These 64 Colorized Photos From The Past Will Blow You Away

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.

The Harlem newsboy, originally captured by Gordon Parks.

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.

Booker T. Washington in his Tuskegee University office, 1906.

Picnickers at a Sarasota trailer park, 1941.

Armed troops blocking off a road near an explosion at an oil factory near Texas City, Texas, April 17, 1947.

Frank “Slivers” Oakley, the Baseball Clown, 1904.

General Robert E. Lee a week after surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War, April 16, 1865.

The Luna Park Promenade in Coney Island, New York, 1905.

Louis Armstrong practicing in a dressing room, 1946.

Boys buying flowers in Union Square, New York, 1908.

The Jersey Shore, 1905.

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, 1935.

Women painting World War II propaganda posters in Port Washington, New York, July 8, 1942.

Portrait of a family near Muskogee, Oklahoma during a drought, August 1939.

“Cab Stand” in Madison Square Park, New York, ca. 1900.

Norman Rockwell entering his Stockbridge studio in Massachusetts, 1966.

A man flipping burgers, 1938.

Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, 1939.

Comedian and singer Ernie Hare, expressing his thoughts on Prohibition, ca. 1920.

Portrait of Hall-of-Famer John ‘Muggsy’ McGraw, the legendary manager of the N.Y. Giants from 1902 to 1932.

“An Oasis in the Badlands”, Red Hawk of the Oglala Sioux on horseback, 1905.

College students pile into a Volkswagen Beetle, 1965.

Old Orchard Beach, Maine, 1904.

Tufts University baseball team studio portrait, 1890.

Elvis Presley meets secretly with President Nixon, 1970.

Buses leave in the shadow of the Washington Monument following the March On Washington, 1963.

Brigadier General and actor Jimmy Stewart. Stewart flew 20 combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, and even flew one mission during Vietnam.

Pablo Picasso

Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963, being transported to questioning before his murder trial for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Winston Churchill, 1941.

Albert Einstein, 1921.

Marilyn Monroe

Samurai Training 1860.

Hindenburg Blimp crash.

British Soldiers Returning from the front in 1939.

Joan Crawford on the set of Letty Lynton, 1932.

Country store in July 1939. Gordonton, North Carolina.

Mark Twain in 1900.

Albert Einstein on a Long Island beach in 1939.

Audrey Hepburn

Union Soldiers taking a break 1863.

Charles Darwin

WWII soldiers on Easter.

Clint Eastwood, 1962.

W.H. Murphy testing the bulletproof vest in 1923.

Charlie Chaplin at age of 27 years old in 1916.

Elizabeth Taylor in 1956.

Big Jay McNeely, Olympic Auditorium, 1953.

Babe Ruth’s 1920 MLB debut.

A Washington, D.C. filling station in 1924.

Louis Armstrong plays to his wife, Lucille, in Cairo, Egypt 1961.

Two Boxers after a fight.

1920s Australian mugshots from the New South Wales Police Dept.

Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield.

Brothers Robert Kennedy, Edward “Ted” Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy outside the Oval Office.

Clint Eastwood working on his 1958 Jag XK 120 in 1960.

Cornell Rowing Team 1907.

View from the Capitol in Nashville, 1864.

Baltimore Slums, 1938.

Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels scowls at a Jewish photographer, 1933.

Henry Ford, 1919.

An RAF pilot getting a haircut while reading a book between missions.

Unemployed Lumber Worker and His Wife 1939.

A car crash in Washington D.C. around 1921.

President Lincoln with Major General McClernand and Allan Pinkerton at Antietam in 1862.

h/t: vintag.es, reddit, boredomtherapy