94 Photos That Prove History Was A Lot Stranger Than You Might’ve Thought

After Being Sentenced She Reportedly Smiled At The Judge And Said "20 Years? Your Government Won't Last That Long." - 1968

Mark Twain is holding one of Tesla's experimental vacuum lamps during a visit to the inventor's New York laboratory. The lamp was illuminated by Tesla's h**h-frequency apparatus without a conventional wired connection to the power source. Tesla is the barely visible figure at the left. The photograph appeared with T. C. Martin's article “Tesla's Oscillator and Other Inventions” in *The Century Magazine* in 1895.

This is a real period photograph, but Tesla was not sitting there while the arcs were firing. Photographer Dickenson V. Alley first exposed the plate with the laboratory's electrical discharge, then exposed it again with the equipment off and Tesla seated in the chair. The result was one of history's most effective pieces of scientific showmanship.

It Was Taken By Komsomolskaya Pravda, Editor In Chief. He Was Ordered To Destroy It, But Instead Saved It. June 22, 1941

The Chinese Didn't Know Photos Were A "Serious Matter" And Decided To Be Goofy, Hence The Pose And Smile.

William Notman & Son made this portrait in Montreal in August 1885. Sitting Bull had permission to tour with Buffalo Bill Cody's show for one season and became one of its headliners. The National Park Service says the two men became friends and that Cody gave him a trained gray horse. Wild West shows offered Native performers income and travel, but they also packaged and reinforced stereotypes for paying audiences.

Central Park recorded 21 inches of snow from March 12–14, while much of the region received far more. The blizzard paralyzed transportation, snapped overhead telegraph and telephone lines, and k**led more than 400 people across the affected region about 200 of them in New York City.

On January 15, 1919, a storage tank containing more than 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed in Boston's North End. Contemporary estimates put the first wave as h**h as 15 feet and moving at roughly 35 mph. It k**led 21 people, injured about 150 and smashed buildings and elevated-rail supports. A court-appointed auditor later found that structural weakness—not the sabotage alleged by the company caused the collapse.

The statue's head and shoulders were completed in 1878 and displayed at the Paris Universal Exposition while fundraising continued. France financed the statue, while Americans were expected to finance its pedestal. The completed statue was dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886.

The smiling photograph helped create a romantic outlaw image, but their actual crime spree involved robbery, kidnapping, car theft, and k***ings. When officers ambushed and k**led the pair near Sailes, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934, authorities believed they had committed 13 m**ders. They were partners but, contrary to the common description, they were never married.

The alley stood in Mulberry Bend on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where immigrant families paid h**h rents for crowded rear tenements. Jacob Riis, Richard H*e Lawrence, and Henry G. Piffard photographed the area in 1887–1888 as part of Riis's campaign to expose urban poverty. Riis later published *How the Other Half Lives* in 1890.

On November 24, 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305, claimed to have a b*mb, and demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills.

After releasing 36 passengers in Seattle, he ordered the plane back into the air and parachuted from its rear stairs into the night. His identity and fate remain unknown.

In February 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram found these decaying bills on a Columbia River sandbar. Their serial numbers matched Cooper's ransom; the $5,800 discovery remains the only recovered portion of the money. “D. B.” was a press-created name the hijacker called himself Dan Cooper.

Designed by Richard Morris Hunt and completed in 1882, the French château-style mansion was Alva Vanderbilt's architectural declaration that the family belonged among New York's elite. Her March 26, 1883 costume ball drew nearly 1,200 guests and helped secure the Vanderbilts' acceptance into old-money society.

The men belonged to the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps, an experimental unit of Black enlisted soldiers based at Fort Missoula. Each bicycle carried camping equipment, food, a rifle, ammunition and repair gear. The corps rode from Montana to St. Louis through mud, sand, rocks and mountain weather to test the bicycle as a military transport. The experiment ended as the Army shifted its attention to the Spanish-American War and, later, motor vehicles.

George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. designed the wheel as America's answer to the Eiffel Tower. It stood 264 feet tall and carried 36 passenger cars, each capable of holding 60 people—a total capacity of 2,160 riders.

This photograph shows Pennsylvania state militia entering Homestead after the violent July 1892 confrontation between locked-out Carnegie steelworkers and Pinkerton guards. The militia's arrival placed the town under martial law and helped the company regain control of the mill.

465 Pineville Road in Newtown, Pennsylvania looks like a massive luxury estate today, but the oldest part of the house dates back to around 1760–1765.

By 1859, the property was owned by John Eastburn and was known as “Buttonwood Grove.” An old Upper Makefield Township historical survey even includes an 1859 lithograph showing what the farm looked like back then.

The house still has pieces of its 18th-century past: thick stone walls, exposed beams, deep window sills, old fireplaces and even a traditional beehive oven.