Learning about the past is far from dull when you have access to social media. There are so many fantastic internet resources out there that can help make history even more interesting than it already is: some pages use memes, create witty threads, and share intriguing pics to make education truly entertaining.
One of those pages is the ‘Photos From History’ Instagram account, a fantastic project that shares iconic historical photos. And many of them might even change your perspective on things. We’ve collected some of the Instagram page’s most recent and most powerful features to share with you, Pandas, so scroll down and get ready to learn something new about everything that’s old.
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#1 Stevie Wonder Visiting A Children’s School For The Blind In London, 1970. Photo By Terry O’neill
Image credits: photos.from.history
#2 Legendary Irish Antarctic Explorer Tom Crean. Crean Was A Member Of Three Major Expeditions To Antarctica During The Heroic Age Of Antarctic Exploration, Including Robert Falcon Scott’s 1911–1913 Terra Nova Expedition
This saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his party. During the expedition, Crean’s 35 miles (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal, and is considered one of the greatest single feats of endurance of the era.
After his experience on the Terra Nova, Crean’s third and final Antarctic venture was as second officer to fellow Irishman Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. After the ship Endurance became beset in the pack ice and sank, Crean and the ship’s company spent 492 days drifting on the ice before undertaking a journey in the ship’s lifeboats to Elephant Island. He was a member of the crew which made a small-boat journey of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km), plotting only by the stars, from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island to seek aid for the stranded party. This extreme effort saved the lives of all 65 members of the expedition.
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#3 A Woman On Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, In 1947, Three Years After Allied Forces Invaded German Occupied France. Photo By David Seymour
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The ‘Photos From History’ page has just over 1.6k followers, and has an impressive archive: the curator of the account has shared over 2.8k photos and counting over the years, and continues to educate and entertain their followers with very frequent updates.
It’s history like you’ve (probably) never seen it before. And these photos are the perfect excuse to pick a time period and a topic, and delve deeper than you have before.
#4 A Man And A Woman Hiding Under A Bridge Following The Tiananmen Square Massacre, 1989
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#5 Paris During The La Belle Époque, The Period (1871–1914) Between The End Of The Franco-Prussian War And The Outbreak Of World War I, Characterised By Relative Peacefulness In Western Europe And By Marked Advances And Productivity In The Arts, Literature, Technology, And Culture
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#6 Gay Men Supporting Lesbians At The Dyke March, 1993
Gay men supporting lesbians at the Dyke March, 1993. This first Dyke March in Washington D.C. was quite monumental for the period, as gay men and lesbians didn’t really get along for a long period of queer history – often due to misogyny, and clashes of feminism and gay liberation. This all changed during the HIV/AIDS epidemic when lesbians banded together to nurse, treat and be activists for gay men who were often refused by doctors and were on the end of increasing homophobia due to the epidemic.
“Suddenly, the hospitals were full of lesbians who were volunteering” Jon, a gay man living in San
Francisco during the HIV outbreak in the 1980s said. “I remember being so moved by them because gay men hadn’t been too kind to lesbians. We’d call them fish and make fun of the butch dykes in the bars and yet, there they were.”As a thank you, they changed the official signs at Pride to having Lesbian’ first (Hence L first in lgbt). This shows some of the slightly later proclaimed support by gay men of lesbians.
Image credits: photos.from.history
Many of these photos are fascinating on two levels. On the one hand, you’ve got pure artistic merit and interesting aesthetics that are beyond intriguing. Few(er) photographers shoot in black and white or use ‘old school’ cameras these days, so it’s very interesting to see how pictures used to come out back in the day.
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On the other hand, the pics shared by the ‘Photos From History’ account offer many before-unseen snapshots that shed light on the past in unusual ways. They pique your curiosity and you can’t help but want to learn more.
#7 Homeless Irishman, Spitalfields, London, 1970. In A 2012 Documentary, Mccullin Recalled Thinking This Man Looked Like Neptune As He Photographed Him
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#8 Noluyanda Mqutwana Dances Outside Her Two-Room Family Shack In Khayelitsha, One Of The Poorest Black Townships Outside Cape Town (South Africa 2000)
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#9 20,000 Year Old Human Footprints Uncovered By Researchers In White Sands National Park. According To A New Study, These Tracks Date To Between 21,000 To 23,000 Years Ago—a Time When Massive Ice Sheets Are Believed To Have Blocked Human Migration Into The Americas. Photo By Dan Odess
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However, nobody should blindly trust what they stumble upon on social media, whether they’re dealing with photos, facts, or memes. First of all, you have to consider the reliability of the source. Then, if you have the time and energy, you can cross-reference the facts shared by the source so that you get a fuller picture of what happened in the past. You can also refer to sites like Snopes, which help debunk fake facts, for some extra help.
#10 (1967) The Patrouille Suisse, The Acrobatic Team Of The Swiss Air Force, During A Loop In Front Of The Alps
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#11 An Infant Colo, The First Ever Baby Gorilla Born In Captivity. When Colo Passed Away She Was The Oldest Known Gorilla At The Time. Colo Lived From 1956-2017
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#12 A View Over Berlin In 1920
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“When looking at ‘mindblowing’ facts on the internet a healthy sense of skepticism is essential—as is looking at the source. Is this being claimed by Twitter user @fakefacts420 or a Professor of History at the University of Oxford? Are you reading this on a university website or an email your nan has forwarded you?” a moderator from a popular subreddit, r/AskHistorians, recently shared with Bored Panda.
#13 Gaston Rébuffat Mountain Climbing In France, 1944
Gaston Rébuffat was a French alpinist, mountain guide and author. He is well known as a member of the first expedition to summit Annapurna 1 in 1950 and the first man to climb all six of the great north faces of the Alps. Photography by George Tairraz
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#14 (1878) A Forest Of Totem Poles Crafted By The Haida People At Skidegate, British Columbia In 1878
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#15 A Russian Soldier Playing An Abandoned Piano In Chechnya, 1994
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Though many time periods have conspiracy theories associated with them, some eras are more ‘popular’ among the conspiracy crowd than others. “There are probably dozens of potential conspiracies surrounding Sumerian agriculture, but that topic isn’t in the public eye in the same way that something like the Second World War or the Roman Empire is,” the mod from r/AskHistorians said that some people hope to “exploit past events to push a political point in the present day.”
#16 Mrs. Hale, The Wife Of A British Soldier, Plays The Accordion Outside Her House For A Group Of American Soldiers In England, 1944
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#17 Emperor Minilik The 2nd Of Ethiopia, 1896
The Battle of Adwa (Amharic: አድዋ; Tigrinya: ዓድዋ;) was the climactic battle of the First Italo-Ethiopian War. The Ethiopian forces defeated the Italian invading force on Sunday 1 March 1896, near the town of Adwa. This victory signaled the decline of European colonialism in Black Africa.
In 1889, the Italians signed the Treaty of Wuchale. The “Treaty of Wichale agreed to in principle that Menelik II would provide to Italy land in the Tigray province in exchange for support in the form of weapons the Italians had been supplying him for some time, but the Italians wanted more.
There were two versions of the treaty to be signed, one in Italian, and one written in Amharic. Unbeknownst to the conquering King was the fact that the version in Italian had been altered by the translators to give Rome more power over Menelik II and his kingdom of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Kingdom/Empire had been in existence since the 13th century
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#18 Walt Disney Explaining Mickey Mouse To A Cat In 1931
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So you’re checking your facts, doing some background research, and evaluating the reliability of your sources. Good! What’s next, though? It helps tons if you can tell whether or not a picture has been digitally manipulated. Software that lets you alter photos, like Photoshop, is incredibly widespread these days. Some folks use it to rebalance colors and touch up important personal photos, while others might use it to change historical photos in subtle ways, whether to have fun or because they have an agenda.
#19 Yves Saint Laurent At Christian Dior’s Funeral, 1957. According To Dior’s Wishes, Yves Saint Laurent Became His Successor And Was Named Artistic Director Of The Haute Couture House At The Age Of 21
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#20 The Story Of Richard Lasher’s Incredible Photo Of The 1980 Eruption Of Mt St Helens
The story of Richard Lasher’s incredible photo of the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens. Everybody knew the mountain was gonna blow, but Lasher camped in the area. He planned to get up early the next morning and drive to Spirit Lake, but woke up late, and was driving towards the lake at 8:32am when Mt St Helens blew. The immediate sight, sound, and force of the blast must have been an almost unimaginable experience for Lasher. Desperately he turned his car in a hurry bending the forks of his Yamaha dirt bike. This is when he took this now world renowned photo.
Had Lasher made it to Spirit Lake, he’d almost certainly have died. According to journalist John P. Walsh, Spirit Lake “met the full impact of the volcano’s lateral blast. The sheer force of the blast lifted the lake out of its bed and propelled it about 85 stories into the air to splash onto adjacent mountain slopes.” Had Lasher made it even over the next ridge, he’d almost certainly have died. According to Cooper’s telling of the story, “Luckily for him, and he did not realize until later just how lucky, he was on the opposite side of that ridge in front, because the entire forest was flattened from the ridge down, and he was in the lee side and protected from most of the blast and the 640 degrees melting temperature.”
As it was, he was soon driving blind through the ash, staying on the left shoulder as he could just see the trees a few feet away. His vehicle clapped out from the ash so he mounted his damaged Yamaha. This decision saved his life. Four campers near close to his position
that morning were not so lucky, and 57 people near the mountain died that day.
The following day he rode his motorcycle back up into the now so called hot zone with his camera to get what pics he could. He was well into the No-Go-Zone when a helicopter saw him and came right down and landed in his path. He was surprised to be arrested on the spot and flown out in the chopper and to jail. They left his motorcycle lay on the mountain. They also kept him in jail for a few days. When he was eventually relessed, he again went back up the mojntain, and was able to get his motorcycle.
Image credits: photos.from.history
#21 A Photo Of A Man Standing On The Lap Of A Statue Of Ramesses In Egypt, 1856
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According to ‘Insider,’ it’s fairly easy to tell whether a photo has been doctored. If you look at the background of the photo (and zoom in a bit), check whether parts of pic appear warped and out of ‘shape.’ If this is the case, it’s quite likely that someone has manipulated the image in some way.
In the meantime, if absolutely everything in the photo is in focus, the odds are that the pic might have been composed of several different images. So if the details far in the distance are perfectly crisp and clear, the image was likely enhanced. Having some areas out of focus, meanwhile, is far more natural.
#22 Students Participating In A School Nuclear-Attack Drill, 1950s
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device at a remote site in Kazakhstan, signaling a new and terrifying phase in the Cold War.
By the early 1950s, schools across the United States were training students to dive under their desks and cover their heads. The now-infamous duck-and-cover drills simulated what should be done in case of an atomic attack—and channeled a growing panic over an escalating arms race.
“During this period, the United States is suddenly having to really reckon with the fact that it is not the only nuclear power out there anymore,” says Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science and nuclear weapons and professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “Now, instead of just seeing the bomb as this asset that we could use or not use…it suddenly is brought to bear that this is something that could be used against us.”
The school drills, which were part of President Harry S. Truman’s Federal Civil Defense Administration program, aimed to educate the public about what ordinary people could do to protect themselves, however, how was ducking and covering really going to protect you from a nuclear bomb detonating your school?
These drills stopped being made during the 1980s.
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#23 Window Cleaners In New York City, 1958
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#24 A Technical Security Officer From The Us Diplomatic Security Service Crawls Out Of A Tunnel After The Discovery Of A Hidden Soviet Listening Post Inside The Us Embassy In Moscow In 1978
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Something else to keep an eye on is people’s skin. If the folks in the photograph have weirdly smooth skin and you can’t see any lines or pores after you’ve zoomed in, then the pic has been photoshopped.
Though a dash of touching-up can help get rid of some incredibly unseemly blemishes that popped up last minute, some individuals go overboard, and you can hardly recognize them.
#25 Members Of The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion Preparing To Jump On A Wildfire In Oregon. In 1945, During Operation Fire Fly African American Paratroopers Made More Than 8,000 Individual Jumps To Fight Wildfires And Disarm Japanese Balloon Bombs In The Pacific Northwest
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#26 Lyndon B. Johnson Singing With His Dog Yuki In 1968
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#27 Two Buddhist Monks With Rosary, Bell And Slit Drum In 1875
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Some more perceptive photography fans might also notice repeating patterns and textures in images. That likely means that whoever posted the photo edited parts of it by cloning, say, clumps of grass, sky, or something else. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is!
Meanwhile, ‘Gadgets to Use’ urges internet users to keep an eye out for pixelation and “imperfect coloring,” as well as checking the shadows in the pics for signs that something has been changed.
#28 The Confessional, Mexico. Photo By John Gutmann, 1960
Image credits: photos.from.history
#29 The 1895 Train Crash At Montparnasse Station Is One Of The Most Famous And Reprinted Images Of A Train Accident. Location: Paris
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#30 Anatoly Karpov Playing An Exhibition Chess Game, 1978
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As for the pros, they can always check the EXIF data of the image. For instance, if a slow shutter speed was used, the moving objects in the photo should be blurry. If they’re not, that means there’s something sneaky afoot! Of course, this applies more to modern, digital photography, not historical pics.
For some more fascinating, beautiful, and mind-blowing historical pics, check out Bored Panda’s earlier posts about ‘Photos From History’ over here.
#31 Habitat 67, A Modular Housing Complex At The Expo 67 World’s Fair In Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1967. Designed By Israel-Canadian Architect Moshe Safdie, Habitat 67 Is Used As A Housing Complex To This Day
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#32 Parisians Walk Across A Row Of Chairs To Avoid Flood Waters In 1924. Photo By Henri Manuel
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#33 Stanley Kubrick & Malcolm Mcdowell On The Set Of A Clockwork Orange, 1971
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#34 A Gondolier Passes By The Residential Homes Of The City Of Venice, Kingdom Of Italy, C. 1900
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#35 (1987) An Estimated 800,000 People Flocked To The Golden Gate Bridge In San Francisco, California For Its 50th Anniversary. The Weight Of The Large Crowd Caused The Bridge To Sag 7 Feet, Flattening Its Usual Convex Shape
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#36 Licking Blocks Of Ice During A Heatwave In New York In 1911
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#37 Jimi Hendrix Playing For Wilson Pickett In 1966
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#38 How Ghostbusters’ Slimer Became John Belushi After The Passing Of The Actor Iconic Comedian
“The night before (Slimer) was meant to be approved, all the executives were coming by the next morning to sign off on him, I get a note saying ‘He’s gotta look like John Belushi.’ His buddies Harold (Ramis) and Dan decided this was a way to keep him in the movie as a slobby, obnoxious ghost like his Bluto character in Animal House'”
– Ghost Effects creator Steve Johnson.
Dan Aykroyd originally wrote one of the characters in Ghostbusters especially for John Belushi.
Image credits: photos.from.history
#39 (Fdr Funeral) Tears Stream Down The Cheeks Of Accordion-Playing Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson As President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Flag-Draped Funeral Train Left Warm Springs, Georgia, On April 13, 1945. Roosevelt’s Fellow Polio Victims Sit Crying At Jackson’s Side
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#40 Harry Houdini Demonstrates Photo Manipulation By Taking A “Spirit Photograph” With Abraham Lincoln, 1920s
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#41 Testing Masks For Silence Of The Lambs, 1991
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#42 Groundhog Day 2 February, 1963
Groundhog Day 2 February, 1963. In 1723, the Delaware native Americans settled Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania as a campsite halfway between the Allegheny and the Susquehanna Rivers. The town is 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, at the intersection of Route 36 and Route 119. The Delawares considered groundhogs honorable ancestors. According to the original creation beliefs of the Delaware Indians, their forebears began life as animals in “Mother Earth” and emerged centuries later to hunt and live as men.
When German settlers arrived in the 1700s, they brought a tradition known as Candlemas Day, which has an early origin in the pagan celebration of Imbolc. It came at the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Superstition held that if the weather was fair, the second half of Winter would be stormy and cold. For the early Christians in Europe, it was the custom on Candlemas Day for clergy to bless candles and distribute them to the people in the dark of Winter. A lighted candle was placed in each window of the home. The day’s weather continued to be important. If the sun came out February 2, halfway between Winter and Spring, it meant six more weeks of wintry weather.
The earliest American reference to Groundhog Day can be found at the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center at Franklin and Marshall College: February 4, 1841 – from Morgantown, Berks County (Pennsylvania) storekeeper James Morris’ diary…”Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.”
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#43 A Llama Takes A Tour Around Times Square, NYC, 1957
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#44 (1944) Hms Howe Steams Past A Dhow While Transiting Through The Suez Canal, Egypt
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#45 Astroman At Astroland. Astroland Was The First Space Age Theme Park. It Was Located On Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York, Opening In 1962 It Was Formally Closed On September 7, 2008
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#46 Notre-Dame, Paris. ‘Diable Et Pigeon’ (Devil And Pigeon)
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#47 Fidel Castro Shooting Basketball With His School In 1943
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#48 The Saturn Launch Vehicle Carrying The Apollo 7 Spacecraft, 1968. Apollo 7 Was The First Crewed Flight In Nasa’s Apollo Program, And Saw The Resumption Of Human Spaceflight By The Agency After The Fire That Killed The Three Apollo 1 Astronauts During A Launch Rehearsal Test On January 27, 1967
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#49 A Band Entertaining U.S. Servicemen In Europe On New Year’s Eve, Early 1950s
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#50 A Group Of Elderly Men Sitting On A Mat,taken In Peshawar, Now In Pakistan, Circa 1865
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#51 Climactic Eruption Of The Mount Pinatubo Volcano In The Philippines (15 June 1991), The Second-Largest Volcanic Eruption On Earth Of The 20th Century
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#52 Korean Woman At The Beginning Of The 20th Century
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#53 Elizabeth Taylor For The Look Magazine In 1956
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#54 Colonel Donald Blakeslee Of 4th Fighter Group Of The United States Army Air Force Briefing A Group Of Pilots During Wwii. Photograph Taken In England In April, 1944
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#55 (1932) Al Capone’s FBI Criminal Record, Showing Most Of His Criminal Charges Which Were Dismissed
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#56 Nuclear Physicist Norman Ramsey Signs The ‘Fat Man’ Nuclear Weapon, Later Dropped On Nagasaki On 6 August, 1945. 60-80,000 Japanese Civilians Were Killed As Large Swaths Of The City Was Instantly Obliterated
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#57 A Militiaman On Horseback Chases A Thief Who Stole A Bag Of Potatoes In A Field Near The City Of Naro-Fominsk, 90 Kilometers Southwest Of Moscow, Russia, On August 27, 1995
In order to preserve the year’s harvest, a number of collective farms in the Moscow region hired special horseback militia units to guard the fields.
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#58 Rms Mauretania, The Largest Ship In The World From 1906 Until The Launch Of Rms Olympic In 1910. Photo By Clifton R. Adams For The National Geographic In Southampton, 1928. The Photo Was Colorised Using The Autochrome Process
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#59 Operation Buster-Jangle. Dog Atomic Bomb Test At The Nevada Test Site, Had Troops Participating In The Exercise Desert Rock I. It Had A Yield Of 21 Kilotons Of Tnt, And Was The First U.S. Nuclear Field Exercise Conducted With Live Troops Maneuvering On The Ground. Troops Were Six Miles From The Blast 1 November, 1951
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#60 Babe Ruth Right In The Middle Of His Fans In 1926
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#61 The Tree Like View Looking Down Onto A Car Park, Taken From The 26th Story Of The Great Shell Centre On The South Bank Of The River Thames In London. The “Tree” Effect Is Formed By The Wheels Of The Cars As They Enter And Leave The Park. (1963)
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#62 Actress And Module Debra Jo Fondren Pictured At An L.a. Roller Disco Party In 1979
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#63 Founder Of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard: “You Don’t Get Rich Writing Science Fiction. If You Want To Get Rich, You Start A Religion”. A Quote From Hubbard 7 November, 1948, During A Meeting Of The Eastern Science Fiction Association
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Source: boredpanda.com