Up until the 1970s, color photography was extremely rare, and so when we think about history prior to that time, we often envision it in black and white. Today’s technology now enables us to “colorize” historical photos, giving us our only chance at seeing what the world really looked like back then. And it was truly spectacular.Take a trip back in time through these photos below. It’s quite incredible to see Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein in living color.Seeing these photos in color for the first time makes it easy to imagine we could all have been part of a world that we've never even seen. It literally changes our perspective of history.
President Lincoln with Major General McClernand and Allan Pinkerton
at Antietam in 1862
A Washington, D. C. Filling Station in 1924
Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels scowls at a Jewish photographer, 1933
Audrey Hepburn
Mark Twain in 1900
Charlie Chaplin at 27 years old in 1916
Claude Monet in 1923
A Car Crash in Washington D.C. circa 1921
Albert Einstein, 1921
Brigadier General and Actor Jimmy Stewart - Stewart Flew 20 Combat Missions over Nazi-Occupied Europe. He also flew one mission during Vietnam
Pablo Picasso
Elizabeth Taylor in 1956
Alfred Hitchcock
Big Jay McNeely, Olympic Auditorium, 1953
Charles Darwin
Clint Eastwood, 1962
Hindenburg Blimp Crash
British Soldiers Returning from the Front in 1939
Albert Einstein on a Long Island beach in 1939
Samurai Training 1860
Winston Churchill, 1941
Country store in July 1939 Gordonton, North Carolina
Unemployed Lumber Worker and His Wife 1939
W.H. Murphy Testing the Bulletproof Vest in 1923
1920s Australian Mugshots from the New South Wales Police Dept
Marilyn Monroe
Joan Crawford on the Set of Letty Lynton, 1932
An RAF Pilot Getting a Haircut while Reading a Book Between Missions
Babe Ruth's 1920 - Major League Baseball Debut
Clint Eastwood Working on his 1958 Jag XK 120 in 1960
View from the Capitol in Nashville, 1864
Baltimore Slums, 1938
American Poet Walt Whitman, 1868
Louis Armstrong Practicing Backstage, 1946
Girls Delivering ice, 1918
Lou Gehrig, July 4, 1939. Photo taken Right After his Famous Retirement Speech - He Pass Away two years later from ALS
Times Square 1947
Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963, - Transported for Questioning Before
his Murder Trial for the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Helen Keller Meeting Comedian Charlie Chaplin - 1918
Burger Flipper - 1938
Madison Square Park New York City - circa 1900
Union Soldiers Taking a Break - 1863
WWII Soldiers on Easter
Red Hawk of the Oglala Tribe on Horseback - 1905
Boys Buying Flowers - 1908
Oklahoma Farmer During the Great Dust Bow - 1939
Louis Armstrong Plays to his Wife Lucille - Cairo, Egypt 1961
Brooklyn Bridge - 1904
Two Boxers After a Fight
Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield
Brothers Robert Kennedy, Edward 'Ted' Kennedy and John F. Kennedy
Outside the Oval Office
Cornell Rowing Team 1914
Henry Ford, 1919
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