22. A 16-year-old German soldier, 1945
This 16-year-old boy’s name is Hans-Georg Henke. According to several sources, he was captured by the Americans and was crying tears of defeat when this photo was taken. In a post-war interview, he tells a somewhat different story — that he actually met the Russians that day. But maybe he changed his story to cover his tracks.
21. During a photo shoot, the background began to change… September 11, 2001
20. The Hugo Boss Nazi Collection, 1930s
19. The Obamas on their wedding day, 1992
18. Arnold Schwarzenegger shows his muscles to some old ladies, 1970s
17. Ethnic Germans greeting Hitler with the Nazi salute after he crossed the border into the formerly Czechoslovak Sudetenland, October 1938
16. A day after President Kennedy’s assassination, November 1963
15. A colorized picture of Queen Elizabeth II from when she acceded to the throne, 1952
Princess Elizabeth ascended the throne at the age of 25, due to the death of her father, King George VI, on 6 February 1952. The coronation took place more than a year later.
14. Blondi, Adolf Hitler’s German Shepherd who was with him to the very last day
Before committing suicide in the bunker in April 1945, Hitler ordered his doctor to give Blondi one cyanide capsule. Later, she was found dead together with her master.
13. A stranded WWI U-118 submarine crowded with tourists, 1921
This mine-laying submarine surrendered in 1918 together with the Imperial German Navy. In 1919, it ran aground on the beach at Hastings and became a popular tourist attraction. The town charged a small fee for visitors to climb on the deck and gained a considerable sum of money to help fund a welcome for the town’s soldiers returning from the war.
12. SS Normandie, renamed USS Lafayette, lies capsized in the frozen mud of her New York Pier, 1942
The SS Normandie was an ocean liner built in France in 1935 as the largest and fastest passenger ship afloat. In 1940, after the Fall of France, the United States seized the Normandie under the right of angary and renamed her USS Lafayette. In 1942, the liner caught fire while being converted to a troopship, capsized onto her port side, and came to rest on the mud of the Hudson River.
11. When you want to know how many people can be packed into a phone booth but it’s 1959 and there’s no Google yet:
10. Tasmanian tigers, 1910. They are extinct now.
9. Albert Einstein with Cord Meyer, Jr., 1948
This photo usually claims to feature Einstein together with his therapist. However, it’s not a therapist but Cord Meyer, Jr., the president of the United World Federalists, a group that advocated for one world government. According to Life, they were discussing what Russia’s attitude toward world government might be.
8. Muhammad Ali training in the fog, 1974
7. A staged photo showing scientists working out equations for satellite orbits at Systems Labs, California, 1957
This shot is circulating on the internet as “NASA before PowerPoint in 1961,” but it was actually taken before NASA was established on July 29, 1958.
6. Child-selling due to poverty, Chicago, 1948
5. Just a dog dressed as a man with a cat on its lap
A photo by a joker from the 1950s.
4. Santa on his way to a party in London, 1940s
3. Pink Floyd concert in Venice, 1989
2. Halloween in the USA, 1920s
1. A gas mask wedding
This photo is often referred to as a picture from the Japanese island of Miyake-jima, where it’s necessary to use gas masks because of the high levels of sulfur in the air. But since gas masks were only made mandatory there after the 2000 eruptions, it’s obvious that this photo was taken somewhere else. It may even have been during WWI, judging by the old design of the gas masks.
