While doing my job researching photos for various stories, I always come across more interesting images than I need, or photos that are unrelated to the story yet are still remarkable, strange, hilarious, or just great shots. The best of those, I’ve been tucking into a folder without a clear plan for future use. Today, I offer a sampling from that folder—a grab bag of historic images depicting space travel, filmmaking, horseplay, and more—from epic achievements to small moments. There isn’t really a theme here today, other than “I thought these were neat photos, many rarely seen, and thought you’d enjoy them as well.”
Weird, Wonderful Photos From the Archives
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Original caption: Professional frogman Courtney Brown tows a 55-foot scale model of the sunken liner Titanic during work on the film Raise the Titanic! (released in 1980.) The screen version of the best-selling novel by Clive Cussler dramatizes an attempt to raise the 46,000-ton wreck of the Titanic, which is 2 1/2 miles down on the floor of the North Atlantic. The model is described as "an exact replica costing $5,000,000." (This replica ship still exists, rusting in bushes beside a water tank at the Malta Film Studios, visible on Google Maps.) #
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Original caption: April 17, 1928—A novel hour of entertainment was recently presented to the radio audience of the nation with the inauguration of the Michelin Hour, presented by the rubber tire manufacturing concern. The orchestra's members are attired in grotesque fashion, as shown above. #
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Original caption: The Boeing Space Center's Visual Space Flight Simulator provides multiple-mission capability. Pilots can fly simulated lunar orbit, lunar landings, or rendezvous missions with another spacecraft. Circa 1960-1970. #
State Library Photograph Collection, 1851-1990, Washington State Archives, Digital Archives -
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Original caption: Chief Thomas K. Yallup, of Toppenish, Washington, chief of the Yakima Indian Tribal Council, visits his son, Cpl. Bill Yallup, who was in training with an army armored unit at the Yakima Firing Center. Cpl. Yallup's "iron horse," an M-48 tank, is one of several roaming the plains where once-proud Indian warriors rode fleet-footed steeds. #
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Original caption: May 27, 1959—Pensacola, Florida: Monkey Baker, an American-born squirrel monkey, was one of the two monkeys which traveled in the nose cone of the Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile launched by the U.S. Army at the Atlantic Missile Range. The monkeys participated in a series of biomedical experiments, which also included tests on certain animal and vegetable matter in support of the National Aeronautic & Space Administration space programs. #
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Original caption: Actor James Garner leads the pack of Formula Ones in a still from the 1966 film Grand Prix, the first film to capture the thrill of the track by mounting a camera on a car. #
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Original caption: Approximately 12 large cargo planes or 40 to 50 smaller aircraft could be hangared in this huge dome-shaped building designed and constructed by Le Tourneau at Longview, Texas, on request from evangelist Billy Graham. It seems that when Graham travels, local facilities have proved inadequate to handle his huge following, hence the portable aluminum "big top" or "semisphere." The building is constructed by first placing the 95-foot center pole with a sliding steel collar at the top, then adding each of the 15 successive rings of aluminum sheets, which are bolted together. This photo shows the interior with parked cars for contrast and the concentric rings showing plainly. #
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Original caption: July 27, 1934—Heimwehr Mobilized. "Ready for Action." Vienna, Austria: All the Heimwehr forces in Vienna have been mobilized and ordered to get ready for immediate action. Armored cars are patrolling the main streets in case of disturbance. #
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Original caption: Looking across the Sahara Desert from the top of the Pyramid of Cheops at sunset, vacationing tourists are shown sightseeing in Egypt. (The pyramid is more commonly called "the Great Pyramid of Giza" today.) #
George Rinhart / Corbis via Getty -
The four sloping legs of the Eiffel Tower undergo construction in 1887 at the Champ-de-Mars in Paris. Civil engineer Gustave Eiffel designed the unique iron tower as a temporary structure for the Centennial Exposition of 1889. Instead of being demolished, it became a permanent fixture and a symbol of the city. #
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Original caption: Burbank, California: Celebrating the harvesting of California's 1930 grape crop, one of the largest on record, society girls of Burbank staged their open-air festival in the famous McClure Vineyards, during which they crowned the 1930 "Queen of the Vineyards" to rule over the $50,000,000 yield. Photo shows Wilma Smith, buried in grapes, eating a sample. #
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Original caption: 1928—Gigantic flame and no smoke! A furious pillar of fire from an oil well causes tremendous losses at Santa Fe Springs, California. The terrific blaze following the blow in of the Bell View No. 1 well in a fabulous rich field. The intense heat has spread destruction to adjacent derricks and the loss has already reached hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is the second severe fire in the field. #
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Original caption: July 17, 1938—Vienna Police lifeboats competed on the Danube Canal in races. During the gathering, two soldiers demonstrated the art of swimming a machine gun along the Danube, spattering bullets as they went. The gun was mounted on a raft, and the two soldiers, using their legs like paddles, drove the craft upstream, demonstrating how simple it is for modern military methods to overcome natural forces such as floods. #
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Original caption: January 28, 1961, Pyramids of Giza, Egypt—American jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong plays the trumpet while his wife sits listening, with the Sphinx and one of the pyramids behind her, during a visit to the pyramids at Giza. #
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Original caption: Future speed demons. At the wheels of their one-horsepower specials, speed aces of 1950 roar around the Indianapolis Speedway, at a 20-mile-an-hour speed. #
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Original caption: November 3, 1957, Moscow, Russia—Called an experienced astronaut, Malyshka, a Russian space dog, poses here in its snug-fitting space suit with a transparent space helmet beside it. Meanwhile, the newly launched Soviet satellite, Sputnik II, circles the earth, carrying what is reported to be a female husky dog, the first living being to roam space. #
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Original caption: Du Mont engineer James A. Craig demonstrates a simple dialing procedure on a completely automatic "dial-direct" mobile two-way radiotelephone system in Clifton, New Jersey, on March 28, 1957. The system, presently used by the Richmond Radiotelephone Service, Inc., is manufactured by Allen B. Du Mont Laboratories, Inc., and is the first radiotelephone equipment to allow phone calls to and from vehicles to be relayed completely unattended through local telephone companies. #
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Original caption: Los Angeles, California, ca 1929—This Looks More like the Loop the Loop. Here's a humpy highway for meandering motorists. It was designed and built by Harry Rocks in Los Angeles, who calls it an "auto thriller" and its unique construction affords a novel trip of 2,400 feet for the autoist who drives his car over its undulating surface. It is shaped like a "U" and supports a speed of 40 miles an hour, although some of the "humps" are ten feet high. This general view of the highways shows the size and construction of his "auto thriller." #
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Original caption: Surprised spectators look on in amazement as Miss Beth Pitt takes her pet fawn, Star Message, for a walk in midtown New York on November 16, 1942. Earlier in the day Miss Pitt paid a fine of $2 in court for letting her pet to roam free in Central Park. #
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Original caption: Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly celebrates Friday the 13th in October of 1939 by standing on his head on a board stuck out from the 54th floor of the Chanin Building, and dunking doughnuts over Manhattan. #
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Original caption: May 8, 1941, New York, La Guardia Field. No, these are not men from Mars, but TWA mechanics and inspectors with propeller hub caps over their heads as they go about spring overhauling chores on the giant transport planes at the airport. #
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Original caption: Miss Amelia Earhart, copilot of the transatlantic plane Friendship, atop the roof of the Hyde Park Hotel in London, getting a view on June 26, 1928. #
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Original caption: An army Sikorsky R-5 helicopter undergoing record trials demonstrates its lifting power by carrying 17 persons and pilot aloft as female onlookers wave in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on January 10, 1946. During the tests, records were claimed for altitude speed and both altitude and speed with payload. #
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Original caption: May 10, 1926 —Commander Richard Byrd, wearing a specially designed leather helmet and mask, used during his flight from Spitzbergen over the North Pole and back. Commander Byrd and Pilot Floyd Bennett used a Fokker Plane, making the trip of 1,360 miles in little more than 15 hours. #
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