like "Sir, the nation is under attack". At least that's how the story went.
the end of freedoms as we knew, the seeds of 2 wars without reason began right here.
The expression on his face says everything we need to know about how he was feeling and what he was thinking at that moment. I’m sure he has never forgotten the shock of leading the American people through one of the greatest tragedies in our history. 💔
I thought it was kind and considerate that he finished his talk with the school children and didn't scare them by running out!
Yes, heaven forbid that the children would suffer having a story go unfinished while the president attended to the country being under attack! Remember that we didn't know how big the attack would be. For all we knew, there would be dozens or 100s of subsequent attacks across the country at that point.
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If I recall correctly, I believe he got a lot of sh!t for staying and continuing to read to kids. But why? What was he supposed to do if he up and left? No, he did the right thing, the kids would have picked up on it, people would have gotten scared. There was nothing he could actually do in that moment, so continuing what he was doing was the best course of action.
There was nothing he could do? Are you kidding? The most powerful man on the planet with centuries of planning for emergencies in place, and there wasn't one single thing that he could have done, with potential subsequent attacks coming at any moment, perhaps on the school in which he was sitting? That makes no sense.
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What's more important is Bush complete his story time with the kids before he left and got on Air Force one that day... there's a time to act and there's a time to be there for your people, and he was there for those he could help, knowing he couldn't do much more
After September 11th 2001, life as we once knew it, changed forever. It’ll never be the same again.
Never understood why he got so much flack for continuing to finish the book he was reading to the kids. Him rushing away would've no doubt frightened them and made him look just as bad.
I remember I was in elementary school the day of 9/11. Our teacher rolled in the media trolly and we all watched it on the news. A terrible day indeed
What do you think he told the children they were probably the first children to know about 9/11
A lot of people criticized Bush.. but this was something entirely new. How do react to not scare children? You hold it together, you put on a fake smile and pretend that the world can’t be a cruel and horrible place.
You Americans need to have a very long look at the way you let these people into positions of power.
We aren't real happy about it, but have no power to stop it - even the popular votes aren't taken into an account for 2 of the ppl that became president. We have no rights in this Country, you're very much mistaken - we live in a society where one side comes up with conspiracy theories of disgusting and laughable degrees (you Republicans) - our voting system is rigged with Gerrymandering, (talking to you asshats again Republicans) We go to work for s**t pay while the rich and corporations step on our backs to line their pockets. Women don't have a right to make decisions about their own bodies, (how many times are you m***********s going to pop up here Republicans) We live in a Country where one side is so racist that they picked someone just as racist - and who lost the popular vote (you f*****s put a racist pedophile who robs ppl for a living to be your goddamn president, you may be the dumbest ppl on this green Earth) & this Country is owned by a handful of the rich and corp.
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Americans pre-9/11 "Acceptable civilian loss." "We bombed a wedding party, but it LOOKED like a terrorist camp" "Our soldiers killed a few civilians, but they won't get a fair trial Abroad, so we;ll bring them home". Americans after 9/11 "Why do these people attack us?"
But he already knew about it well before it happened that’s why he’s sitting in a classroom full of kids reading them storybooks, so he looks all innocent, dirty government dogs knew exactly when & when it was happening killing all those innocent people
I was impressed by his lack of reaction and how it suggested that he may have known the plan.
He already knew. It was a blatant false flag. How-stupid...00e01b.jpg 
I've seen the footage - he sat there and did nothing for a significant amount of time. People criticised the hell out of him for it, though I later read that there's actually some sort of protocol for those situations which says no jumping up and rushing out the door because it might make people panic, or something like that. Either way it didn't do wonders for his image.
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Don't you think that is a bit rude to say? (The part about he can't read)
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Wrong Bush. It was Bush Sr.'s policies that lead to the rise of Al Quaida, but that's incompatance not malice.
Load More Replies...As mentioned above, the creator of r/DragonUtopia is extremely diligent in posting content on the daily (with a slight hiatus as of this article, but no worries!)—it would often average at 10 posts a day, each with a visual and a short explanation of what folks can see.
“The posts depend on what I’m reading currently or am in the mood of. I usually post around 10 post a day and there is sometimes (not always) an overarching theme hidden behind them like: cruelty of humans, beauty of art, indifference of war and of the biological world, suffering of humans and maybe the possibility of empathy and the feeling of their despair as yours through photographs, child labor, progress of science changing life for the better,” elaborated OP.
Salvador Dalí Poster For Us Army In Campaign Against Venereal Diseases, 1942
End Of Prohibition, 1933
Paris Air Show, September 1909
“There are so many great resources now on the Internet. There are plenty of national archives (like the Library of Congress, Narodwe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archives in Poland), and a bunch of others—nearly every country now has digitized archives.”
“These feature hundreds of thousands of photos in high-res for free, authored by famous photographers like Lewis Hine, Jack Delano, John Vachon, Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, Theodor Horydczak, Arthur Rothstein, Arthur S. Siegel, Andreas Feininger, and Gordon Park. I’ve previously mentioned them in length because they document reality as a 19th-century French novelist would do.”
“Also, there are plenty of great blogs and other people doing the same thing on social media, but for the most part, I try to give the content some kind of personal touch, if that is possible.”
Belgium Coal Miners Coming Up After A Day Of Work, 1900
Collapse Of Deepwater Horizon Rig, 2010
The effects of that spill are still evident in North Florida beaches, fish, shellfish and wildlife 12 years later.
Robert E. Peary, An Inuit Man Warms Up His Wife’s Feet In Greenland, 1890s
I am starting to suspect BP team is trying some subconscious techniques on me. Is it the 4th or 5th time I've seen this very image over the last 3 or 4 weeks? Anyway, I hereby confirm that it has been deep-etched in my mind, thank you.
Abandoned Presidents' Heads In A Rural Virginia Field
This looks like a fever dream. Imagine gtting lost in this rual area and stumbling over a few huge heads of dead presidents.
Since the subreddit’s creation in April of 2017, it has grown from a “diary” to a whole community, and Myrmekochoria has nothing but praise for them:
“The community is great. They always have something interesting to say and they provide interesting links to articles or academic papers. If I post about lesser-known events from modern times, people sometimes write that they were there or witnessed it. Sometimes, citizens of a city or smaller village write to me about how things change or which building still stands (or not).”
“Often they will give me interesting links to blogs or archives that I did not even know existed, and I end up using them in future posts. The readers often say that they learn things that were before completely unknown to them about history from the subreddit, and that is very flattering.”
Star Wars Poster In Tokyo, 1978
A Worker Paints The Golden Gate Bridge, 1956
The Charred Remains Of The Apollo 1 Cabin Interior. Three Astronauts Died In It: Gus Grissom, Ed White And Roger Chaffee
Greaser Takes A Break From Working On His Car, Brooklyn 1950s
Lastly, we’ve asked Myrmekochoria to drop some historical knowledge that they think people should ponder, or at the very least know about, and they had this to say:
“By no means am I a historian, so, maybe, I am punching above my weight here. But I would like to say two things: one objective and one personal.”
“First, objective: the path to our modern life starts in the 17th century, after the Thirty Years’ War. Europe, after a ruthless religious war, finally starts to grow away from religious dogmas and the two ‘splinters’ of Catholicism finally accept one another, but the intellectuals look in the other direction after Peace of Westphalia. There are rumblings and Age of Enlightenment slowly begins and brings miracles of technology that will forever change our lifestyles, governments, worldviews and so on.”
“The French Encyclopédie, for the first time, gives people an alternative view of reality to the Bible in Europe. Governments change to absolute monarchies focused on technology, conquest, finance, and growth. Firearms, trains, modern chemistry, Louis Pasteur’s groundbreaking studies, architecture, judicial systems in the spirit of Montesquieu, and birth of modern nations (most of them were just class systems) in the 19th century’s Spring of Nations. We also see this system of thought being transplanted to other parts of the world, like Japan in the Meiji Restoration or South American countries—it became a good and tested way to reform a country with all its flaws and evils.”
Stock Exchange Trader At The End Of The Day On Black Monday, Toronto 1987
Men Outside The Bar Called “The Squirrel”, Sweden, Stockholm, 1895
Joaquin Phoenix In 1996
is the picture black-and-white for the vibes? not a 90s kid, but i think that color photography was commonplace in the 90s
The Effects Of A Daisy Cutter Bomb, The Bomb Was Designed To Clear An Area For The Helicopter To Land
Huh, so that's why that character in Avatar exclaimed "f*****g daisycutters!" when she found out they were going to blast the giant tree.
Myrmekochoria continued: “Second: peasant suffrage. Throughout most of history, over 90% of people were peasants or serfs who were treated very badly—sometimes worse than cattle. In Revolutionary France, around 93-97% people were the Third Estate (Fr. Tiers État). The ruling class never wanted them to learn to read, let alone bring them to the policy table. Peasants were conscripted, forced to do the back-breaking labor, paying taxes, and their social advance through the ladder was mostly not attainable.”
“In the 19th century, peasant suffrage starts more or less excluding many different parts of the world. There is a misconception that the great revolutions of our time (Russian and Chinese) were workers’ revolutions, but in fact they were that of the peasants who finally had enough of their government. And this gave us the Soviet Union (and Communist China). Cold War, Space Programs, Atomic Era, IT technology. Maybe the suffrage is too personal and important to me, because I was born to a rural peasant family and I did not have a TV or a phone up until 1995, but technology gave me the chance to learn language and see the global wonders without exiting my room. This is a stunning achievement, reached in more or less 350 years. So, the Enlightenment, the technological prosperity following Peasant Suffrage and the possibility for greater education overlap.”
An Orthodox Priest In A Deerskin Gizhiga, Russia, 1901
What are those things hanging behind him? Fish? Bats? Some kind of underwear?
Bobby Kennedy Taking A Lunch Break At The Bluefield Drive-In, 1960
Each Day At The End Of The Shift, The Miners Would Have To Go Through The X-Ray Machine For Inspection. Some Miners Would Swallow Diamonds, Even Hide Them In Self-Inflicted Incisions In Their Legs, South Africa 1954
A Freshly Painted M4 Sherman Tank In An Infrared Lamp Tunnel ,which Is Designed To Cut The Drying Time Of The Paint From 24 Hours To 4 Minutes
Men Constructing Chicago Sewers, 1912
“There are also many other things, like the Neolithic revolution, iron smelting, cattle breeding, plant manipulation, chemistry and others things that should be mentioned here, but it would take us a long time to do so. And maybe my liberal (in the classic Enlightenment sense) worldview speaks through, but we are all slaves to our thoughts and minds,” concluded Myrmekochoria.
If you have a thirst for history in this vein, be sure to join up the r/DragonUtopia Reddit community, but there’s also Twitter, if that’s your forte. And if you’ve accidentally missed it, there was another recent post we had about folks on Tumblr pointing out historical facts in the most spot-on and hilarious ways.
But before you do leave us, be sure to get engaged with the folks in the comment section by sharing some of your insights on history!
Kim Il-Sung, Founder Of North Korea, With The Hungarian Communist Leader János Kádár, 1984. Tumor On His Neck Clearly Visible
British Soldier Takes A Bath In The Port City Of Tobruk, Libya, 17 February 1942
I am surprised you can get running water in these challenging conditions.
Martha Cooper, Man Smoking Cigarette And Reading Comics While Being Tattooed, Tokyo, Japan, 1970
Tourists Atop The Great Pyramid, 1938
Swedish Pilots Tanking Saab 105 On The Gas Station, 1980
A Commuter Reads The New York Post’s Rundown Of Black Monday Stock Market Crash, 1987
Off I go to find some articles about black Monday after seeing some of these photos...
Off I go to find some articles about black Monday after seeing some of these photos...
