I Just Spent An Entire Month Looking For The Most Fascinating, Mind-Blowing Pictures, And These Are The 50 Best I Found
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1.This is what Chile looks like compared with Europe:
Such a svelte country!
And this is how big Japan is compared with the East Coast of the United States:
Pretty big!
2.This is what Netflix's homepage looked like in 1999, one year after it launched:
What movie are we renting? Think I gotta go with 8MM and Nic Cage.
3.This is what it looks like 16 stories beneath New York City:
Specifically, this is what it looked like in 2013 during construction of the East Side Access tunnel. The project was completed this year.
4.This is the Antonov An-225 Mriya, the largest plane in the world:
Unfortunately, it was destroyed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
5.This picture, taken by Robert Cornelius in 1839, is generally accepted as the first "selfie":
Basically, he probably took the first self-portrait ever. Bob had to sit for 15 minutes to get this picture.
6.Speaking of which, Buzz Aldrin took humanity's first "space selfie" while on a spacewalk in 1966:
Never heard of a "space selfie"? Well, it's got its own Wikipedia page.
7.This is Norma Smallwood, the winner of the 1926 Miss America pageant:
Try as he might, old Calvin Coolidge couldn't rig the contest for his wife, Grace.
8.In 1972, astronaut Charles Duke left behind a picture of his family on the moon's surface. It's been there ever since:
The back of the photo reads, "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth, who landed on the Moon on the twentieth of April 1972."
9.This is how big a moose is compared with a van:
REALLY BIG!
10.Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system, the 72,000-foot-tall Olympus Mons:
It's over 372 miles wide. That's bigger than Arizona.
Here's a computer illustration of what Olympus Mons looks like from space:
11.There's a golf course right next to the Great Pyramid of Giza:
In 2009, a round there cost $15.
12.This is what $1,600 in $1 bills looks like:
They were collected as tips.
13.The "American section" of a German grocery store contains a lot of popcorn, hot sauce, and mustard:
The food trifecta our nation was built upon.
14.This is what salt looks like under an electron microscope:
Would love to play some microscopic craps with two salt crystals.
15.This is what a gym looked like two centuries ago in 1831:
Just people living in the moment, climbing ropes, and dueling.
16.This is the iconic log cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809:
This would sell for $19 million in Lake Tahoe today.
17.This is how big the Hubble Space Telescope is compared with a few human beings:
This was taken in 1989, when the telescope was being prepared to be shot into space. Smaller or bigger than you thought?
18.Easter Bunny costumes were absolutely horrifying in the 1950s:
This picture from 1957 will forever haunt my dreams.
19.In the '60s, you could buy a mail-order squirrel monkey for $18.95:
Not great, folks! This truly awful sale would run you about $193 today.
20.This is what a slice of meteorite looks like:
Would love to get some pico de gallo on that forbidden space chip.
21.This is what the end of a rainbow looks like:
22.NASA's James Webb Space Telescope just took some brand-new pictures of Uranus. Here's what one of the new photos looks like:
Shiny! Fresh! Uranus!
23.While we're at it, here's another new picture from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, this time of Neptune:
Poseidon would love this.
24.There's a bridge specifically for crabs in Christmas Island, Australia. A crab bridge. A cridge:
Millions of these crabs migrate every year, and this bridge keeps 'em safe.
25.This is what Leonardo da Vinci's “The Last Supper” looks like in person:
Not sure what I expected, but it's definitely smaller. More like "The Last Amuse-Bouche," am I right?
26.This is what a medieval toilet looked like on the inside of a castle...
...and this is what it looked like on the outside:
Quite literally a poop chute. Look out below.
27.This is what a soda bottle looks like before it's inflated and filled with liquid:
It's so adorable.
28.This is a picture of a lifeboat filled with Titanic survivors being rescued and brought aboard the Carpathia following the sinking of the ship:
29.Kiwi eggs are absolutely huge:
Compared with a kiwi, that is.
30.In 1909, pigs finally flew. Icarus the pig (right) went on a short flight with John Moore-Brabazon and finally did the impossible:
You'll notice Icarus emanating nothing but positive vibes.
31.This is what a first-class seat on Singapore Airlines looks like:
Would love to drink nine beers here.
32.John Quincy Adams was the first US president ever photographed. Here he is in 1840, more than a decade after his presidency:
Would not love to drink nine beers with John Quincy.
33.This, my friends, is what a perfectly spherical egg looks like:
Truly awe-inspiring.
34.Speaking of eggs, horn sharks have very cool spiral egg cases:
I mean, I think they're cool. You may not. Let's just remember that I am the one with the peanut brain here.
35.This is the world's first skyscraper, the 10-story Home Insurance Building, which was located in Chicago:
The absolutely gargantuan skyscraper was built in 1885 and torn down in 1931.
36.This is what a kidney stone looks like under an electron microscope:
(Old-timey cartoon character getting their finger caught in a mousetrap voice) YEEEEEEE-OUCH!
37.This is Jack the baboon, a South African baboon who worked as a signalman at a railway station in the 1800s. During his almost decade of railway work, Jack never made a single mistake:
He was paid "20 cents a day and half a bottle of beer weekly." RIP, Jack.
38.This is what the moon looks like in the Northern Hemisphere...
...and this is what the moon looks like in the Southern Hemisphere. It's upside down:
Well, I guess that just depends on the moon you lived your life with.
39.This, to scale, is how far apart the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are:
FYI, the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across.
40.This is what the line to the summit of Mount Everest looks like:
Does not seem stressful at all. Nope, not at all.
41.This is Ahmet Ali Çelikten, a man who is generally considered to be one of the first Black pilots — and perhaps the very first:
He first flew for the Ottoman Empire in World War I. His contemporaries included Eugene Bullard, the first Black military pilot from the United States.
42.This 2,000-year-old Roman shoe looks like it could've been made today:
Air Cicero? Air Crassus? Air Caligula? Yeah, Air Caligula.
And this is what the bottom of that shoe just might look like:
EXTREME GRIP.
43.Yes, 45-foot-long phone chargers exist:
44.Fiat once had a car factory with a working test track on the roof:
The building and the track are still there; you just can't perform the incredibly safe act of driving cars on a roof anymore. Bummer.
45.This is what stem cells look like after they've been collected and are ready to be transplanted:
Apparently they "smell like creamed corn." Yum!
46.The head of one of Portugal's first and most notorious serial killers, Diogo Alves, was preserved in a jar after his death for "scientific study":
Diogo Alves killed over 70 people in the 1800s, mostly by pushing people off an aqueduct to their death.
47.Fingers with nerve damage won't prune:
48.This is what the base of a wind turbine looks like before it's filled with concrete:
Big! Very big!
49.This is the note former president George H.W. Bush left for incoming president Bill Clinton in the White House after Clinton defeated him in the 1992 presidential election:
It reads:
"Dear Bill,
When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.
I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.
There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I'm not a very good one to give advice; but just don't let the critics discourage you or push you off course.
You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.
Your success now is our country's success. I am rooting hard for you.
Good luck — George"
50.And, finally, this is a Javan rhino, an extremely endangered species of rhino of which there are only about 76 left on Earth:
In actual good news, 10 years ago, there were only 50 Javan rhinos. As you can tell by his smile, my man up there is doing work.
