While doing my job of researching photos for various stories, I always come across more interesting images than I need, or photos that are unrelated to the story yet still remarkable, strange, hilarious, or just great shots. I tuck the best of those into a folder without a clear plan for future use. Today, I offer another sampling from that folder—a grab bag of historic images depicting land-speed records, underwater photography, Italian elections, a young Princess Elizabeth, a streamlined ferry, and more—from epic achievements to small moments. There isn’t really a theme here, other than “I thought these were neat photos, many rarely seen, and thought you’d enjoy them as well.” This is part of an ongoing series of collections of interesting photos from the past. See the previous entry: Weird, Wonderful Photos From the Archives.
Weird, Wonderful Photos From Another Era
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The Jack Conrad Band bus, built for and featured in the 1935 film Stolen Harmony. The streamlined 36-passenger vehicle was driven by a pilot in the "crow's nest" jutting out over the front bumper, and featured a mighty tail fin above its rear observation deck. #
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Original caption, from April 4, 1934: "The word Si, or yes, fills every bit of this large election billboard, except for the space taken by a huge modernistic conception of Premier Benito Mussolini. The great placard covers the front of the Palazzo Braschi, the most modern of Rome's office buildings and home of the Fascist Party's offices." #
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In orbit are Sister Euphemia (front) and her co-pilot, Sister Michael James, as they ride the Tomorrowland rocket at Disneyland in November 1962. Catholic schools were out on a special holiday, and the park invited students and teachers in a day set aside as Catholic School Day. #
Bettmann / Getty -
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A stuntman takes off in a customized vehicle at Alexandra Palace in London on August 1, 1930. A closer view of the stuntman in midair can be seen here. #
Fox Photos / Getty -
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Original caption: "A blimp casts its shadow over the the water as sailing craft follow the course in the President's Cup Regatta off Hains Point." Photo taken circa 1940, off Hains Point in southwest Washington, D.C. #
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Albert H. Luke (center), an instructor at the Sheil School, advises a student as she operates the controls of a preflight trainer called the "penguin" in Chicago, Illinois, on July 25, 1945. The penguin gives flight students the basic "feel" of flying without leaving the ground. #
Associated Press -
Original caption: "Some of the creatures who make their way down Broadway in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade are enough to faze even a taxi driver. Here, throngs of New Yorkers jamming Columbus Circle gape as a flying fish swings onto Broadway from Central Park West." #
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Original caption: "Thirty feet of water raging towards Beardstown, Illinois, as the levee broke under the tremendous pressure. The Illinois River at flood stage, the highest ever known, rapidly poured in the lowlands at the right. In foreground are the C.B. & Q. railroad tracks. The last connecting link between Beardstown and the outside world, just washed away." Photo was taken on April 18, 1922, by Norman W. Alley of International Newsreel Staff. #
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A diver demonstrates how he took photographs of the wreck of the Royal Navy submarine HMS Thetis by strapping a Leica camera inside his helmet and holding the trigger between his teeth. #
Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis via Getty -
Original caption: "John Otterman drives his cab for the last time. Otterman, 72 years of age, bade farewell to his 25-year-old horse at the end of their last run. Otterman had been driving a cab in New York City for the previous forty years, but the invasion of the taxi and the desire to retire have at last forced him out of business." Photo taken on April 24, 1922, indicating that Otterman began his career around 1882. #
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Original caption, from 1939: "New York—New York Central Railroad Yard. Photo shows three 'Hudson' (4-6-4)-type locomotives, streamlined for the 'Twentieth Century Limited' service." #
Philip Gendreau / Bettmann / Corbis / Getty -
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The motorcycle racer Roland Free lies horizontally on his bike (to reduce wind resistance) as he breaks the world speed record on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats on September 13, 1948. #
Peter Stackpole / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty -
The MV Kalakala ferry operates in Rich Passage in Puget Sound, circa 1940. The Kalakala operated in Puget Sound from 1935 to 1967, then was retired and sold to a fish-processing company in Alaska. After decades of use as a cannery structure, the Kalakala was purchased by an individual in the 1990s and towed back to Seattle, with the intent to be restored as a museum or a working vessel. Years of missed deadlines and financial difficulties followed, and the deteriorating ferry changed hands multiple times, eventually being scrapped in 2015. #
Bert W. Huntoon / Progress Commission Photographs, 1937-1945, Washington State Archives, Digital Archives -
A model of a prehistoric animal at Crystal Palace, London, is given its annual scrub by one of the exhibition staff standing on its back and using a broom in February 1927. #
Fox Photos / Getty -
Silhouetted at twilight, a gigantic sculptured rendition of a Russian robot with its hand raised in a salute, in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, circa 1931 #
Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty -
Original caption from April 12, 1958: "Working hard to recoup recent loses, Italy's Communists are resorting to super-sales techniques to get votes in the national elections, slated for May. One of the gimmicks of the Communist campaign is this auto float on which is mounted a model of the Soviet Sputnik, complete with dog occupant. The float is equipped with flashing lights, music and a microphone and public address system - plus, of course the slogan 'vote Communist.'" #
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Maryln Rich, suspended by a helicopter over the skyscrapers of Manhattan, performs stunts on behalf of the American Relief for Korea organization, on August 27, 1951. #
Library of Congress -
A test subject sits at the controls of a lunar-orbit simulator on December 5, 1961. Project LOLA, or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach, was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface. #
NASA -
Original caption from November 13, 1929: "Jack Reilly, intrepid photographer, precariously perched on the 72nd story of the world's tallest building, the 74-story Bank of Manhattan structure, in progress of construction on Wall Street in New York City. A panorama of New York's prominent business section is seen in the background, with the Woolworth building in the upper left." #
Bettmann / Getty
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