Rare photos from the past

March 2, 2019 • 2:30 pm

If you have 13.5 minutes to spare, watch this succession of many moving images from the past. I find the iron lungs at 5:37 ineffably sad. Thanks to Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and science, we no longer have to see these scenes.

There’s a lot to see and ponder in this montage. If you want more, another montage video is here, including, 53 seconds in, Jackie the MGM lion recording his roar for the movies.

32 thoughts on “Rare photos from the past”

  1. I liked all of those but I think the prisoners playing chess somehow was very impactful.

  2. Hard to imagine sitting and watching the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion either from pleasure or curiosity. Times have changed. Even in the early sixties in the RAF we were instructed to avoid the blast, light, cloud and all the invisible stuff and this was only ten years or so previous.

  4. I remember being in lines for polio vaccine in the 1950s; it was a sugary substance on the tongue. We were told we could once again go swimming. My biggest fear before nuclear bombs and drills in school was living in an iron lung.

    And the Hartford circus fire . . . we lived in Hartford. Even though the fire was before my time, we were indoctrinated to never, ever go into a tent for a public event. I still won’t do it, even though conditions are much better now. Everyone knew people who had died. Driving by the site now (which last I knew was unmarked 20 years ago) still breaks my heart.

    Thank you for the link.

  6. For historically minded folks, I think many of the photos were thought provoking, particularly those of WWII. But, I wonder what people lacking historical context will make of them. Perhaps they will stimulate them to learn more about some of the topics. I hope so.

  7. Watching XY phenotypes try to manhandle Katherine Switzer and prevent her from running the Boston Marathon (second video) is incredibly infuriating.

    1. That was an obscure comment (‘XY phenotypes’? srsly?), I thought it was some recent transgender thing. About which opinions can legitimately differ.

      But no, it was pure sexism –
      “In 1967, she became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon as a numbered entrant. During her run, race official Jock Semple attempted to stop Switzer and grab her official bib; however, he was shoved to the ground by Switzer’s boyfriend, Thomas Miller, who was running with her, and she completed the race. It was not until 1972 that women were allowed to run the Boston Marathon officially.”

      cr

      1. Single photos can be so misleading. Only one man was attempting to impede Switzer, and she had support.
        See this:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOGXvBAmTsY
        the runner at far right no 390 is her boyfriend Tom Miller; the slightly balding man beside her is her coach Arnie Briggs, and rather than laying hands on Switzer I think he is shoving the man in the dark coat behind her, who I presume is the unfortunate official Semple, who is shortly thereafter about to be flattened by Tom Miller. The other runners are just spectators.

        Note the curious circumstance that Switzer was the first *registered* female participant, but she actually finished an hour after the first female runner, Bobbi Gibb, who ran unregistered (and had also completed the Marathon the previous year). Apparently the organisers simply ignored unregistered runners.

        cr

  8. I can only imagine what it would have been like to live in Europe during either of the world wars, but these kinds of photos move me to tears.

  9. In the 60s, I knew a young woman (in her late teens at the time) who had suffered from a polio infection – even that late. She was injured by it, unable to walk without a sever limp. She was a fine person, but, I found her personality had been adversely affected. She was somewhat subdued and often depressed. Sadly for her, she was probably among the last victims.

    1. Unfortunately, many of the survivors are suffering again with a sort of recurrence or flare-up, which was, I guess, unknown back then. Victims are suffering new symptoms now and a friend of mine here in Vermont who survived is now suffering again with severe mobility issues. But she is up and about, thank goodness. I don’t know the medical details.

        1. I read about this a number of years ago, but hadn’t realized it was in the news as early as 1984:

          https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/26/us/some-polio-symptoms-may-recur-up-to-40-years-after-the-disease.html

          https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/26/us/some-polio-symptoms-may-recur-up-to-40-years-after-the-disease.html

          I also grew up at a time when I wasn’t allowed to swim to avoid contracting Polio.
          But, back then there were so many childhood diseases to contract. I missed the first week of my freshman year of high school due to having Chicken Pox.

  10. Those ‘Soviet plane-spotters’ at 7:33 wearing the ludicrous apparatus are not Soviet, and probably not Russian. Most likely German, as described on Doug Self’s entertaining page:

    http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/ear/ear.htm#pers

    and this thread on Reddit:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1nfn4i/soviet_planespotters_around_1917/

    Those kids in the bank of iron lungs at 5:30 – shocking. Might as well be dead, is my instinctive reaction.

    I’m sure the border struggle at 5:40 is posed – that ‘USA | Mexico’ sign is just too conveniently placed.

    cr

    1. Oops, didn’t realise Reddit would imbed, sorry!

      Also, at 9:26, the flying wing is NOT a Horten Ho229. According to Wikipedia, the Ho229 did indeed have two jet engines, whereas the plane in the photo quite clearly has two pusher propellers. Quite possibly a prototype.

      cr

  11. And while I’m at it, in the second sequence:
    Image 19, at 3:18: Strictly speaking, that’s not a derailment, it’s failure to stop
    Image 23, at 4:03: That pipe certainly isn’t 45,000 tons. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation scaling off the photo suggests around 50,000 lbs.
    Image 32: The Punt Gun was intended, as its name implies, for use on a punt, duck shooting. No person could absorb the recoil. The idea was to bag the maximum number of sitting (or floating) ducks in one go. I doubt PCC would approve.

    cr

  12. I love the one of the marathon dance competition. The expression on the face of the woman on the left holding up her collapsed partner says: “I can’t believe I’m partnered with this loser”.

  13. Failure to stop evidently led to that train leaving the rails (and the station). What is the definition of a derailment?

      1. Generally a derailment implies that the train jumped the tracks (for whatever reason – generally either excessive speed on a curve, an obstacle on the track, or possibly a mechanical failure like a broken wheel). Inherent in that is the implication that, absent derailment, the train would have continued on its way without harm. In fact there have been rare derailments where the derailed wheels have jumped back onto the tracks e.g. at a crossover and the train has continued on its way, and only the flange marks on the sleepers (ties) have proved what happened.

        In the instance in the photo, the train failed to stop in time and crashed out of the end of the station. Either due to excessive speed or brake failure.

        Similarly, if a bridge span collapsed, one wouldn’t normally call that a ‘derailment’, even though the train did leave the tracks.

        cr

  14. At 4:04 is a picture of an early 20th century battleship that used bold black and white stripes as a kind of ‘visual radar’ jamming.
    It is like zebra stripes!

  15. Just a reminder, Ngeo is showing Free Solo tonight. It’s a marvelous athletic achievement.

  16. I was surprised by the photo of the iceberg with the Titanic’s paint on it. I had no idea such a photo existed. I’m a bit of a history buff too. To me, it’s an eerie reminder of how vanishingly insignificant human existence is in this universe. After all the effort, hard work, fanfare, huge amounts of fortune, steel, material and planning for that amazing, colossal ship, an inanimate object from one of the Earth’s natural presses broke off from the northern ice shelf, floated thousands of miles in the Atlantic Ocean, and by happenstance, right into the path of the Titanic on its maiden voyage, sinking it. Then floated around for a few weeks and then melted away.

    I think I’ll speed up my planning for my bucket list.

    1. Personally, I don’t see how paint could stick to ice, how ice could scrape the paint and retain it on its surface, because the friction would inevitably produce some heat, making the surface of the ice wet where it was scraped. It also is my understanding that the part of the iceberg that scraped and tore the Titanic was below the surface of the water. Many icebergs do have dark colours too. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313025/Icebergs-youve-seen-Incredible-pictures-giant-glaciers-black-blue-green-stripes.html

  17. I’m currently reading Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, so these images were particularly poignant for me. I think Pinker is right… we really *have* progressed in many ways. Thanks for the book recommendation, PCCE.

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