Take a look back at these impactful photos from the past hundred-plus years. The invention of the photograph has given people a brand new way to see and interact with each other around the world. It has also given us a portal in time to look back at life in the past, in and around major historical events. Photos from this gallery span the civil and world wars, political conflicts, and the day-to-day life of people and children.
One photo shows the 1949 Philadelphia auto show, featuring obscure automakers like Studebaker and Packard, and well know modern brands like Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac. As an avid auto show attendee myself, seeing this vintage group displayed as modern marvels is a sight to behold. On a completely different note, another photo showcases a 1930s bombing of the Telefonica building during the Spanish Civil War. Supported by the Germans, a nationalist uprising ultimately prevailed against the new far-left soviet backed elected government. Fortunately, the Telefonica building still stands in Madrid.
If either of those photos sound interesting to you, take a look at them and 18 other fantastic historical flicks sure to teach you a fact or two.
1
1949 Philadelphia automobile show.
2
The Telefónica building, the tallest skyscraper in Europe at the time, being targeted by bombs during the Spanish Civil War. 1936-1939.
3
U.S. Army Rangers at work on French invasion beach, climbing high cliff to knock out German gun emplacement. Their deadly duties taken care of for the moment, the Rangers take things easy in a foxhole on D-Day. 12 June, 1944.
4
Actress Dona Drake playfully takes aim with a rifle on the balcony of her Los Angeles home, 1942.
5
Ales Hrdlicka, one of the world’s leading anthropologists, at an excavation in an unspecified country in Africa in 1925.
6
Grandmother and granddaughter selling baskets. Japan, 1905-1920.
7
Mixe children playing basketball, Mexico 1994.
8
18 month old baby, sole survivor of his family after the Hebron massacre in 1929.
9
Miss America contestants including Miss Bronx, Edith Higgins 1925.
10
Rudy King and his Trinidad Steelband, Seventh Avenue, Harlem Carnival, 1958.
11
Alfred Hitchcock in Marrakesh, Morocco, July 1955.
12
Union general Galusha Pennypacker was and still is the youngest brigadier general in the U.S. On April 28, 1865, he received a full promotion to brigadier general of volunteers after being wounded in the second battle of Fort Fisher. He was 20 years old at the time.
13
A beardless Charles Manson, sporting a shaved head in 1971.
14
Świętokrzyska Street in Warsaw, Poland, 1936.
15
Street children in China, 1940s.
16
Gymnasts of Geluk in Ghent. Belgium, 1910.
17
In the 1980s, Nixon plumber G. Gordon Liddy and psychedelics advocate Timothy Leary toured the college lecture circuit billed as Nice Scary Guy vs. Scary Nice Guy.
18
A man spends the night by his family tomb in the cemetery, as he and hundreds of other residents celebrate the Day of the Dead. Oaxaca, Mexico, 1999.
19
Indochina: Members of the French Foreign Legion watching children cross the street, 1954.
20
Bavarian red guard posing in front Munich central station, 1919.
