Amazing, POWERFUL pics

[Laura PourMeADrink]

We came across this selection of astonishing photos from the past, thanks to Reddit user epicnesshunter. Some of these are absolutely mind-boggling, but what makes most of them so powerful is that they were taken in the past century, just one or two generations away from us.

#1. Woman With A Gas-Resistant Pram, England, 1938


#2. Unpacking the head of the Statue of Liberty, 1885



#4. Animals being used as part of medical therapy, 1956



#5. Testing of new bulletproof vests, 1923



#6. Charlie Chaplin at age 27, 1916



#7. Hindenburg Disaster, May 6, 1937



#8. Circus hippo pulling a cart, 1924



#9. Annette Kellerman promotes women’s right to wear a fitted one-piece bathing suit, 1907. She was arrested for indecency



#10. Annie Edison Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, 1901



#11. 106-year-old Armenian Woman guards home, 1990



#12. Baby cages used to ensure that children get enough sunlight and fresh air when living in an apartment building, ca. 1937



#13. The original Ronald McDonald, 1963


#14. Disneyland Employee Cafeteria in 1961



#15. Advertisement for Atabrine, anti-malaria drug, in Papua, New Guinea during WWII



#16. Soldier shares a banana with a goat during the battle of Saipan, ca. 1944



#17. Little girl with her doll sitting in the ruins of her bombed home, London, 1940



#18. Construction of the Berlin wall, 1961



#19. Unknown soldier in Vietnam, 1965



#20. Bookstore in London ruined by an air raid, 1940



#21. Walter Yeo, one of the first to undergo an advanced plastic surgery and a skin transplant, 1917



#22. Measuring bathing suits – if they were too short, women would be fined, 1920′s



#23. Martin Luther King with his son removing a burnt cross from their front yard, 1960



#24. Hotel owner pouring acid in the pool while black people swim in it, ca. 1964



#25. Lifeguard on the coast, 1920′s



#26. Artificial legs, UK, ca. 1890



#27. Mom and son watching the mushroom cloud after an atomic test, Las Vegas, 1953


#28. Mother hides her face in shame after putting her children up for sale, Chicago, 1948



#29. Austrian boy receives new shoes during WWII



#30. Hitler’s officers and cadets celebrating Christmas, 1941



#31. Christmas dinner during Great Depression: turnips and cabbage



#33. Last prisoners of Alcatraz leaving, 1963



#34. Melted and damaged mannequins after a fire at Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London, 1930



#35. A space chimp posing to camera after a successful mission to space, 1961


#36. Illegal alcohol being poured out during Prohibition, Detroit, 1929



#37. Princeton students after a freshman vs. sophomores snowball fight, 1893



#38. 23 year-old Evelyn McHale’s suicide – she jumped from the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building and landed on a United Nations limousine, 1947



#39. Suntan vending machine, 1949



#40. First morning after Sweden changed from driving on the left side to driving on the right, 1967


http://pulptastic.com/40-photos-from-the-past/

[Sheldon Cooper]

1. The first Ronald McDonald is Willard Scott, former NBC weatherman.

[BainsBane]

5. It's the scariest picture in the bunch

Suddenly I realize why some people are afraid of clowns.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

6. Ha... cup on the nose? what I noticed was how big the fries are. nt

[Mojo Electro]

85. What an amazing collection of pictures.

Thank you for a posting these.

You, sir, are a gentlemen and a scholar.

[Sheldon Cooper]

86. Well, thank you, but I'm not the OP.

They are great pictures nevertheless.

[FSogol]

2. Cool, thanks for posting.

Hope you don't get in trouble for that swimsuit pic.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

10. Haha. It reminded me of Catholic school - Our skirts couldn't be more than

12 inches above the knee. Which I remember was SO prudish. But 12 inches is very very short thinking about it now.

[DeadLetterOffice]

22. Ours had to touch the ground when the nuns made us kneel.

Yet another good reason for dropping out of Catholic high school after two years.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

35. mine was Catholic girls

college. I actually liked it - because it was so much fun sneaking around, climbing out windows, and trying
to walk straight when you came home to the nun's check in station from a frat party.

[MuseRider]

77. That was our measurement as well

at a public Jr. High School 1968. It was embarrassing during those days to have a skirt that long.

[1monster]

54. TWELVE inches!!! I went to public school and our limit was THREE inches. More than that and we

were sent home.

[malthaussen]

50. That Kellerman woman is built like a brick something-or-other.

It was a choice between fining her or fainting.

-- Mal

[flying rabbit]

3. WAY cool. nt

[kentuck]

4. The Vietnam War guy looks like someone I knew...

A Sgt Love from Dallas, TX. He was with the 101st Airborne.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

8. Really...wow..that would be so cool if we could actually ID the pic. nt

[Brickbat]

16. Here's an article about the photo:

http://thesouthern.com/news/local/local-family-says-unidentified-soldier-is-their-flesh-and-blood/article_bb5a4cac-bdb4-11e1-bd71-0019bb2963f4.html

[Laura PourMeADrink]

18. wow..how'd you find that? I'm a google fanatic. nt

[Brickbat]

20. "war is hell" helmet life photo

[janlyn]

7. Amazing, sad, funny

all of the above. The ww2 pics made me think of my mothers stories about life in the UK during that time. The one that really upset me was the hotel owner and the acid. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by humans ability to be so monstrous, but It still hurts my heart to see such things.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

9. Yes, the hotel pic shocked me. It is horrific. They are all compelling

but two stand out to me.....LOVE the last one and the wrecks when they changed the driving side. And, I am
drawn to to the 106 year old Armenian lady with the gun.

[1monster]

57. That was the Monson Motor Lodge during Martin Luther King's visit in 1964. The

Owner, Jimmy Brock is the guy throwing the muriatic acid in the pool.

Those who maintain pools will know that muriatic acid is regularly used in pools to maintain the ph balace. However, one should not enter the pool after the acid is placed in the pool and the water pumped around the pool for at least an hour. Muriatic acid in the concentrations used in pool maintenance is not particularly strong, but it can cause burns if spilled on the skin.

Both the Monson Motor Lodge and Jimmy Brock are no more. Brock died, and the Monson Motor Lodge was torn down (over the protests of historians who saw it as a landmark in civil rights history) to make way for a Hilton Hotel.

[ananda]

26. The pool picture and the sale of the children..

.. those were so sad and horrifying.

And that one of the mother and son watching the nuclear bomb test
made me wonder what happened to people who lived so close by.
I wonder what the fallout did to them.

Most of the pics were just plain interesting.

[Loudly]

11. Changing which side of the road you drive on took great political courage.

And it was not something which could be phased in.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

12. never even thought about it...but you are right. Can't imagine getting

any legislature to agree in today's time. Was that an effort to become more westernized?

[Loudly]

19. To conform to adjacent countries and in recognition of the kind of cars they drove.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

[Submariner]

61. Hmmm

Obama should pass a law that FORBIDS Republicans from driving on the other side of the road. Maybe they will drive on the left to spite him. Obama already mentioned using reverse psychology on them.

[liberalmuse]

13. Alcatraz closes in 1963, yet...

that picture of the man pouring acid in the pool in 1964. WTF??? Definitely compelling photos. So compelling I want to reach into them and make things better.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

14. well put

[rppper]

15. Thanks! Great thread! #9 is a hottie!

"#9. Annette Kellerman promotes women’s right to wear a fitted one-piece bathing suit, 1907. She was arrested for indecency "

very beautiful lady! Apparently pretty and strong willed!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. Thankful for people like her before me ! One of the most disturbing ones is that lady

selling her kids. 1948? I would have thought something like that would be in the depression.

[rppper]

21. That was something else! Where was that taken?

the one of the mother an son watching the mushroom cloud together...I had nightmares that looked like that in the Reagan years as a teen....

[2naSalit]

23. That sort of poverty was

pretty wide-spread even into the 1960s. I recall how nasty some of the tenement housing was in the cities of the NE when I was young. Things didn't really get better for lots of poor people until well into the 70s... and even then, depending on where you looked.

[packman]

24. Those Children for Sale

really upsets me every time I stumble across that picture. Here's the rest of the story of what happened to the children and the mother.

From Reddit:

2 oldest girls are bought by someone and forced into slave labor. They slept tied up in the barn.

The younger was kidnapped, raped, became pregnant, and had her daughter adopted. At 17 years old, she finally ran away from the slave labor home (YES THAT WAS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

The son David, born after this photo (the mother is shown pregnant) is adopted by a normal loving family, just a few miles away from the slave labor one. He frequently would sneak onto their property and untie the ropes that were applied to keep his sisters in the barn. He runs away when he's 16 and a half, and spends 20 years in the military.

Milton (boy in picture) was sold to the slave labor group as well, however, whereas the father abused him like the daughters, the mother actually liked him, and eventually sent him to live with an aunt and uncle.

The 3rd daughter in the photo is believed to be have been adopted similarly to David. Little is known because her papers were destroyed in a fire, and she died of cancer before the article's research commenced.

The mother remarried and had four more daughters. She met with all of her children except Lana again. She hated all of them, and expressed no regret


Too fucking cruel, just too fucking cruel to happen to innocents

[Laura PourMeADrink]

34. I was hoping it wasn't real. That sign

looks so professional for someone who obviously was so poor.

I have vague recollections of our parents saying it jokingly.

It makes you want to go back in time and just scoop those beautiful children up.

[JHB]

39. We can't go back, but we can remember and apply that to the future

Remember it every time someone wants to cut back safety net programs and remove the ability of women to control their fertility and reproductive health.

From the outcomes of the kids, it doesn't sound like the mother would have chosen to have eight children if it had been up to her.

[packman]

42. About that sign-

again, from Reddit , reporter heard that the woman was selling her children and went to the house to verify the report. Indeed, she said, she was . The reporters, sensing a story printed up the sign and posed the children on the front steps for a more sensational story. The mother turned her head away from the flash cameras they used at the time because of the flash, not from shame.

The photo did have an impact at the time and money and job offers came pouring into the newspaper for the woman and her husband but:


"After this photo, the family was offered many jobs, and were temporarily given shelter with a nearby family because their home was being repossessed.

THEY STILL ENDED UP SELLING THE CHILDREN."

Basically, they were scum.

[Stargazer09]

55. That mother

Deserves to burn in whatever hellish afterlife might exist. I don't care how poor you are, or how much your boyfriend hates your kids. You don't sell them.

[Warpy]

31. Who knows what provoked it?

Maybe she was shaming her children for misbehaving. Maybe she was sick of living on SSI given to support her kids but nothing to support her but a dead husband's inadequate military pension. Maybe she was just sick of her life that day. Maybe it was some sort of a joke.

If she'd been serious, she could have taken them to an orphanage. Sadly, with abortion and most birth control still illegal, orphanages were open and did a brisk business.

[packman]

43. Orphanages don't "buy" children

Her and her worthless husband just wanted to get rid of the children. She even abandoned the one she was carrying. No "Maybe"'s about it - just a piece of shit who didn't want to be burdened with 4 , soon to be 5, children.

Read the story

[Warpy]

63. Sorry, all I saw posted was the story

and no, orphanages didn't buy children, but they did take them in from extremely poor, transient families.

Read my post.

[Logical]

60. I thought so also!! n-t

[etherealtruth]

68. Pretty horrible

[Auntie Bush]

82. If they had welfare in those days this wouldn't have happened.

[ReRe]

27. K&R

Thank you so much for sharing your find with us. I love history. And especially pictures of it!

[babylonsister]

28. Recommend to the moon! Thank you so much! Great pix! nt

[madfloridian]

29. Loved these pictures! Amazing.

Thanks for sharing.

[Quiet_Dem_Mom]

30. Orphan Trains

My 4th grader brought home a Scholastic reader with an article about the orphan trains. I had never heard of the program. Sounds like quite a few kids had stories similar to the children in the 'for sale' pic.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Train

The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported orphaned and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1853 and 1929, relocating about 250,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children.

[polly7]

36. A lot of those children weren't homeless, though.

I've done quite a bit of research on my family in England, Ireland and Europe and read that many children were picked up off the streets, shipped overseas to be denied education, treated like dirt and worked like mules on homesteads, or as servants, never seeing their families again. And many did have families who looked for them for them for the rest of their lives. I met some of these children, as seniors, while working in nursing homes who had no idea of their birth-dates or even if their names were real and not just given to them once they got here. They shared some very, very sad and tragic stories.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Powerful picture

No media outlet would run it today. A commentary on our society.

A lot of them would not run today

[Blue_Tires]

65. An unofficial rule came up in the following years

about newspapers not showing bodies of suicide victims (or even dead bodies in general unless there were really unique circumstances), just out of decorum...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_the_Angels_School_fire



Here's another one of my favorite photos which tells a story:



On July 22, 1975 in Boston, a 19-year-old and her 2-year-old goddaughter were trapped in a burning building. A firefighter, Robert O’Neill, shielded them from the flames as a fire ladder inched closer. Then the fire escape collapsed. Although the woman died from her injuries, the infant survived. Fire Escape Collapse circulated around the world. The photo led to the passage of new fire escape legislation across the country. It provided Stanley Forman with his first of two Pulitzer Prizes for spot news photography.

[Number23]

33. My heart leapt into my throat on this one

And the one of the lady selling her four kids was horrible

[NewJeffCT]

69. Yes, that was disturbing

made me think how many of those baby cages were just not built quite well enough.

[Number23]

70. I almost hate to ask but do you know if there were any injuries from the cages?

This is the first I've ever seen of anything like that.

[NewJeffCT]

73. No idea

but, I did see it was popular enough in the US and the UK for a while - supposedly, even Eleanor Roosevelt ordered one.

http://qi.com/infocloud/babies

[Bettie]

37. There are so many comments I could make

But I'll stick with this:

In 1893, people clearly took snowball fights WAY more seriously than they do now.

All of these are compelling in their own ways, I like that there is a variety of pictures, some happy, some terribly sad, some simply neutral.

Also, thanks to those who put up additional information on some of them, particularly the one about the children for sale.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

46. for sure ! they certainly look more like guys posing after a bar room brawl than

Ivy league students. Although I remember some pretty serious snowball fights in the 60's ...especially those amazingly hard ice balls. But, acorn fights were pretty awesome too.

[polly7]

38. Absolutely stunning photos. nt.

[CrispyQ]

40. Kick!

What a great collection of photos! Thanks!

[L0oniX]

41. K & R

[randome]

44. They screwed up the numbering starting with #22. You can see that when you download them.

But then they 'caught up' later.

Thanks for the post! These are awesome!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[Laura PourMeADrink]

45. have to confess...I left out Elvis in the army. nt

[randome]

48. Even with that, they screwed up the numbering at the site itself.

No big deal, my obsessive need for organization compelled me to point that out.

The boy with the new shoes makes me happy.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]It made sense when we were children. Not so much now.
Talk to a stranger today. You might learn something. You might help someone.[/center][/font][hr]

[malthaussen]

47. Not sure about some of those captions...

Number one for example: why would a woman be pushing a gas-resistant pram in 1938? The war didn't start until 1939, and the panic over possible attack on Britain until 1940.

-- Mal

[randome]

49. A woman ahead of her time?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]

[Laura PourMeADrink]

51. May not be...but according to this...the fear of war was great at that time

and WWI air raid shelters were still around.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/czechoslovakia_1938.htm

[Laura PourMeADrink]

52. air raid shelters

http://www.military-history.org/articles/air-raid-shelters.htm

[Blue_Tires]

66. Maybe she was just 'playing' mom while

the inventor was displaying his latest invention?

Yeah, the war hadn't "officially" started yet, but there were definite storm clouds brewing on the horizon...And all the horror stories and nightmares from the millions of veterans who lived through WWI gas attacks couldn't have been far from anyone's mind...

[cali]

53. great curating. arresting, funny, shocking tragic, puzzling, absorbing

and charlie chaplin was so beautiful.

[janlyn]

59. I too loved the Charlie Chaplin photo!

I was totally mesmerized by his eyes! Such depth and life in them! Beautiful!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

84. he really would fit in perfectly today with that hairstyle.

[drm604]

56. K&R

Great Pics!

[Boom Sound 416]

58. Incredible

[libdem4life]

62. The Candy Bomber...about 1948 and the Berlin Wall. This is a heartwarming, one hanky,

unforgettable Tom Brokaw in a performance...and a very unexpected ending, at least for me...that's the hanky part.

[thecrow]

64. I think I know the guy who bought #39

He is a Republican big shot.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

71. very very funny

[passiveporcupine]

67. Great photos, thanks!

I was born in Chicago in 1949, and I just sent this photo to my Mom saying "Thanks for keeping us". I had two siblings at the time. Now I have three.

I love it when Mom tells us stories about depression times. She doesn't often talk about it.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

72. glad they kept u

[bkanderson76]

74. Amazing to say the least.....thank you

[NewJeffCT]

75. That was a nasty snowball fight

at Princeton.

[shenmue]

76. My word

The one with the hotel owner makes me want to reach through time and punch him.

Thank you, all of them were provocative.

[loudsue]

78. Putting children in a cage & hanging them out the window? Sounds like something my folks

would have believed in.

[randome]

80. Sorry for your childhood then!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

[loudsue]

81. Thanks, randome.

Back in the old days, parents believed in some pretty weird shit.

[RBInMaine]

79. GREAT pics. Thanks. :-)