These days, when cameras are everywhere, from our phones to security cams in public spaces, it’s easy to forget that the major part of history has passed without them. Only in 1888, when Kodak released the first commercial camera, did they slowly begin permeating our lives.
But long before thousands of snaps on our camera rolls, photographs were reserved for capturing precious and one-of-a-kind moments. These incredible visual monuments of history have resurfaced and brought a whole new meaning to events and lives of people in the past.
And today we’re about to get on board down memory lane full of raw emotions and unstaged realities captured in these rare historical photos. After you’re done, make sure to check out our part 1 right here.
This post may include affiliate links.
100,000 Iranian Women March Against The Hijab Law, Tehran 1979
Google "pre taliban afghanistan". Even more of a kick in the gut. Afghanistan used to be a vacation destination. All the good that any organized religion has done or can do will never make up for or offset all the harm that they've inflicted and continue to inflict.
Load More Replies...
Iran used to be so modern and advanced! In the 50s, women went to college, worked outside the home, drove cars.... What religion did to these women is horrific, and put Iran back into a more primitive place.
It's not religion as much as it is politics and outside meddling. Though, religion makes it a whole lot easier to take control of the masses. See how states use evangelical christianity/catholicism to change women's rights in the states. It's why separation of church and state is absolutely necessary. When politicians use religion for control, they abuse the people and the religion as well by twisting its words to fit their agenda.
Load More Replies...
Looks like USA is going down the same path with bigots growing more and more powerful.
Yep you're right. Women are starting to lose their rights (again), so now we're starting to regress. Notice how some of the poorest states do this kind of crap.
Load More Replies...
Those fundamentalists who say that "Hijab is a choice" have never seen this pic..!!
Usually the people who say the hijab is a choice are in countries where it IS a choice.
Load More Replies...
Shame these poor woman had to go back to living in the dark ages this was a very wrong way of life and should never have been bought back into play - woman should be respected not hidden away like we are dirty with men doing what they want to do
That shows that things can change quickly so women and feminism must fight harder to get equity and agains violence to women. US could have live that, or worst, with Trump, just few months ago, for example.
Nothing. The moment you can try to speak up for them you will be label a islamaphobe and that word will immediately silence you.
Load More Replies...
I am fascinated by American hypocrisy. Even when they're responsible for the oppression of minorities and women in other countries, it's still the fault of Islam. These women lived free while being Muslim, something hypocritical Americans won't acknowledge. They became oppressed AFTER the US organized a coup in Iran against a democratically elected president. Religion didn't cause this. A secular powerhungry superpower was responsible for this and continues to be responsible. Also can Americans finally stop equating liberty with short skirts and bikinis? Like I could be more educated than the men in my family and earn more but just because I cover up and it's an image of oppression to American audiences, doesn't mean I am oppressed. Women in Iran and Afghanistan never largely wore skirts. The pictures you see being circulated as a sign of their lost freedom was never a widespread reality but only limited to certain areas of their capitals.
Yup. Even in Pakistan, America funded Zia, an Islamic extremist dictator who sent us back decades in terms of progress. We still haven't fully recovered from that yet most Americans probably don't even know his name .
Load More Replies...
American militaries created theses types of organizations (terrorists, like Taliban and ISIS). Do to our military occupying Iraq, this created a power vacuum, thus allowing any group to go get power. If it was in America, and America was occupied by Iraq, then most likely a Christian version of this would form. How many people would join that? More than Iraq, considering its a larger country than Iraq.
That's so sad. There have been so many times the people have tried to stand up and no one comes to help them.
And the police opened up with live ammo and and tear gas. People forget the Revolutionary Guard was one of 7 anti-Shah groups and the only religious one. The others were secular. But they were the armed one, that was trained. Since they had the weapons, training, and support of the religious fanatics, they took charge, killed the leaders of the other factions and used force and violence to create the Iran we see today
People also forget that Iran used to have a democratically elected president, but the UK and US decided to topple him because he wanted his country to exploit their oil reserves. They put a the Shah Reza to rule the country. He did, for the West and the rich. Eventually the people got tired and Jomeini saw his opportunity. Learn the whole story.
Load More Replies...
Iran was on its way to become a modern democracy - but the US didn't like that so the CIA helped overturn the government. Same in Irak and Afghanistan.
I remember this. The Shah was overthrown and the clerics took over, women lost a lot of the freedoms they had always enjoyed. But they still wire makeup and nice clothes under their chadors, so once they reached their destination they were able to enjoy a semblance of normality.
And now they are kicked back to the Stoneage, largely because of men with big egos, powertrips and small d.icks are afraid their women will outsmart them. Brainwashed to harm their own population. The United States are to follow, taking women's rights but giving no alternative.....
What an intense photo. In the states the over reaching laws against women's rights in Texas where the women made their voices heard against a religious zealot.
so sad, they are so down trodden they feel they HAVE TO wear it now for modesty.
Some stranger shouldn't be making laws about what a woman can do with her body and mind. We are legitimately human beings and capable of deciding for our selves. If you don't like it, mind your own f*****g business - you are not required to like anyone's choices but your own.
and yet they are still stuck in those nasty things... obviously Islam is NOT women-friendly
This is for those that drone on about "it's their culture". Yeah, so? Wrong is wrong in any culture.
Wait... And you all want to fight to make them wear it? I don't get it.
It's about choice u dimwit. If I forced you to carry a Bible with you at all times it's the compulsion that would be the problem not the book.
Load More Replies...
Next time I hear someone say, "But they LOVE to wear the Hijab, it's their choice and they prefer it". I will reference this photo and point in Iranian history.
Did not work did it? Now they say they WANT to wear hijab and be covered up
You do understand that there are over a billion Muslims, right? They won't all want exactly the same thing, and that's fine. What they want is the right to make their own choice.
Load More Replies... 
Choice. People fight for choice dimwit. The women should have a choice. If someone is wearing a hijab in the US and that's what they choose to wear it's no ones business
Load More Replies...
Meet The "Night Witches", Fearless Russian Female Pilots Who Bombed Nazis By Night, 1941
A Native American Mother And Her Child - 1900s
“Photography historians are each different in how they approach studying the life of the medium: some are interested in its technical history, asking what camera improvements, and limitations, meant for the people who became photographers,” Gabrielle Moser told Bored Panda.
Gabrielle is a writer, book author, independent curator, and Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Art Education at York University. She was happy to share some insights into the wondrous world of historical photography and what photography historians do to bring them back to life.
“What could you literally photograph—because of film speed, exposure times, and the ability or inability to print multiple copies of an image—and what did that mean for the kinds of images that were made?” These are the inquiries photography historians are looking for the answers to.
In 1941, The Photo On The Left Was Taken Of Soviet Soldier Eugen Stepanovich Kobytev On The Day He Left To Go To War. The Photo On The Right Was Taken In 1945 After The End Of The War, Just 4 Years Apart
Keshia Thomas Protects An Alleged Kkk Supporter From A Mob In Ann Arbor, Mi, 1996
A Red Cross Nurse Writing Down Last Words Of Mortally Wounded Soldier, Taken Around 1917
“For instance,” Gabrielle continued, “war photography was incredibly difficult until the early 1900s since shutter speeds were so slow and exposure times were so long that any movement, like armed battle, wouldn’t be captured by the camera. That didn’t mean that photographers didn’t make images of wars, but that they had to be inventive, using staging, re-enactment, or capturing the aftermath of battle, as Roger Fenton, Mathew Brady, and Timothy O’Sullivan were all very skilled at.”
Sir David Attenborough As A Young Man, Late 1950s
Annette Kellerman Promotes Women's Right To Wear A Fitted One-Piece Bathing. She Was Arrested For Indecency (1907)
British Soldiers (Interrupted During Drag Show Rehearsals By A German Raid) Manning A Bl 6-Inch Mk Vii Naval Gun At Shornemead Fort, England In 1940
The professor explained that many important photography historians have also traced where these images circulated, who would have seen them, and in what context: “did they have captions? Were they shown in newspapers, or in more spectacular settings like lantern slide presentations, or through a stereoscope which produced a 3D effect for the viewer? Were they used by the government for the purposes of surveillance, or by activists to make claims for social change?”
Grand Central Terminal, NYC, The Sun Can't Shine Through Like That Now Due To The Surrounding Tall Buildings. 1929
Coal Miners Coming Up A Coal Mine Elevator After A Day Of Work In 1920's Belgium
Today In 1945, The Auschwitz Death Camp Was Discovered And Liberated By The Red Army
“Other photography historians are curious about how photography was used as a fine art form and about how artists like Julia Margaret Cameron, F. Holland Day, and Berenice Abbott adapted the medium to make photographs that were taken as seriously as paintings and sculptures from the same period.”
More recently, there has been an interest among photography historians in the social life of photographs. “It focuses less on the artists who made the images and more on the people who are in them. These historians ask how photographs might be used to claim rights, like citizenship, or to protest social and political injustices,” the professor explained and named some important figures who used images for social justice: “Photographers like Lewis Hine, Raja Deen Dayal, James van der Zee, and later Roy DeCarava, Susan Meiselas, and Zanele Muholi.”
A Boy's Reaction Staring At A TV Screen For The First Time (1948)
American Troops Treat A Wounded Dog On Orote Pennisula. W.Eugene Smith. 1944
Female Snipers Of The 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front, 775 Confirmed Kills, Germany, May 1945
When asked how photography historians determine the date, context, and the participants of the particular photograph if there are no apparent indications, Gabrielle said that most photography historians rely on their technical knowledge of photography to date images that are “orphaned" from their captions.
“We examine the photographic print—its dimensions, the quality of the image, its wear and tear—to determine what kind of camera or printing technique was used. Daguerreotypes produce a mirrored surface, a high level of detail and contrast, but could only be made at very small scales, for instance, while salt prints could be much larger, and printed on paper, but sacrificed a level of detail.”
Lockheed Martin Employee Sally Wadsworth Working On The Fuselage Of A P-38 Lightning In California In 1944
JFK & Bill Clinton Greeting At The White House, In 1963
Arikara Warrior 'Bear’s Belly' - North Dakota, USA - Photo By Edward Curtis (1909)
Turns out that “early Kodak cameras were the first widely available and cheap mass-produced cameras in North America, introduced in 1888,” Gabrielle said and added that they have particular prints that produce a circular image.
“Determining the context in which an image from the past circulated can be much trickier. Historians often have to look to archives of illustrated newspapers to see if photographs were reproduced there, and often with photographs made for press agencies, like Magnum or Black Star, stamps and captions are included on the back to indicate where the image was seen.”
An Undercover Police Officer On Duty. New York, Brooklyn, 1 July 1969
San Francisco's Iconic Cliff House, Shortly Before It Was Destroyed By Fire In 1907
Geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor And Meteorologist Charles Wright In The Entrance Of An Ice Grotto. Terra Nova Expedition, Ross Island, 5 January 1911. Photo Taken By Herbert Ponting
However, in the case of private or domestic images, “like portraits, family photo albums, passport photographs, or class photographs,” the professor said that we might not ever know everything we want to know about who is in the photographs, or what context in which they were made. Having said that, she added that “we can use our imaginative capacities to speculate and make educated guesses.”
Visiting Quarantined Family And Friends At Ullevål Hospital, Oslo - Photo By Anders Beer Wilse - 1905
Just like many people, myself included, who visited family in care centres during COVID. Heartbreaking.
A U.S. Marine Rescues Two Vietnamese Children During A Gun Battle At The City Of Hue, During The Tet Offensive Of The Vietnam War - 1968
A Woman Overlooking A Snowy Mountain Pass In The Pyrenees Mountains, France - 1956
According to Gabrielle, as digital photography has become accessible to almost everyone through smart phones, we have begun to value historical photographic processes, “especially ones that have been made obsolete, more highly. Especially the processes that resulted in one-of-a-kind images, like photograms, daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, and Polaroids, because they seem unique and irreproducible.”
Homecoming, A British Soldier With His 8 Month Old Daughter As He Arrives At The Docks From Overseas 1945
A German World War II Prisoner Is Released By The Soviet Union And Reunited With His 12-Year-Old Daughter, Who Has Not Seen Him Since Infancy. 1956
Mother And Baby Of Family Of Nine Living In Field On U.S. Route 70 Near The Tennessee River, March 1936
“In many ways, the more we know about the history of photography, the more we seem to find parallels between now and the past. We might worry that there are 'too many images' in the world through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or even in the millions of photographs uploaded to Flickr and Facebook each day, but if we look back at some of the earliest cartoons and caricatures about the invention of photography in France in 1839, we see the same panic surrounded the first viable and publicly available photographic method, too,” Gabrielle concluded.
Cetshwayo, King Of The Zulu Who Defeated The British At The Battle Of Isandlwana, 1878
Shepherds Listening To Music Records, Azerbaijan 1939
The World's Last Commercial Ocean-Going Sailing Ship - The Pamir - Rounding Cape Horn, 1949
Navajo Riders In The Canyon De Chelly, Arizona. 1904, Photo Taken By Edward Curtis
A Native American Man Looking Over The Newly Completed Transcontinental Railroad In Nevada, 1869
One Of The Many Selfies That Emperor Nicholas II Took Throughout His Life, (1868-1918)
Frozen Niagara Falls, 1911
All Of Them Pick Shrimp At The Peerless Oyster Co. Photo Was Taken While Bosses Were At Dinner As They Refused To Permit The Children To Be In Photos. Out Of 60 Workers, 15 Were Apparently Under 12 Yrs Old. Bay St. Louis, Miss, March 1911
Oldest Austrian Soldier Of Ww1, A 79-Year-Old Gaspar Wallnöfer, Veteran Of Habsburg Campaigns In Italy In 1848 And 1866, September 1917
Last Sword Duel In History In France, 1967 Between The Mayor Of Marseille And The Socialist Party Candidate For Presidency
A Rare Photo Of A Traffic Accident In The Netherlands More Than 100 Years Ago. The Photo Was Taken In 1914
An Outdoor Hockey Game In Sweden Is Cut Short, 1959
Acrobats Balance On Top Of The Empire State Building (1934)
A Babushka Keeps The Ears Of Her Grandson Warm As He Takes An Oath Of Enlistment For The Russian Army. Volgograd, 1994. Photo Taken By Nikolai Ignatiev
Anti British Propaganda, Japan 1941
Rome When It Became The Capital Of The Kingdom Of Italy (1871)
we have say here "eh una volta qui era tutta campagna" = "once here it was only open land" aaand this picture is absolutely on point since near the Colosseo now there are so many buildings (mostly are offices) and considered that the 90% of us lives so far away from the center... man this city is huge lmao and in the 1871 it was barely what it is now
Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards Soars Above A Roaring Crowd At The 1988 Winter Olympics. He Finished Last
Survivors Of 1972 Of The Infamous Andes Plane Crash. The Passengers Resorted To Cannibalism To Survive 72 Days In The Snow
Look at the right, right next to the chair. You can see human remains on the floor... Caitlin Doughty did a great episode on this story.
FDR Using Help To Get Out Of His Car, One Of The Few Photos That Show His Paralytic Illness, Journalists And Photographers Avoided Showing The President In This Weak State Especially During WWII, Taken In The 24th Of September 1932
Iron Workers Pose For A Photo Atop The North Tower Of The World Trade Center, 1973
Conrad O'brien-Ffrench Greets A Bear. Having Spent His Youth As A Mountie, Surviving The First World War And Serving As An Mi6 Agent In The Second World War, He Was Known To Welcome Danger. Banff National Park, 1950. Photo Taken By Rosalie French
The Airship Le Jaune Flying Past The Eiffel Tower, In Paris, France. (11/20/1903)
Las Vegas Police Facing Mike Tyson After He'd Just Bitten Holyfield's Ear Off (1996)
Note: this post originally had 101 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
I absolutely loved this, the photo stories about historical stuff is always so interesting to me
I remember when we got our first colour telly and also when channel 4 started, f**k me I feel older writing that than I am and that's old enough!!!!!!
My dad talks about getting his first tv, but it was in a country town in Australia, so they were quite behind the times. Australia introduced tvs just in time for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. My dad was born that year, but his family didn't get a tv until years later.
Load More Replies...
Many were examples of what a sad society we are. Others showed the bravery and strength of many people. An educational and eye opening collection.
Editorial standards seem to be slipping. There are many excellent pix here but they cover six or seven diffeent themes or topics, and throwing them holus=bolus into a single undifferentiated post dimishes their meaning and robs them of their impact. Poor showing, folks!
I absolutely loved this, the photo stories about historical stuff is always so interesting to me
I remember when we got our first colour telly and also when channel 4 started, f**k me I feel older writing that than I am and that's old enough!!!!!!
My dad talks about getting his first tv, but it was in a country town in Australia, so they were quite behind the times. Australia introduced tvs just in time for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. My dad was born that year, but his family didn't get a tv until years later.
Load More Replies... Many were examples of what a sad society we are. Others showed the bravery and strength of many people. An educational and eye opening collection.
Editorial standards seem to be slipping. There are many excellent pix here but they cover six or seven diffeent themes or topics, and throwing them holus=bolus into a single undifferentiated post dimishes their meaning and robs them of their impact. Poor showing, folks!
