20 Historical Photos That Will Leave You Breathless

This rather disconcerting photograph was taken of the participants of the Miss Lovely Eyes competition in Florida held in 1930.

We get the idea was supposed to accentuate these lovely ladies’ eyes, but it ends up feeling like a Hannibal Lector appreciation society.

 

This 1917 photo of Soviet planespotters wearing directional sound finders used to listen for enemy planes approaching.

The binocular is apparently focused at infinity so that when you found the source of the sound by turning your head, you could see the aircraft creating that sound.

At first glance, you would be mistaken for thinking these were Mickey Mouse robots.

 

This incredible photograph was taken of the famously flamboyant surrealist Salvador Dali taking his pet anteater for a stroll through the streets of Paris in 1969.

It is thought that Dalí’s pet was an homage to his close friend and collaborator André Breton, the founding father of Surrealism, who was given the affectionate nickname “le tamanoir” (the anteater) by his fellow Surrealists.

I just stick to walking my Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever thank you very much.

 

This photo of ‘Operation Babylift’ was taken by Robert Stinnett for the Oakland Tribune in 1975.

It shows babies, orphaned after the loss of their parents during the Vietnam war, sleeping in cardboard boxes strapped into the seats of a 747 Jumbo jet being transported to the United States.

 

This photograph, taken in 1940, is of ‘liquid stockings’.

Also known as ‘Paint-on Hosiery’, women would resort to this due to a wartime shortage of Nylon by instead applying powder to their legs and use an eyeliner pencil to draw on the fake seam.