46 Unique Historical Photos That Show a Different Era

Welcome to a journey through time with 46 rare historical photos that transport you to a world unlike anything you know!

This is how football helmets were tested in the early 1900s:

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

For some reason unbeknownst to me, in 1920 a policeman did this off a building in New York:

Car seats for children were incredibly dangerous in the 1940s:

This is what an early design for an electric hair dryer looked like:

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:

Easter Bunny costumes were absolutely horrifying in the 1950s:

This poster from the late 1800s advertises a fight between “the world’s thinnest man” and “the world’s fattest man”:

This is the Dynasphere, a giant wheel vehicle invented by Dr. J. A. Purves that could go as a fast as 30 MPH:

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

The very first iteration of Ronald McDonald was created by Willard Scott in 1963:

This is how condoms were tested in the 1930s:

For a brief but wondrous moment in time, you could get potatoes from a vending machine:

Beer vending machines were also a thing:

Before modern car washes were invented, one particularly wacky idea was for cars to drive around through water in a circle:

This is what a gym looked like two centuries ago in 1831:

This totally safe device was known as a baby cage, a wire cage suspended out of an apartment window meant to give babies born in cities extra light and air:

This is 455 pound Piet van der Zwaard AKA the “fattest man in Europe” in 1955:

This is Pauline Musters, the shortest woman ever to live:

She was 24 inches tall when she died at the age of 19.

In the 1930s, this couple won an Atlantic City dance marathon after dancing for 1,473 hours:

And, yes, people did fall asleep standing up while dancing at these marathons:

California once had a place called the California Alligator Farm where children were encouraged to get up close and personal with alligators and even take them for rides:

In the early 1900s, one way to transport tons of materials and train parts was to suspend it hundreds of feet in the air and tow it across a canyon:

This man won a costume competition in 1894 while dressed as a piece of bacon:

This is a real 19th-century advertisement for cough medicine with a very special ingredient — heroin:

In 1876, Virgil A. Gates patented the “Moustache Guard,” an absolutely brilliant invention for “holding the moustache out of the way of food or liquid while eating or drinking”:

During World War II, Walt Disney developed a Mickey Mouse gas mask, designed to help children get comfortable and relaxed while wearing the mask:

This is Herman the Cat, a cat who was given the title of expert mouser aboard a US Coast Guard ship during World War II:

This is the world’s longest limo, the American Dream limo:

This is one of the earliest designs for roller skates. They didn’t catch on for some reason:

In the ’60s, you could buy a mail-order squirrel monkey for $18.95:

In 1909, pigs finally flew. Icarus the pig (right) went on a short flight with John Moore-Brabazon and finally did the impossible:

Fiat once had a car factory with a working test track on the roof:

This is Jack the baboon, a South African baboon who worked as a signalman at a railway station in the 1800s. During his almost decade of railway work, Jack never made a single mistake:

Here’s Hannes de Jong, the 1970 Pole Sitting World Champion, well, sitting on a pole:

Before the invention of RADAR, soldiers used big old Looney Toons-looking contraptions to listen for enemy planes:

This is the Peel P50, the smallest car ever produced:

One of the more ridiculous inventions of the 19th century was this, a “mass shaving machine” designed to shave a bunch of men all at once:

In 1908, huge crowds gathered in Boston to watch Harry Houdini jump off a bridge while tied up in chains:

Speaking of other things that didn’t catch on, this was a proposed firefighting suit designed to drench the wearer in water:

This is Venus the bulldog, the official mascot of the HMS Vansittart, a World War II destroyer in the Royal Navy:

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

And, finally, in 1961, auditions were held for the role of the black cat in the film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat.” Lots of black cats showed up: