22 Archival Photos That Reveal Hidden Pages of History

History in photographs is often much more informative than long descriptions and reflections. It is simply a silent witness of an event that has occurred, important, historical and not so. Often, archival photos capture the lives of ordinary people in the environment of the era in which they lived.

An arrested girl with an arrow in her leg, who apparently tried to escape to avoid being sent to the rubber plantations. There, she faced unbearable working conditions and, if she failed to meet production standards, her hands would be chopped off. Belgian Congo, 1890.

Nevsky Prospect in 1896. Color photograph, St. Petersburg.

The creator of the first parachute, Gleb Evgenievich Kotelnikov, with a dummy on June 6, 1912.

Betty Broadbent 'The Tattooed Venus', Australia, April 4, 1938.

Dagestan, Gamsutl village. Gamsutl is one of the oldest villages in Dagestan, several thousand years old. The last resident of the village died in 2015.

Little Anna having tea with her best friends, a spiny lobster and a baby hawk, UK, spring 1938. Anna's parents were explorers and lived on a small island off the coast of Wales. There was no one else on the island, so the girl had no other playmates.

French soldiers dressed as women entertain their comrades. Maginot Line. Third French Republic. March 1940.

Prambanan Temple, Indonesia. The oldest building, dating back to 850 AD (although there are claims of a later construction of the temple). Excavated and restored in the first half of the 20th century.

The female hippopotamus named Beauty survived the Leningrad siege only thanks to the zoo worker Evdokia Ivanovna Dashina. Every day she brought or carried on a sled 40 buckets of Neva water to fill the hippopotamus's pool, gave her water, warmed her up and always washed her with warm water, and lubricated her skin with camphor oil. After all, when a hippopotamus's skin dries out, it cracks and becomes covered in "bloody sweat."

Beauty received 4-6 kilograms of vegetable and herbal mixture and another 30 kilograms of steamed sawdust to fill her stomach per day. The animal was also very afraid of shelling, and during the raids Evdokia Ivanovna hugged Beauty, lying down with her on the bottom of the pool...

When Evdokia became exhausted, a cry was put out on Leningrad radio: an amazing and rare animal is dying! Then dozens of Leningraders from the Petrograd side began to come every day and bring water for the Beauty. Thanks to the heroism of Evdokia Ivanovna and the help of ordinary people, the Beauty survived in the zoo until 1951.

Demonstration of suits made of water-repellent fabric, 1948, USA.

Brigitte Bardot, Cannes, 1953. And in this photo is the unique house number 95 on Magnitogorskaya Street in Leningrad. What is so unique about it? It was built the other way around! Literally the other way around. Forget about the classic principle from the bottom up: first, a 150-ton reinforced concrete flat roof appeared here. Then, using special hydraulic jacks, the roof was raised to the design level and they began to assemble the fourth floor. Then they raised it and began to assemble the third, and so on.

At the end of the construction, an MI-4 helicopter had to be used to lift and remove the jacks from the roof. There is even a photo of this process. The house was experimental, and its construction was covered in great detail.

The key question that probably arose in your mind is why? Indeed, why all the fuss? The main advantage of this type of construction is that there is no need for tower cranes. After all, bringing them in and installing them is a whole story. If everything is so good, then why hasn’t this method caught on? The thing is that this house has a twin brother on Oktyabrskaya Embankment. And an inspection of that house some time after the end of construction revealed huge shrinkage and significant cracks. They also inspected the house on Magnitogorskaya - there were cracks there too, but nothing criminal. But they decided not to take any more risks and return to traditional construction methods.

Destruction of banknotes of the Grozny Bank, 1995.

Nati Revuelta. Fidel Castro's lover.

Socialist Nati Revuelta was a married woman and a comrade of Castro's in the revolutionary struggle. In 1952, she and Fidel had a stormy affair.

From prison, Fidel wrote to her:

They had a daughter, Alina, who fled Cuba in the 1990s. An aristocrat by birth, Nati sold her family jewels to raise money for the revolution. The Comandante was married, then divorced his wife, but did not take Nati down the aisle. She divorced her husband and never remarried.

Driva Geneve Switzerland watch, with TV, calculator and radio. 1976

Viktor Tsoi performs at the Leningrad Rock Club festival, 1982.

Painting the Eiffel Tower 1932.

US Army nurse Amy Stewart and her teddy bear. Gulf War, 1991.

An unemployed man sold space on his bald head to advertise a sports magazine. Budapest, 1939.

Young black men wearing fashionable suits stolen from clothing stores during the Harlem riots in August 1943.

Entrance to a rural disco, Lithuania, 1990s. Photo by Andrew Maxis.