Each and every picture is more fascinating than the last.
1. This is the unfinished portrait of George Washington that was used as a basis for the design of the $1 bill:
The portrait was done by Gilbert Stuart, who apparently had something better to do than finish up ol' George's portrait?
2. This is Albert Woolson, the last surviving Civil War veteran:
Albert fought for the Union army and died in 1956 at the age of 106.
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:
My palms are sweaty just looking at this picture.
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:
The court has never allowed cameras. In 1937, photographer Erich Salomon pretended that his arm was broken and put the camera inside a sling he wore into the court and snapped this pic.
8. This is William Hutchings, one of the last surviving American Revolutionary War veterans:
He was 100 in this picture.
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 This is the scene inside a Chicago bar on Dec. 5, 1933, the day Prohibition was repealed: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:
He was a member of the Whittier College football team.
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:
The back of the photo reads, "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth, who landed on the Moon on the twentieth of April 1972."
14. This is what the Panama Canal looked like while it was under construction:
Absolutely enormous.
15. This is Eugene Cernan, who is, as of 2023, the last man to ever walk on the moon:
He did it way back in 1972. It's been that long, folks!
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:
Unfortunately, there's no treasure map, just a lot of nothing. Nicolas Cage... how could you lie to us?
18. This is the Willamette meteorite, the largest meteorite that's ever been found in the United States:
It is the sixth largest in the world and weighs 15.5 tons.
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:
The man had a stressful life, folks.
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:
We need more razor blades keen to shave me.
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:
28. This is the dish rag that Robert E. Lee used to surrender the Confederate army to the Union during the Civil War:
It's been called "the final flag of the confederacy."
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:
The Langley was sunk in World War II after Japanese bombardment.
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:
Looks like this baby can go zero to six in no time at all.
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:
Whoa, Zach! Save some beard for the rest of us.
39. This is how big Plymouth Rock is in real life:
40. This is the first ever ticket sold for Disneyland:
It's from 1955, when the park opened. $1 for a trip to Walt's domicile! How about that.
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:
He used a jet-propelled backpack to maneuver around. It was apparently very, very cold.
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:
Yet another thing we should just leave in the past.
45. This is what a dollar bill looked like in 1917:
46. The presidents on Mount Rushmore were originally planned to look like this:
Big, giant hands.
47. This is John Smith, a Chippewa man who was reported to be 137 years old at the time of his death:
There's controversy about whether that's actually true, of course, but I choose to believe in my man John.
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:
He won fifth place at a world's longest beard competition that year.
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:
The window is down. Took me a second, too.
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:
The 19 men who were saved by the net became known as the "Halfway to Hell Club."
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:
It was taken in 1846.
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:
She made her fortune selling cosmetics designed for Black women.
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:
You'll notice it folds into a trunk. Only the finest for old George.
66. Speaking of George, this is what a pair of Washington's dentures looked like:
They contained cow, human, and horse teeth.
67. This is the world's first skyscraper, the 10-story Home Insurance Building, which was located in Chicago:
The absolutely gargantuan skyscraper was built in 1885 and torn down in 1931.
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:
It reads:
"Dear Bill,
When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.
I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.
There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I'm not a very good one to give advice; but just don't let the critics discourage you or push you off course.
You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.
Your success now is our country's success. I am rooting hard for you.
Good luck — George"
69. This is Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls while inside a barrel:
She was 62 years old at the time. People going over waterfalls in a barrel fell off real hard. We should bring it back.
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:
It reads:
"This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.
"We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some — perhaps many — may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:
"This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."