25 photos that will change how you view world history (26 photos)

When you read something about history, be it a memoir, a textbook, or an article, you form your own unique impression of what it was like: your imagination fills in the atmosphere, details, colors, sounds, and smells. And sometimes we can't even really imagine what it was like back then. Fortunately, photography has been around for a good century and a half, making it possible to at least visualize some places and moments that are forever in the past.







A group of tourists sunbathe atop the Great Pyramids of Giza.





A happy Walt Disney on Disneyland's opening day in 1955.



The Titanic's opulent main dining room.



Construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1888.



The shadow of a man after the nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.



The Hollywoodland sign in Los Angeles in 1925.



Construction of the Sydney Opera House in 1973.



Construction of the World Trade Center towers begins in New York City in 1971.



A group of tourists in Las Vegas watches a nuclear bomb test from the front row in 1953.



A couple shows their newborn children to their grandparents on the other side of the Berlin Wall in 1961.



An American Indian on the roof of Alcatraz in 1971, when the prison was overrun by Indians.



The left arm of the Statue of Liberty being reassembled in Paris in the winter of 1882.



The ruined side of the Empire State Building after the impact of a B-25 bomber in 1945.



A Japanese man on a sailboat with Mount Fuji in the background, 1890s.



London in ruins after a German air strike on December 29, 1940.



The empty halls of the National Gallery in London during World War II: all the paintings were hidden from the Nazis.



Fireworks on Red Square in Moscow in honor of the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.



The unfinished Tower Bridge in London in the late 19th century.



Sculpting on Mount Rushmore in the 1930s. By that time, 500,000 tons of granite had been removed from the mountain.



Archaeologist Howard Carter examines Tutankhamun's golden sarcophagus after the opening of his tomb in 1923.



A Hooverville in New York City's Central Park during the Great Depression.



The water at Niagara Falls was turned off in 1969 for soil erosion research.



Men fishing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction in San Francisco in the 1930s.



Madison Square Garden under construction in New York City in 1966.



The Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., without its dome, 1859.