70 Extremely Rare Pictures From American History That Will Completely And Totally Change Your Perspective On The Past

1.This is the unfinished portrait of George Washington that was used as a basis for the design of the $1 bill:

2.This is Albert Woolson, the last surviving Civil War veteran:

3.The first Super Bowl didn’t sell out — you can see plenty of empty seats in pictures from that day:

4.This is the chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in the night he was assassinated:

5.Someone had to hand-carve all of the presidents’ eyes on Mount Rushmore:

6.This is what the Statue of Liberty looked like while it was under construction in France:

7.This photo is one of only two photos in existence of the US Supreme Court in session:

8.This is William Hutchings, one of the last surviving American Revolutionary War veterans:

9.This is the scene inside a Chicago bar on Dec. 5, 1933, the day Prohibition was repealed:

10.The man in the middle in this picture is a college-aged Richard Nixon:

11.This is Ruth Malcolmson, the woman who won the 1924 Miss America pageant:

12.This tea chest is one of two surviving chests from the Boston Tea Party back in 1773:

13.In 1972, astronaut Charles Duke left behind a picture of his family on the moon’s surface. It’s been there ever since:

14.This is what the Panama Canal looked like while it was under construction:

15.This is Eugene Cernan, who is, as of 2023, the last man to ever walk on the moon:

16.You might recognize Eugene from this iconic picture of his moon walk:

17.This is what’s on the BACK of the Declaration of Independence:

18.This is the Willamette meteorite, the largest meteorite that’s ever been found in the United States:

19.This is the earliest known picture of Abraham Lincoln, taken in 1846:

20.And this is what Abraham Lincoln looked like 19 years later, in 1865:

21.This is one of the last pictures taken of President Harry S. Truman, shortly before his death in 1972:

22.The picture, from 1930, shows what the Empire State Building looked like while it was under construction:

23.Before it became that iconic sign all us sign-heads know and love, the Hollywood sign read “Hollywoodland”:

24.This is what Times Square looked like in 1921:

25.This is Selma Burke, the woman who designed the portrait of Franklin Roosevelt that’s still on the dime to this day:

26.This is a picture of the opening of the very first New York City subway back in 1904:

27.In 1969, Niagara Falls was “drained” in order to remove a large number of boulders that had accumulated at the foot of the falls:

28.This is the dish rag that Robert E. Lee used to surrender the Confederate army to the Union during the Civil War:

29.This is what the face of the Statue of Liberty looked like before it was installed onto the monument:

30.This is the USS Langley, the first United States aircraft carrier:

31.This is a billboard that was posted outside of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a town established as a manufacturing site as part of the Manhattan Project:

32.This is Jackie Robinson entering the Dodgers clubhouse for the first time, five days before his first game in the MLB on April 10th, 1947:

33.This is Henry Ford cruising around in the first car he designed, the Quadricycle:

34.This is the last picture ever taken of President Ulysses S. Grant, snapped days before his death at his home:

35.This is what Harriet Tubman looked like in old age:

36.Andrew Jackson was one of the first United States presidents to be photographed. Here he is in 1844:

37.Before CGI, this is how MGM filmed its iconic movie intro:

38.This bad boy is Zach T. Wilcox, owner of the world’s longest beard, in 1922:

39.This is how big Plymouth Rock is in real life:

40.This is the first ever ticket sold for Disneyland:

41.This is the top hat Abraham Lincoln was wearing the night he was assassinated:

42.One of the more creative ways bootleggers would hide alcohol during Prohibition was inside trucks lined with wood, complete with a tiny trapdoor:

43.On Feb. 7, 1984, Bruce McCandless II performed the first-ever untethered space walk, and folks, it looks absolutely terrifying:

44.These are the contestants in the 1930 Miss Lovely Eyes beauty pageant, a contest where woman had to wear an absolutely terrifying mask so that only her eyes were visible:

45.This is what a dollar bill looked like in 1917:

46.The presidents on Mount Rushmore were originally planned to look like this:

47.This is John Smith, a Chippewa man who was reported to be 137 years old at the time of his death:

48.In 1962, three men escaped Alcatraz Island prison after fooling guards with papier-mâché decoy heads that looked like this:

49.This is how big the engines on the Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to the Moon were compared to engineer Wernher von Braun:

50.This picture straight out of Harold Potter is of the former Cincinnati Public Library, built in 1874 and demolished in 1955:

51.This is a picture from Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration in 1865. Can you spot him?

52.Speaking of Lincoln, this man, Valentine Tapley, vowed in 1860 to never cut his beard again if Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Here’s him in 1896:

53.This is what the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC looked like in 1907:

54.And this is what it looked like 100 years later:

55.This monument to the doomed Donner Party shows just how deep the snow the unfortunate travelers had to deal with was:

56.This is what the Golden Gate Bridge looked like while it was under construction:

57.You are, of course, familiar with Grant Wood’s painting “American Gothic”…

58.…well, this is what it looks like from inside the actual house in the painting:

59.This is the safety net that was installed under the Golden Gate Bridge during its construction in the 1930s. The net saved 19 people through the duration of the work:

60.This is what the inside of the White House looked like when it was being reconstructed in the late 1940s:

61.This is the oldest picture of the White House ever taken:

62.John Quincy Adams was the first US president ever photographed. Here he is in 1840, more than a decade after his presidency:

63.The person driving the car here is Madam C.J. Walker, the first female self-made millionaire in the United States:

64.This is the first picture of Earth from the moon, taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1:

65.This is the foldout bed George Washington slept on during the Revolutionary War:

66.Speaking of George, this is what a pair of Washington’s dentures looked like:

67.This is the world’s first skyscraper, the 10-story Home Insurance Building, which was located in Chicago:

68.This is the note former president George H.W. Bush left for incoming president Bill Clinton in the White House after Clinton defeated him in the 1992 presidential election:

69.This is Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls while inside a barrel:

70.And finally, this is the statement President Jimmy Carter wrote and put aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft, intended for any aliens the probe might encounter: