“A picture is worth a thousand words”, they say. This famous statement by English illustrator Frederick R. Barnard perhaps applies most to historical photographs. Sometimes, one simple vintage photo can tell you so much more about the past than any history book would.
Today, we would like to share some incredibly rare historical images with you that provide a fascinating look at our earlier days. Whether it's a photo of the World Trade Center being built or a snapshot taken in 1880 of a mother and daughter looking at a ship, these rare photos bring the past to life.
Scroll on and enjoy the time travel.
Related: A Slice of History – 20 Powerful Images of Yesteryear
1. A family stands in front of "Mark Twain," a 1,341-year-old Sequoia tree taken down in 1892 by two men who spent 13 days sawing it in the Pacific Northwest. The massive tree towered 331 feet (100 meters) above the ground.
2. Constructing the World Trade Center (1970)
3. A zebra pulls a wagon through Brixton, London in 1913. Domesticating and training zebras as riding and harnessing animals piqued people's curiosity back then.
4. Mt. Washington Cog Railroad with a fully open car of passengers. The Mt. Washington Cog Railroad was the first rack-and-pinion railroad designed to ascend a high mountain slope, particularly Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Work on the Cog began in 1858 but was halted by the onset of the American Civil War. Work resumed in 1866, and the Cog began transporting tourists to the summit of Mt. Washington.
5. A passenger bus in Paris, 1900s.
6. First Class train travel in the 1890s.
7. Japanese archers, circa 1860.
8. A Dornier Do X in New York, 1931. Produced by the Dornier company of Germany in 1929, back then it was the largest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world boasting a wingspan of 157 feet (48 meters) and a length of 130 feet (40 meters).
9. American actress Tippi Hedren having her cigarette lit by a crow on the set of The Birds, 1963.
10. A man stands on a massive figure of Ramesses II at the temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt, 1865.
11. Arnold Schwarzenegger taking ballet and posing lessons from dancer Marianne Claire in 1976.
12. A Filipino-American family poses for a photograph in the Philippines in 1912. (Photo by J. Tewell, University of Southern California).
13. A young Kenyan woman holds her pet dik-dik, Mombasa in 1909.
14. 1978-style big-screen TV and VCR (GE Widescreen 1000 - General Electric Performance Television).
15. A mother and daughter observe a tall ship navigate the Thames with the assistance of a steam tug, London, ca. 1880. (Photo by Sunderland Antiquarian Society).
16. Hiroo Onoda (middle) was the last imperial Japanese soldier to come out of hiding and surrender, almost 30 years after the end of World War II. Onoda, an army intelligence officer, was persuaded to come out of hiding in the Philippine jungle in 1974.
17. A street scene in Kabul, Afghanistan (1979). (Photo by François Lochon)
18. When the Waldorf Astoria Hotel was being built in 1930, the hotel sought to find a method to demonstrate to the world how excellent its service was. They planned a PR gimmick in which wait staff from restaurants delivered full-service dinners to steelworkers on the unfinished top levels of the building, located well above Midtown Manhattan.
19. A shepherd from the village of Karakechdi with his children, Azerbaijan, 1980s. (Photo by Oleg Litvin).
20. Princess Elizabeth with her fiancé Phillip Mountbatten at Buckingham Palace, 10th July 1947.
21. A young woman plays the harp in front of a big crowd on the Rock of Cashel in Ireland, 1910.
22. Dressed up as a nursemaid, "Bum", the trained cat, gets ready to push a baby for an afternoon's outing in a pram. 1938.
23. The 1939 Schlörwagen was a bizarre German car inspired by airplane wings. The car, designed by Hans Schlör von Westhofen Dirmstein as a prototype aerodynamic vehicle, made headlines at the 1939 Berlin Auto Show but was quickly dismissed for being unattractive, impractical, and unsafe for driving.
24. A man leaning over the edge to look over into the crater of Mount Aso, also known as Aso Volcano, Japan (c.1906). Photo by Herbert Ponting.
25. People observing the fountain that froze solid in Detroit, 1917.
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