50 Historic Moments Photographed For The First Time Ever
This collection captured some of history's most important “firsts." Enjoy!
1. The first photograph ever taken, 1826. It shows the view from the window at Le Gras, Burgundy, France, by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for several hours on a windowsill. The photo was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.
Photo taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
Here's the enhanced version of the photo:
Photo taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
2. First Photograph of a Person, showing the view of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. Photographed by Louis Daguerre, 1838
Wikimedia
3. Oldest Photograph of New York City, showing the Upper West Side, 1848
Sotheby’s
4. First Self-Portrait Photograph, a self-portrait of Robert Cornelius in daguerreotype, 1839
Library of Congress
5. First Photographic Hoax: “Self Portrait as a Drowned Man” by Hippolyte Bayard, 1840
Hippolyte Bayard
6. Oldest Photograph of a US President, the photograph of President John Quincy Adams, 1843
Smithsonian Institution
7. Oldest Aerial Photograph from October 13, 1860, a view of Boston from 2,066 feet in the air
Metropolitan Museum of Art
8. First photograph of people playing chess with Nicolaas Henneman, 1841
allposters
9. First Photograph of an Amputation, April 18, 1847. Belgian surgeon Pedro Vander Linden amputated a leg of Sgt. Antonio Bustos during the Mexican-American War
Wikimedia
10. First Photograph of Drinking, 1844
Metropolitan Museum of Art
11. First News Photograph, also believed to be the first photo of an arrest, 1847
Three Lions/Getty Images
12. First Photograph to Illustrate a News Story: the Barricade in the Rue Saint Maur-Popincourt, June 26, 1848
Musée d’Orsay
13. The first color photograph, 1861
Photograph by James Clerk Maxwell
14. First Photograph of Lightning, September 2, 1882
Photo taken by William Jennings
15. First Photograph of a Tornado near Garnett, Kansas, April 26, 1884
Kansas State Historical Society
16. First Photograph of the Moon captured by John W. Draper from his rooftop observatory at NYC, March 26, 1840
John W. Draper / Greenwich Village History
17. First Photograph of the Sun captured by Louis Fizeau and Leon Foucault, April 2, 1845
National Science Foundation, High Altitude Observatory
18. The Wright brothers' first flight, 1903
NASA
19. First photograph of a fatal plane crash, September 17, 1908
Wikimedia
20. First Photograph from Space, a view of the Earth from a V-2 missile, October 24, 1946
White Sands Missile Range/Applied Physics Laboratory
21. The first photograph inside a hydrogen atom taken using a quantum microscope
FOM Institute AMOLF
22. First Photograph of the Separation Between Binary Stars, resolving the separation between binary stars with the Magellan Telescope
University of Arizona
23. The oldest known photo of Abraham Lincoln, 1840
24. The first public Jewish religious service in Germany held by American troops during the battle of Aachen, 1944
25. LA Dodgers' Glenn Burkes and Dusty Baker perform what it believed to be the first high-five, 2 October, 1977
Wikipedia
26. Henry Ford riding on the first car he built: the Ford Quadricycle, 1896
27. Hannah Stilley, born 1746, photographed in 1840. She's the earliest born individual ever captured on camera.
28. The world's first underwater photo, 1893
29. Sally Halterman, the first woman granted a license to drive a motorcycle in Washington, D.C., 1937
30. The oldest known photograph of a Presidential inauguration taken in 1857 at the swearing in of James Buchanan.
31. Louis Washkansky, recipient of the world's first human heart transplant, in Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, three days after the surgery, December 6, 1967
32. Minneapolis women lining up to vote for the first time ever in a presidential election, 1920
33. The first and only picture taken (so far) from the surface of Venus, 1982
34. The first team photo in baseball history, 1858
35. Madam C.J. Walker, the first woman in America to become a millionaire by her own endeavors.
36. The first bananas to arrive in Norway, 1905
37. Photographs of the first modern Olympic Games, Athens, 1896
38. The first public showing of the bikini, Paris, 1946
39. Otto Lilienthal, the first person to make a successful glider flight, 1894
40. Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to survive going over the Niagara Falls inside a barrel on her 63rd birthday, 1901
41. Construction of the world’s first Ferris wheel for the Chicago world's fair, 1893
42. ENIAC, the world’s first computer, 1940
43. Installation of the first neon sign on the Las Vegas Strip, 1941
44. Sputnik 1, the first satellite, being launched into orbit by the Soviet Union, 1957
45. The first riders of New York City's first subway, 1904
46. Bertha Benz, with the help of her two sons, became the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance - 66 miles, 5 August, 1888
47. Ruby Bridges becomes the first African American to attend an all-white elementary school in the South. She was followed everywhere by US Marshals because of threats on her life, 1960
48. The very first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, 1931
49. The first wheelie ever photographed, 1936
50. Howard Carter and his assistants viewing the sarcophagus of Egyptian King Tutankhamen for the first time in thousands of years, 3 January, 1924
