We came across this selection of astonishing photos from the past, thanks to Reddit user epicnesshunter. Some of these are absolutely mind-boggling, but what makes most of them so powerful is that they were taken in the past century, just one or two generations away from us.

Wow wow wow.

#1. Woman With A Gas-Resistant Pram, England, 1938

#2. Unpacking the head of the Statue of Liberty, 1885

#3. Elvis in the Army, 1958

#4. Animals being used as part of medical therapy, 1956

#5. Testing of new bulletproof vests, 1923

#6. Charlie Chaplin at age 27, 1916

#7. Hindenburg Disaster, May 6, 1937

#8. Circus hippo pulling a cart, 1924

#9. Annette Kellerman promotes women’s right to wear a fitted one-piece bathing suit, 1907. She was arrested for indecency

#10. Annie Edison Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, 1901

#11. 106-year-old Armenian Woman guards home, 1990

#12. Baby cages used to ensure that children get enough sunlight and fresh air when living in an apartment building, ca. 1937

#13. The original Ronald McDonald, 1963

#14. Disneyland Employee Cafeteria in 1961

#15. Advertisement for Atabrine, anti-malaria drug, in Papua, New Guinea during WWII

#16. Soldier shares a banana with a goat during the battle of Saipan, ca. 1944

#17. Little girl with her doll sitting in the ruins of her bombed home, London, 1940

#18. Construction of the Berlin wall, 1961

#19. Unknown soldier in Vietnam, 1965

#20. Bookstore in London ruined by an air raid, 1940

#21. Walter Yeo, one of the first to undergo an advanced plastic surgery and a skin transplant, 1917

#22. Measuring bathing suits – if they were too short, women would be fined, 1920′s

#23. Martin Luther King with his son removing a burnt cross from their front yard, 1960

#24. Hotel owner pouring acid in the pool while black people swim in it, ca. 1964

#25. Lifeguard on the coast, 1920′s

#26. Artificial legs, UK, ca. 1890

#27. Mom and son watching the mushroom cloud after an atomic test, Las Vegas, 1953

#28. Mother hides her face in shame after putting her children up for sale, Chicago, 1948

#29. Austrian boy receives new shoes during WWII

#30. Hitler’s officers and cadets celebrating Christmas, 1941

#31. Christmas dinner during Great Depression: turnips and cabbage

#32. The real Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, ca. 1927

#33. Last prisoners of Alcatraz leaving, 1963

#34. Melted and damaged mannequins after a fire at Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London, 1930

#35. A space chimp posing to camera after a successful mission to space, 1961

#36. Illegal alcohol being poured out during Prohibition, Detroit, 1929

#37. Princeton students after a freshman vs. sophomores snowball fight, 1893

#38. 23 year-old Evelyn McHale’s suicide – she jumped from the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building and landed on a United Nations limousine, 1947

#39. Suntan vending machine, 1949

#40. First morning after Sweden changed from driving on the left side to driving on the right, 1967

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