Living in the digital age also means learning something new every time you go online. It’s all thanks to resources like the Inside History Instagram page, an account dedicated to providing random trivia.
With over three and a half million followers, it has tidbits of information about life, entertainment, current events, and history from all eras.
We’ve compiled a list of noteworthy images from the page. Scroll through them, and you might find an excellent conversation starter.
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#21
This powerful photo shows a young child, dressed in white Klan hood and robe, touching his reflection in a riot shield carried by an African-American Georgia State Patrol trooper during a rally in downtown Gainesville on Sept. 5, 1992.
This photo was taken over twenty years ago by Todd Robertson in Gainesville, Georgia. Seeing his reflection, the boy reached for the shield, and Robertson snapped the photo. The now-retired trooper, Allen Campbell, is staring down at the child, no particular expression on his face. “Me and this kid, neither one, made a choice to be here,” Campbell said. “The state patrol made me come, and his mom and daddy brought him.”
Almost immediately, the mother swooped in and took away the toddler, whom she identified to Robertson as “Josh”. The moment was fleeting, and almost no one noticed it, but it had been captured on film. The two hadn’t met since the photo was shot.
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131points
We live in the information age, and consuming news articles and social media posts is inevitable. Babauta stresses the importance of having a healthy relationship with them.
“The goal isn’t to eliminate all information sources and be shut off from the online world. It’s not to throw out your iPhone or laptop. These tools are incredibly useful and powerful,” he explains. “The idea is simply not to be controlled by them, and to have a balanced life that includes other activities.”
#22
The REAL Indiana Jones. In 2001, Cody Clawson was a 13-year-old Boy Scout when he got lost near Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. He was missing for more than 18 hours and spent the night curled up in a cave.
When he woke up, he heard airplanes and helicopters overhead. Clawson used his belt buckle to reflect the sunlight and they saw it and landed.
The Boy Scout was shocked to see it wasn’t just a search and rescue crew who landed — the pilot was none other than Harrison Ford.
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127points
#23
Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s was a notorious hotbed of gang activity, with notorious figures such as Al Capone and Bugs Moran making headlines with their violent exploits.
During this era, gangsters would go to great lengths to protect themselves from rival gangs and law enforcement, often resorting to extreme measures to stay one step ahead. This 1932 Cadillac is one such evidence of this, and it’s on display in the Historic Auto Attractions Museum in Roscoe, Illinois.
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126points
#24
The largest tunnel is over 2,000 feet long. Some are large enough for cars to drive through – but they weren’t man-made. Giant ground sloths dug them in #Brazil over 10,000 years ago.
The walls of the tunnels are covered in giant claw marks from the floor to the ceiling. Geologists call the tunnels “paleo burrows,” which are believed to have been dug by a now-extinct species of giant ground sloth as big as #Elephants.
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119points
Our brains need decluttering, just like messy office desks. In this case, it’s minimizing your content sources to the essentials.
“You might decide to only read 10 really good blogs instead of 50 ones that take up your attention,” Babauta says. “Your attention matters — you should only give it to the things that make your life better.”
#25
These photographs are powerful: This is the moment Joseph Goebbels, who was Nazi propaganda minister, found out his photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was Jewish at the League of Nations meeting in Geneva in 1933.
Eisenstaedt was a German-born Jew. Not knowing this at first, Goebbels was initially friendly toward him, who was able to capture a photograph showing the evil Nazi in a good and cheerful mood.
However, he soon learned of the Jewish blood flowing through his veins. When Eisenstaedt approached Goebbels for another portrait, his expression was very, very different. Instead of smiling, he scowled for the camera, and the famous photo that resulted shows the man wearing the “Eyes of Hate”.
Here’s what Eisenstaedt later shared regarding experience:
“I found him sitting alone at a folding table on the lawn of the hotel. I photographed him from a distance without him being aware of it. As documentary reportage, the picture may have some value: it suggests his aloofness. Later I found him at the same table surrounded by aides and bodyguards. Goebbels seemed so small, while his bodyguards were huge. I walked up close and photographed Goebbels. It was horrible. He looked up at me with an expression full of hate.
He looked at me with hateful eyes and waited for me to wither. But I didn’t wither. If I have a camera in my hand, I don’t know fear.”
After Goebbels committed suicide at the end of World War II, Eisenstaedt shot an even more iconic photo. On August 14, 1945, he photographed a sailor celebrating Japan’s surrender by kissing a random nurse in #NewYork City. The photo came to be known as “V-J Day in Times Square.”
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118points
#26
It’s weird knowing that we’re living through a pivotal point in history and 99% of us can’t do anything about it.
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114points
#27
During the last Century, the laboratory testing of lipsticks used to involve a group of volunteer women who all participated by kissing one lucky random bald man. His name was Richard Ramsey 💋
This role involved testing different lipsticks by wearing them to see if they caused any negative reactions, essentially setting the stage for modern safety testing standards in the beauty industry.
This role involved testing different lipsticks by wearing them to see if they caused any negative reactions, essentially setting the stage for modern safety testing standards in the beauty industry.
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113points
Many people go on social media diets, which Babauta also advises. It’s more about limiting time spent on social media and overall screen time.
“This limit allows you to use these tools but also have time for other things, and it forces you to decide what’s important within that limit and to use the limited time efficiently.”
#28
A Greek Orthodox monk, Mihailo Tolotos, lived his entire life of 82 years without ever seeing a woman due to the strict rule of the monastery he lived in on Mount Athos, which banned #Women from entering.
A law was passed in 1060 AD banning women and animals from Mount Athos. Even today, only male tourists are allowed inside the monastery and monks are not allowed to shave, bathe, tight, argue and ask what lies beyond the walls of the monastery.
He was abandoned as an infant and adopted by the monastery, and never left the walls of the monastery throughout his entire life.
Despite living in seclusion, Mihailo’s story is a reminder of the strict rules and regulations that governed monastic life in the past.
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112points
#29
A drought that has turned vast swaths of the #American West into a tinderbox and revealed several sets of human remains at the nation’s largest reservoir has unveiled another discovery in #Texas — dinosaur tracks.
Prints mostly left by the Acrocanthosaurus — a theropod that stood 15 feet, weighed 7 tons and roamed the area 113 million years ago — have emerged as the Paluxy River has dried up almost entirely in most parts of Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose.
Under normal conditions, the recently discovered prints are filled in with sediment — a condition that helps protect them from natural weathering and erosion.
The footprints left by a single acrocanthosaurus was an early cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex and had not been seen for more than 20 years.
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112points
#30
On April 23, 1972, Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke made his third and final moonwalk, accompanied by fellow astronaut John Young. During their exploration of the Descartes Highlands with the Lunar Rover, Duke left a unique token on the lunar surface: a photograph of his family.
The photo features Duke, his wife Dorothy, and their two sons, Thomas and Charles, seated on a park bench. Remarkably, for over 40 years, this family portrait, along with Duke’s boot print, has remained undisturbed on the moon.
In a symbolic way, Duke not only brought his family to the moon, but they also stayed there indefinitely.
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103points
