Photos play an important role in understanding history. They offer visual evidence of both pivotal events and everyday life that written records alone sometimes cannot fully convey. Through images, we gain additional insights into the people and places of different eras, making the past feel more tangible and relatable.
#1
a cat escaping from the Animal Rescue League in Boston, Massachusetts in 1940
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#2
A young boy playing the banjo to his dog in 1920.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#3
The train wreck at Montparnasse Station in Paris, France on or near the 22nd October 1895.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#4
Roland, a 4,000 pound elephant seal, getting a snow bath from his handler at Berlin Zoo, Germany in c. 1930.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#5
An open-air school in the Netherlands photographed in 1957.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#6
Statue of David by Michelangelo, encased in bricks to prevent damage from bombs, during World War 2. Photograph taken in the 1940s.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#7
A little girl holding her pet toad at a pet show at Venice Beach, California, USA in 1936.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#8
A photograph of Edinburgh, Scotland from the sky taken by Alfred G. Buckham in the 1920s.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#9
The head of a Joseph Stalin statue on the streets of Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#10
Photograph of the Hindenburg Disaster on the 6 May 1937. This was when the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#11
A young Prince Charles standing between his grandmother, The Queen Mother (left), and aunt, Princess Margaret (right), at his mother Queen Elizabeth's coronation on 2 June 1953
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#12
A helmeted bulldog guarding a family outside a block of flats during the Blitz on the 15th October 1940
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#13
Royal Navy stoker with 21 years service nicknamed “Popeye”, photographed on board the HMS Rodney in September 1940. A stoker was responsible for anything from the propulsion systems to hydraulics, electrical and firefighting systems. The HMS Rodney played a major role in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck in mid-1941.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#14
Private James Hendrix of the 101st Airborne, playing guitar at Fort Campbell Kentucky in 1962. Jimi Hendrix went on to become one of the most influential guitarists of all time.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#15
Robert Wadlow, the tallest man to ever live, with his family in c. 1930s. Wadlow stood at 8 ft 11.1 in (272 cm) tall.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#16
A German officer and an NCO wearing portable sound locating apparatus to detect enemy aircraft. Taken somewhere on the Western Front in 1917.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#17
A beggar running alongside the carriage of King George V of the United Kingdom somewhere in London, England, 1920.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#18
A blimp destroyed by the shockwave of a nuclear blast, Nevada in 1957.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#19
The iconic American wartime photograph "The Thousand Yard Stare" showing an exhausted 19-year-old US Marine Private Theodore J. Miller in February 1944 after two days of constant fighting at the Battle of Eniwetok. Miller would be killed in a firefight during the invasion of Ebon Atoll a month later on the 24 March 1944.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#20
Salvador Dali on a ship arriving in New York, United States on the 7 December 1936.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#21
A French and British soldier helping the other light their cigarette during WWI in 1915
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#22
Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet for his wife Lucille in front of the Great Sphinx of Giza in Greater Cairo, Egypt, in 1961.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#23
Harriet Tubman photographed in 1911 at the age of 89.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#24
A federal agent inspects a 'lumber' truck after smelling alcohol during the prohibition period, Los Angeles, in 1926.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#25
The tallest (Cornelius Bruns), shortest (Unknown), and fattest (Cannon Colossus) men in Europe playing cards and drinking together in 1913.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#26
Photograph of the oldest house in Hamburg, Germany taken in 1898. It was built in 1524 and, despite protests from locals, was demolished on the 8 December 1910.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#27
A large crowd in Times Square, New York City celebrating the surrender of Germany, May 7th, 1945.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#28
The Empire State Building in New York City photographed in 1941.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#29
Sergeant William Henry “Black Death” Johnson of the 369th Infantry Regiment (Harlem Hellfighters) wearing his Croix de Guerre medal in circa 1918. In North France, Johnson single-handedly fought off a German raiding party receiving 21 wounds in order to save fellow soldier Private Needham Roberts.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#30
President Lyndon Johnson listens to a tape sent by Captain Charles Robb (his son-in-law) from Vietnam. Taken in 1968.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#31
First World War German Field Marshal, August von Mackensen, photographed in c. 1915. He was one of Germany’s most prominent and competent military leaders and remained a committed monarchist until his death in November 1945 at the age of 95. His life spanned the Kingdom of Prussia, the North German Confederation, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, The Third Reich, and the post-war Allied occupation of Germany.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#32
In 1945 a B-25 bomber got lost in the fog and crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building. 14 people died in the accident. This is the damage that the crash caused.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#33
Future King George V of the United Kingdom sitting next to his cousin, future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia while posing for a photograph at Marlborough House in London, England in c. 1893. George and Nicholas shared the same maternal grandparents.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#34
Mercury Trains photographed in 1936. Mercury was the name used by the New York Central Railroad for a family of daytime streamliner passenger trains operating between midwestern cities. The Mercury’s started operating in 1936 and lasted until 1959.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#35
A logging family photographed with a 1300 year old tree they cut down, 1892.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#36
Amiens Cathedral photographed during World War I showing the walls lined with sandbags in order to protect the building from artillery. Taken in Amiens, France in 1918.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#37
Mugshot of Frank Sinatra after being arrested on charges of seduction and adultery. Photo taken on the 27 November 1938.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#38
British veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and his wife sitting for a photograph in the 1860s. This veteran served in the Peninsular War which took place from 1807 to 1814 and saw Bourbon Spain assisted by Great Britain against the First French Empire for control of the Iberian Peninsula.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#39
The last photo ever of Nikola Tesla. Taken on the 1 January 1943, 6 days before his death at the age of 86.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#40
Oda Nobuyoshi, Japanese Civil Rights activist and dentist during the Meiji Era. Photograph taken in 1880 when he was 20-years-old.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#41
The final photograph taken of Vladimir Lenin. He is seen with his sister Anna Ilyinichna Yelizarova-Ulyanova and his doctor A. M. Kozhevnikov in Gorki in May 1923.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#42
One of the largest and heaviest horses ever recorded, Brooklyn Supreme, photographed in c. 1940s. He stood 19.2 hands (198 cm (6 ft 6 in)) tall and weighed 3,200 lb (1,451 kg).
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#43
Legendary film director, producer, and screenwriter, Alfred Hitchcock, photographed holding a pitchfork on the lawns of Pinewood Studios, at Iver, Buckinghamshire, the United Kingdom on 22 July 1971.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#44
Sadie Pfeifer, a young girl working at the Lancaster Cotton Mills in Lancaster, South Carolina, in 30 November 1908. At the time of the photograph, Sadie had worked at the mill for half a year.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#45
Soviet peasants listening to the radio for the first time. Taken at some point in 1928.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#46
An anti-communist revolutionary holds a Molotov cocktail behind his back during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#47
The only known photograph from the event, President Abraham Lincoln Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address on the east front of the United States Capitol. Taken on the 4 March 1865.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#48
Cow shoes used by moonshiners during the Prohibition Era to hide their footprints, June 18th, 1924.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#49
Chief John Smith a.k.a. White Wolf, reportedly the oldest Native American to ever live (137-years-old), photographed in c. 1920. White Wolf’s true age at his death is often disputed.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#50
A woman photographed standing on the frozen Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri in February 1905.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#51
A 16-year-old Bill Clinton, future 42nd President of the United States, shaking hands with 35th US President John F. Kennedy at a American Legion Boys Nation event on July 24th, 1963.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#52
Hans Langseth, the man who held the record for the world’s longest beard, posing for a photograph in c. 1912 when he was in his 60s.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#53
An unemployed lumber worker called Thomas Cave with his wife in Oregon, USA in August 1939. He has his social security number tattooed on his arm.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#54
B-17 American Bomber 43-37563 from the 728th Bomb Squadron of the US Army Airforce encounters German Anti-Aircraft artillery fire. The black smoke shown in the image are detonating 88mm caliber shell. Photograph taken in 1944.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#55
What is now the fully developed Las Vegas strip, 1955.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#56
A power house mechanic working on a steam pump in 1920. Photo taken by Lewis Hine somewhere in the United States.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#57
Charlie Chaplin selling war bonds at the foot of the United States Sub Treasury Building in Wall Street, New York City in 1918.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#58
25th President of the United States, William McKinley, walking up the stairs of the Temple of Music, on the day of his assassination, September 9, 1901. This was the final photograph taken of McKinley alive.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#59
A group of Japanese Samurai photographed in front of the Sphinx in Giza, Egypt during a visit to the country, 1864.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#60
A coal miner and his family in their home in Scott's Run, West Virginia photographed on March 19, 1937.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#61
An Irish man sharing a pint with his son in Dublin, Ireland, during the 1950s.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#62
59 ½ Mulberry Street, a back alley in Manhattan, New York City, better known as “Bandit’s Roost” due to being the most dangerous area in Mulberry Street which to the photographer Jacob Riis epitomized the worst of New York City’s slums. Photo taken in 1888.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#63
An aerial view of Manhattan, New York City taken in 1931.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#64
Dr. Wernher von Braun, an aerospace engineer that was a leading figure in Nazi German rocket technology, and then United States rocket technology, photographed standing in front of five F-1 rocket engines in circa 1969.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
#65
Boys of Ardingly School set off home at the start of the Christmas holidays in 1926.
Image credits: historyblackandwhite
