Worth more than a millions words.
Like some of you, I’m also a rabid history buff who loves to collect the most interesting rare historic photos. I only curate the rare ones that have a significant impact on the history of the world.
Below are some of the most fascinating rare historical photos ever captured on camera and collected together with Kennith Fletcher, a writer from Essay4Students.
Thanks to these great images, we now have before us a rare window to some of the most interesting moments of our world history.
1. A boxing match on board the USS Oregon in 1897
2. An airman being captured by Vietnamese in Truc Bach Lake, Hanoi in 1967. The airman is John McCain.
3. Samurai warriors taken between 1860 and 1880
4. A shell-shocked reindeer looks on as war planes drop bombs on Russia in 1941.
If you’re interested in the way these rare photos were edited, read more about the history of photo retouching and view the funniest and weirdest photos that were manipulated.
5. Walt Disney on the day they opened Disney Studios
6. Che Guevara enjoying a drink
7. The Microsoft staff in 1978
8. The last known Tasmanian Tiger (now extinct) photographed in 1933
9. German air raid on Moscow in 1941
10. Winston Churchill out for a swim
11. The London sky after a bombing and dogfight between British and German planes in 1940
12. Martin Luther King, Jr removes a burned cross from his yard in 1960. The boy is his son.
13. Google begins.
14. Nagasaki, 20 minutes after the atomic bombing in 1945
15. The only photograph of a living Quagga (now extinct) from 1870
16. Hitler’s bunker
17. A Japanese plane is shot down during the Battle of Saipan in 1944.
18. The original Ronald McDonald played by Willard Scott
19. The first photo taken from space in 1946
20. British SAS back from a 3-month patrol of North Africa in 1943
21. Disneyland employee cafeteria in 1961
22. The first McDonalds
23. Fidel Castro lays a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial.
24. George S. Patton’s dog mourning his master on the day of his death.
25. California lumberjacks working on Redwoods
26. Construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961
27. Bread and soup during the Great Depression
28. The 1912 World Series
29. The first photo following the discovery of Machu Pichu in 1912.
30. Construction of Christ the Redeemer in Rio da Janeiro, Brazil
31. Steamboats on the Mississippi River in 1907
32. Leo Tolstoy telling a story to his grandchildren in 1909
33. The construction of Disneyland
34. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the day he received his American citizenship
35. 14-year-old Osama bin Laden (2nd from the right)
36. Construction of the Statue of Liberty in 1884
37. Albert Einstein’s office photographed on the day of his death
38. A liberated Jew holds a Nazi guard at gunpoint.
39. Construction of the Manhattan Bridge in 1908
40. Construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1888
41. Dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989
42. Titanic leaves port in 1912.
43. Adolf Hitler’s pants after the failed assassination attempt at Wolf’s Lair in 1944
44. ENIAC, the first computer ever built
45. Brighton Swimming Club in 1863
46. Ferdinand Porsche (yeah, that Porsche) showing a model of the Volkswagen Beetle to Adolf Hitler in 1935
47. The unbroken seal on King Tut’s tomb
48. Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke left this family photo behind on the moon in 1972.
49. The crew of Apollo 1 practicing their water landing in 1966. Unfortunately, all of them were killed on the launch pad in a fire.
50. An aircraft crash on board during World War II
51. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Warren G. Harding (29th president of USA), and Harvey Samuel Firestone (founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.) talking together
You may also enjoy reading: 28 Rare Medical Photos In History That Show How Doctors Treated Their Patients in the Past