Rare Historical Photos That Change How You See the Past (49 PICS)

Posted in PICTURES 7 Jan 2026 1594 2

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This is one of the last pictures ever taken of President William McKinley, shot moments before he was assassinated in Buffalo, NY in 1901:

Rare Historical Photos That Change How You See the Past

During World War II, the USS Trigger got close enough to Japan on patrol to take a picture through its periscope of Mount Fuji:

This is what the menu for Alcatraz prison looked like on March 13th, 1956:

Speaking of which, here's what a typical Alcatraz cell looked like:

Here's a scene from the 1924 Olympics gold medal hockey game between the USA and Canada:

In the mid-80s, the Statue of Liberty was completely covered in scafolding while being renovated:

This is a picture of the first Ferris Wheel ever, designed specifically for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair:

Here's what the view looked like from it:

Here's a group of people casually enjoying a swim while, in the distance, an atomic bomb detonates:

Speaking of which, people were so caught up in atomic-mania at they crowned a "Miss Atomic Bomb" in 1957. Here's what she looked like:

This is a Japanese painting from 1854 of an American:

Here's a picture of what the subject of the drawing actually looked like:

Pictured here are a bunch of daredevils hanging out in a 45-foot cross setion of a pipe used to build the Hoover Dam:

This is a picture of what Las Vegas looked like in the 1800s:

Here's Louis Armstrong serenading his wife at the Great Sphinx of Giza in 1961:

This is what the Brooklyn Bridge looked like while it was under construction:

Here's what the bottom of Manhattan looked like in 1933:

And here's what that same part of New York City looks like today:

Here are two Union Civil War soldiers messing around in a picture and holding each other's cigar:

Speaking of which, this picture from 1915 shows what the USA-Mexico border looked like in Arizona over 100 years ago:

This the only picture of Abraham Lincoln's actual casket. It was lost for almost 100 years and rediscovered in the 1950s:

This photo shows two women being led off a beach by police in 1922 for violating a law that banned abbreviated bathing suits:

Some of the women being arrested even fought back:

This is American soldier Ivan Babcock in 1945 wearing the recovered Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, found hidden deep inside a German castle:

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, President Truman undertook a gut renovation of the White House. This is what it looked like inside during construction: