“Utterly Unique Pictures”: 40 Rare And Interesting Historical Pics You Probably Haven’t Seen

The person behind the Utterly Unique Photos community and the username u/dannydutch1 is a Welsh man named Daniel Holland. On social media, he refers to himself as Danny Dutch. You can find him on almost all social media platforms: he shares interesting pictures and facts on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok.

Utterly Unique Photos is one of three communities that Danny moderates. The other two are r/UtterlyBizarre and u/UtterlyInteresting. In name, they might seem quite similar, but they do differ in content.

The latter is "a home for all those things we see that could be described as interesting," according to the community itself. The latter deals more with the strange and weird things in this world. It's a home "for the strangely interesting or bizarrely surreal."

Danny tells us the story of how the Utterly Unique Photos group came to be. Or rather, how one subreddit eventually evolved into three. "Initially, I created r/UtterlyBizarre at the end of 2022 to mirror what I was posting on my Twitter channel. But it was pointed out that some of the content I posted was more interesting than bizarre."

Danny said he didn't think that Reddit users took the subreddit titles so literally. "So I set up r/UtterlyInteresting a month later to share articles and videos that interest me," the Redditor continues.

"One of my key areas of interest is photography and history, and I felt I was posting quite a lot of this to the r/UtterlyInteresting subreddit, and it would probably sit better on its own subreddit, hence r/UtterlyUniquePhotos, which I set up about 4 months ago."

You might think: "Why go through all the trouble and create a new group when there are communities for that already?" Danny wanted a place to share what he thinks is fascinating without adhering to someone else's rules. "One of the reasons I set them up was because I wanted to be free of the rules employed by more established subreddits."

Yet the troubles of bigger subreddits might soon catch up to Danny. "As they've grown, I realize I may need to implement submission rules, as all the subreddits are completely open to submissions, and spreading myself across 3 subreddits containing 100k members can be a challenge," the Redditor admits. 

Danny also wanted a space to share what he features on his personal blog. That's a place where he can share longer stories, not just quick snippets or pictures. "Some of the bigger pages on Reddit saw this as self-promotion, so I thought I'd set up my own pages and not be concerned about Reddit moderators," the creator explains.

"I'm not sure you'll find a theme in these images, or the blog posts, or even this website, but if you do, please tell me what it is – I'd love to know," Danny writes in the 'About' section of his personal blog. "I might even get a theme song written to go on the website, a 70's cop show sort of theme."

As a creator of three separate communities and a blog about art, music, media, and history, Danny comes across as quite the fan of all things fascinating. "I've always liked to share things I find of interest, and my subreddits reflect that," Danny says. "They've grown into quite active communities now and are a great place to spend some time."

What is it with our fascination with history, especially when we see it in old-timey pictures? In an earlier interview, writer, visual artist, and photographer Margaret Sartor told Bored Panda that "all historical photographs are a window into the past, but beyond the facts (or a nostalgia for the past), they may indicate little else."

However, in some cases, they also might change our minds about a thing or two. "Some historical photographs have the power to subvert familiar narratives and carry with them the possibility of expanding or upending our understanding of our own history," Sartor explained back then.

She also told us that it doesn't take a professor to be a master at photography. "Anyone could be a photographer, just like anyone can draw or write a sentence if they can hold a pencil; the camera is simply a machine, a tool, a medium."

"A photographer, in any era, is someone who chooses to use the camera as a way to explore or discover something about the world or their place in it. You can capture an authentic moment even with an iPhone – it's the idea behind it, the feeling that it gives the viewer that matters."

Photographs aren't the truth, but they can help us get to it, Sartor told Bored Panda. "As human beings and citizens, we are constantly trying to see ourselves and our ever-changing, often conflicted world as clearly as we can—hoping it matters, hoping we matter, wondering what happens next."

"The magic of photography is that photographs move us in ways we can neither control nor can we fully explain, and in that sense, they remind us that ordinary life is suffused with mysteries."