46 Historical Photos And Their Intriguing Or Heartbreaking Backstories

This 1894 image was first published in April 1895 by the Century Magazine as part of T.C Martin’s article titled, “Tesla’s Oscillator and other Inventions”.Twain frequently visited and volunteered in Nikola Tesla's laboratory in the 1890s, where he famously tested Tesla's mechanical oscillator.

Roland was a massive 4,000-pound sea elephant who called the Berlin Zoo his home from the late 1920s until the Second World War. In a fascinating display of human-animal interaction, Roland was pictured receiving a snow bath from his handler.

Shot between 1928 and 1929, the photograph captures Jackie, MGM’s “Leo,” as a cameraman and sound man work beside him in his soundproof booth-sized cage. In the risky and unnervingly intimate setup, handlers often prodded and coaxed roars out of Jackie, close enough for everyone to be in grave danger if he lashed out.

This photo of a monk carefully crossing a chain bridge at Yunyan Si, also known as Cloud Rock Temple, was captured in 1930. The precarious two-chain bridge, with one chain as the narrow footway and the other as the handrail, was one of two daunting routes to the sutra library perched on a cliff.

This 1931 photograph of Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa was not taken at a Hopi Mesa, but at Hopi House, part of the Grand Canyon’s El Tovar hotel. This was a common scene staged for tourists. Not even the feathered headdress and pipe given to Einstein were part of Hopi culture. Instead, they belonged to Plains Indian tribes.

Shot in 1948, this image shows a Hawaiian fisherman holding a torch made from kukui nuts. Passed down from generation to generation, the traditional practice, known as torch fishing, involved illuminating shallow waters to attract octopi and rock fish for spearing.

Taken by Harry Burton, this photo shows when the doors of the fourth shrine inside Tutankhamun’s burial chamber were finally opened in 1923. It captured the decisive moment before the revelation of the sarcophagus. The protective goddesses, with outstretched wings on the doors, serve as proof that they had reached the heart of the shrines.

Pictured are Northern Japan’s Ainu people at the turn of the 20th century. Due to forced assimilation since the 18th century, there were only around 300 native Ainu speakers in 1966. By 1980, fewer than 100 speakers remained, and today the Ainu language is likely extinct, with no known native speakers.

The plane imprint pictured was left on the British cruiser HMS Sussex on July 26, 1945, when a Japanese kamikaze plane crashed into it. Luckily, the ship’s hull was strong enough to withstand the impact, resulting in only minor damage. The photo serves as a powerful reminder of just how intense the Pacific War was.

Taken in 1923, this photo shows two salesmen from the Protective Garment Corporation of New York performing a live demonstration of their lightweight bulletproof vest invention. The demonstration took place at the Washington City Police Department in front of several police officers who looked on in awe.

Nicknamed yellow bellies, French knife grinders worked while lying on their stomachs to prevent back pain. As their workshops were usually located in cold and damp areas, knife grinders often had dogs sit on their legs for warmth.

The Brooklyn Bridge took 14 years and over 600 workers to build. But what most people don’t know is that the bridge claimed its fair share of lives. Over 20 workers passed away due to falling off the bridge, being hit by debris, or getting caisson disease. This photograph of painters suspended on the cables of the bridge with absolutely no safety gear was taken by photographer Eugene de Salignac.

This photo was taken in the early 1900s at the Los Angeles Alligator Farm in Lincoln Heights, California. Seeing a baby sitting in a holding pen surrounded by young alligators may seem shocking, but such close contact with the reptiles was viewed as harmless family entertainment at the time.

In 1943, 86-year-old Nikola Tesla was photographed for the very last time. The famous scientist passed away that very same year on January 7 from coronary thrombosis. Having spent his final years in quiet isolation, Tesla’s lifeless body was only discovered two days later in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel.

Before the dangers of radioactive material were known, many women worked as “radium girls.” The role required them to hand-paint watch dials with luminous radium paint. Sadly, most of them suffered from severe radiation poisoning, anemia, cancer, and even jaw decay due to their prolonged exposure to radiation without safety gear.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians debuted in January 1961, marking a significant shift from the animated movies Walt Disney produced in earlier decades. It was contemporary and grounded in realism, rather than magic. The success of the film spawned a successful media franchise, two animated television series, and live-action remakes in 1996 and 2000.

The bustling scene pictured is of a street market in Paris in 1920. After the First World War ended in 1918 and until the Great Depression in 1931, the French economy boomed. This saw Paris emerge not only as a commercial hub but as a capital of art, music, literature, and cinema.

Charles Kauha, a Hawaiian surfer, is pictured at Waikiki Beach in 1898, carrying one of the last alaia surfboards. An alaia was a thin, round-nosed, square-tailed surfboard about 200 to 350 cm (7 to 12 ft) long. They weighed up to 50 kg (100 lb) and were generally made out of wood from the Koa Tree. Unlike modern surfboards, alaia surfboards had no ventral fins and relied on their sharp edges to grip the waves.

Photographed here is the ”Steam Man,” invented by American inventors Zadoc P. Dederick and Isaac Grass in 1868. This interesting contraption was meant to pull a small carriage using the steam generated by the boiler in its chest. Although people in Newark and New York City initially paid top dollar to see the Steam Man, by 1870, the media had labelled it a sham.

In this photograph, esteemed circus performer and animal tamer Jack Bonavita poses with 13 lions as part of his act “The Armchair.” While sitting in a chair, Bonavita would order the lions to sit around him. He eventually branched out into working with polar bears, a decision that proved fatal for him.

In the 1930s, stilt walking formed part of popular festival arts and stage training for both comic and martial roles in Beijing. This particular photograph was taken in 1934 at a drama class where even young girls and boys practiced stilt walking.

Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin, locked up at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, escaped from the prison on June 11, 1962. They used sculpted dummy heads to fool guards into believing they were asleep in their beds while they made a getaway. The dummies were made from a concoction of toilet paper, toothpaste, concrete dust, and soap with paint and real human hair to give them a realistic appearance.

Air travel in the early 20th century was far from the luxury experience we’ve grown accustomed to. The wicker seating in the photo can be traced back to an Imperial Airways commercial plane. This form of seating was popular across airlines throughout the 1920s. By the turn of the 1930s, leather padding and lining were introduced to make the chairs more comfortable.

In this photo, a multitude of miners and prospectors can be seen climbing the Chikoot trail in 1898. This was during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 to 1899, when an estimated 100,000 people followed the trail to reach the gold fields in the Klondike region of Yukon in Canada.

This photograph of Swami Satchidananda, a yoga guru and religious teacher, speaking in front of a massive crowd at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, was captured on August 15, 1969. To call for harmony during the Vietnam War era, festival organizers asked the guru to bring calm and bless the crowd with his powerful invocation.

An oil slick at a shipyard on the Cuyahoga River ignited, leading to the massive blaze captured in November 1952. The fire swept through the docks, destroying everything in its path, including the Arizona tugboat pictured. Interestingly, the blaze got little to no media attention in 1952, but the images were eventually used in later coverage of another fire on the same river in 1969.

Photographed is the Statue of Liberty, shown from the rare perspective of the torch, looking down at the top of the head. Following the "Black Tom" explosion of July 30, 1916, the statue suffered structural damage, prompting authorities to keep the torch permanently closed to the public.

Pictured is the view across the cask yard at St. James's Gate Guinness Brewery, sometime between 1906 and 1913. Established in 1759, the brewery had an annual output of 1.2 million barrels by 1886, making it the world’s largest brewery. It was considered one of the city's most outstanding employers during this period.

During World War I, over one million Indian troops served overseas, and about 74,000 of them lost their lives. These fatalities were mostly due to the soldiers facing new war technologies, such as machine guns and poison gas, which they weren’t equipped to handle.

The children in the picture are carrying ‘rattle boxes’ or small cans used to collect money and treats during Fastelavn. Fastelavn is a Nordic carnival tradition celebrated seven weeks before Easter Sunday. While customs vary by country and region, a common tradition is children dressing up in costumes, going door to door, singing, and gathering treats for the Fastelavn feast.

Taken at Hengistbury Head near Bournemouth in 1941, this photo is a powerful depiction of what British soldiers during World War II endured during training. Wearing a gas mask, the soldier can be seen advancing through a smoke screen. This was a common drill to help soldiers prepare for chemical warfare and battlefield conditions.

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This photograph, taken circa 1941 in Helwan, Egypt, is a powerful display of Māori cultural traditions. It shows members of the 28th Maori Battalion, who had fought against German invasion in Greece, performing a haka for the King of Greece.

Taken around 1925 in Urga, this photo shows a Tsam masked dance meant to purify the community and scare away evil spirits. Monks performed in heavy robes and sacred masks, while horns, cymbals, and drums provided rhythm. By the 1930s, the tradition was suppressed, making images from this era valuable records.

This photograph, taken in 1899 of Banyuls-sur-Mer, shows Romanian scientist Emil Racoviță posing underwater for French pioneer Louis Boutan. Racoviță held a slate that read “Photographie sous-marine,” confirming that the shot was taken below the surface. Boutan’s work is widely regarded as the first underwater portrait and helped launch the era of underwater photography.

Captured in this U.S. National Archives photo from September 16, 1918, are two young women on a delivery route, lugging a huge block of ice around using tongs. Traditionally, this was a job done by men due to its physically demanding nature. However, more women took up the work to assist during World War I.

Captured in Nushagak, Alaska, this 1912 photo shows an Eskimo medicine man, also known as an Aglegmiut shaman, with his arm draped over the shoulder of a sick boy. It was captioned "Working to beat the devil" - exorcising evil spirits from a sick boy. Despite being forbidden by Christian missionaries, these ceremonial costumes, consisting of masks and outsized hands, were still made and used in the early 1900s by the Aglegmiut people. 

Julia Pastrana was born in 1834 in Mexico. She was a singer and performer with a genetic condition called hypertrichosis terminalis that caused straight black hair to grow all over her face and body. Pastrana also had a rare disease called gingival hyperplasia, which increased the size of her gums. Both were unique conditions to have, with gingival hyperplasia virtually unheard of at that time.

This 1940 photograph captures a gas-attack drill staged at a London hospital. As part of the drill, the nurses at the hospital had to carry babies around in cocoon-like devices called “baby gas respirators” to prepare for possible evacuations due to poison gas raids. Interestingly, the device’s design enclosed the baby’s body apart from their legs, which were left hanging out.

This 1961 photo was captured during the excavations in Pompeii. Using a technique perfected by Giuseppe Fiorelli, archaeological investigations of the ancient town have recorded over 1000 victims of the 79 AD eruption since 1863, with 103 casts made during the excavation process. Thanks to developments in digital imaging and scientific analysis, other projects have emerged to challenge myths and uncover the truth about the victims.

On the Island of Nias, megaliths were used to honor prominent deceased individuals. Whenever such a stone was erected, a ritual feast was held to allow the deceased to join their ancestors in the afterlife. According to legend, it took 525 people in the village of Bawomataluo three days to raise the stone pictured in 1915.

This well-known photograph was taken by Paul Thompson in London, circa 1916. It depicts Florence Priscilla, Lady Norman, a British suffragist and wartime office supervisor, riding an Autoped motor-scooter to work. The scooter was a birthday present from her husband, Sir Henry Norman. Like many other early motorized scooters during the 1910s, it briefly boomed and was marketed to women as convenient city transport.

The children pictured here were known as “breaker boys” because of the work they did at coal breakers. Lewis Wickes Hine shot this photo of them in 1911, while documenting child labor on behalf of the National Child Labor Committee. Often working 10 hours a day and 6 days a week, the boys would pick slate and other impurities from coal with their bare hands. However, by 1920, the use of breaker boys had ended because machinery had improved, and laws had been tightened.

Captured at the height of the Great Depression, this photo gives us a glimpse into the bleakness of the time. Like the man holding a morbid sign, about a quarter of the American population was without work, with many ending up homeless as a result. Thousands of banks closing, the stock market crashing, and a drought drying up farms only worsened the hardships.

Pictured is Archaeologist Gabriel Gustafson and his team at work during the 1904 excavation of the Oseberg burial mound. The Viking era discovery included the Oseberg Ship, along with numerous wooden and metal artefacts, textiles, and even sacrificed animals offered to the two women buried there.

This is what natural bodybuilders looked like in 1941. Over the next decade, bodybuilding slowly gained recognition as a sport, with notable figures promoting natural, balanced physiques and compound exercises. By the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, anabolic steroid use became widespread. Physiques then took on a more extreme look, focusing on size and definition.

Taken in 1953, this photo captures the devastation of the polio epidemic before widespread vaccination began in 1955. At the Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Downey, California, polio patients (who were unable to breathe on their own) were treated in a large iron lung ward. The iron lung was a life-saving machine that kept them alive by forcing air in and out of their lungs.