65 Extremely Rare And Fascinating Pictures From American History That Will Completely And Totally Change Your Perspective On The Past

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10-05-2025

Before he died, Abraham Lincoln had a "life mask" made of his face. This is what it looked like:
This one is from 1860, before he became President.
This is the last meal Richard Nixon ate in the White House before he resigned. Pineapple, cottage cheese, and a glass of milk:
Pineapple, cottage cheese, and a glass of milk.
Before it became that iconic sign all us sign-heads know and love, the Hollywood sign read "Hollywoodland":
"LAND" was removed in 1949.
This is what Mount Saint Helens looked like before and after its 1980 eruption:
A bit different.
These are the contestants for the 1924 Miss America pageant:
The competition started in 1921.
This is a picture of the spectators, including alleged mobsters, covering their faces with hats to avoid recognition during Al Capone's trial in October 1931:
Poor form by the guy in the front row to the right. You hate to see it.
This is what a typical children's playground looked like in 1908:
This is from New York City's Tompkins Square Park. Ladders and poles, folks, get yer ladders and poles.
This is what the Oval Office looks like completely empty:
This was in 2001 while it was being renovated.
And here's what it looks like with all that stuff back in it:
This is investor Walter Thornton trying to sell his car for $100 directly after the United States' stock market crash in 1929:
Thornton actually ran a successful modeling agency after all this.
This is the Thanksgiving menu that was served at the Plaza Hotel in 1899:
What are you going for? Might be partridge and orange jelly tarts for me.
Huntington Beach in California used to have a bunch of oil derricks on top of it:
They were there until the '80s.
This is what a float from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade looked like in the 1930s:
Uncle Sam seems OVER it.
Before it found its home in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty's head was on display at the 1878 Paris World's Fair:
And here's what Lady Lib looked like while it was being packed up to be shipped to the US:
How much do you think shipping cost on that?
Recognize these big ol' rocks? This is Mount Rushmore before the presidential heads were carved into it:
Construction on Mount Rushmore started in 1927 and was finished in 1941.
This is Lemuel Cook, maybe the oldest living veteran of the American Revolutionary War, photographed in the mid-1800s:
This guy literally saw the British coming. Respect.
This is the foldout bed George Washington slept on during the Revolutionary War:
You'll notice it folds into a trunk. Only the finest for old George.
This is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked like at the start of his first term as President in 1933...
And this is the last picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever taken, snapped just one day before his death:
He was 63 years old in this picture.
This is how football helmets were tested in the early 1950s:
Can't say I'd be too pleased about this job.
This was the scene aboard the ship The Queen Elizabeth as it brought soldiers back home to New York after World War II ended:
One panel of glass survived the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. This is it:
This is what the FBI's fingerprint files looked like in 1942:
Endless.
This is Charles Ponzi, the infamous scammer ponzi schemes got their name from:
He was actually born in Italy.
This picture was taken shortly after David Scott and Neil Armstrong's Gemini 8 space capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean:
Some cool-looking extra-terrestrial dudes.
Here's the 1930 "Queen Of The Vineyards" Wilma Smith buried head to toe in a bunch of grapes:
Congrats, Wilma.
This is the first aerial photo ever taken, captured by James Wallace Black from a hot-air balloon high above Boston:
This picture, from 1860, is called "Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It."
This is what a ticket to the opening day of Disneyland looked like:
$4.75... bit too rich for my blood.
Over 80,000 people attended the 1921 heavyweight championship boxing match between Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey:
It was held at a place called Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City, New Jersey. Dempsey won.
This is the Dale Creek Bridge, an bridge built in Wyoming in the 1800s that was so rickety that trains had to slow down to 4 miles per hour to cross it safely:
No thanks!
In 1964, Randy Gardner, pictured here, set the world record for the longest time without sleeping after staying awake 264 hours:
Those items next to him are objects he would identify throughout the experiment to show he was still lucid.
This is the 107th US Colored Infantry, pictured here in 1865:
This is the top hat Abraham Lincoln was wearing the night he was assassinated:
This is what an authentic, mint condition Woodstock 1969 ticket looks like:
$6!
This is Althea Gibson, the first Black American to win a tennis Grand Slam title, celebrating at a parade honoring her:
She won the French Open in 1956 and later won at Wimbledon and at the US Open.
This is what in-flight entertainment looked like in the 1960s:
My neck hurts just looking at this.
This is a picture from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Can you spot Abe?
I assure you, he's there.
The picture, from 1930, shows what the Empire State Building looked like while it was under construction:
It opened in 1931.
This is how long it took to travel to different parts of the United States in 1800:
Six weeks to Illinois!
This is the aftermath of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, a deadly event that claimed the lives of 21 people in Boston after a container holding over two million gallons of molasses burst, sending a wave of molasses several feet high through the city streets:
It sounds like it's funny, but I assure you: it is not.
This is what the cabin of a passenger plane looked like in the 1930s:
This is the interior of a Handley Page Type W plane.
This is a picture of the construction workers who built the Chase Manhattan Bank posing with their work:
This is what they did before Happy Hour.
This is what the grave site of President James Monroe looks like:
It's in Richmond.
This map, from 1507, is the first map to ever label America as "America":
As you probably now, it was named in honor of Amerigo Vespucci and was "the first map to depict clearly a separate Western Hemisphere, with the Pacific as a separate ocean."
This is what the control panel of the Spirit of Saint Louis, the plane Charles Lindbergh used on his historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean, looked like:
And this is the chair Charles Lindbergh sat on for his entire 33 hour flight:
While we're at it, here's a diagram of his entire plane, for reference:
Looks... comfy!
Before modern car washes were invented, one particularly wacky idea was for cars to drive around through water in a circle:
It cost 25 cents but you can safely assume the memories lasted a lifetime.
This is Emma Lilian Todd, the first woman to design an airplane:
That is some contraption.
This is a picture of a meeting of the New York chapter of the "Fat Men's Club" circa 1930:
According to the photo's caption, pictured here are "A Rockwitz (312lbs), comedian Eddie Carvey (250lbs), David Burns (475lbs) and F C Kupper (351lbs)." Members had to be at least 200 pounds to join.
Here is the oldest picture of the White House ever taken:
It was taken in 1846. Right around the time when the sewage was probably killing everyone inside.
This is Civil War veteran Jacob Miller, a man who was shot right between the eyes and lived for 17 more years:
That can't feel good.
Thomas Edison's last breath was captured and now resides in a museum:
Interesting.
One of the biggest fads of the 1950s was "phonebooth stuffing," where-in a bunch of people would, well, stuff themselves into a phonebooth:
The world record at the time was 25 people stuffed into a phone booth. Truly an example of the triumph of the human spirit.
These are the prices from a 107 years ago from a restaurant in Alabama:
Lemme get the uh... pigs feet and orange juice.
This is what New York City looked like from space on 9/11/2001:
Captured from the ISS.
This is what the dorm room of two college students looked like in the 1910s:
BFFs.
The Capitol lawn was mowed by a steam-powered lawnmower way back in 1903:
Yet another thing I just find neat.
This is what some of the first New York City tour buses looked like in 1904:
No walls...no seatbelts...just vibes.
In 1984, a giant dinosaur replica was moved via a helicopter to the Boston Museum of Science:
Never thought you'd see a dinosaur being airlifted, did you?
This is what a traffic light looked like in New York City in 1929:
Even traffic lights were art back in the day, back in the day being 1929, of course.
This is Louisa Ann Swain, the first American woman to ever vote in a general election:
The vote happened in 1870, five decades before the 19th Amendment granted voting rights to all American women.
This is apparently an eighth-grade test from 1912. Are you passing it?
Feel free to describe the heart in the comments.
This is what the Panama canal looked like while under construction:
This is President Lyndon B. Johnson driving a Amphicar, a, well, amphibious car designed to operate on land and sea:
Imagine the spiders inside that thing.
Before he retired from baseball, the legendary Lou Gerhig auditioned for the role of Tarzan. They made him carry and a spear and everything:
Apparently, he didn't get the job because of his "massive legs."
In 1933, A.L. Kahn caught a 5,000-pound manta ray off the coast of Florida:
And then he brought it to New Jersey, naturally.
And, finally, for two brief years, 1934-5, the United States issued a $100,000 bill with Woodrow Wilson's big ol' mug on it:
It never circulated publicly but if it did I would use it to buy 100,000 Arizona iced teas.