Do you like old photos that have been totally forgotten and lost in time?

Old photos are remarkable evidence of how much we humans change over time. We are never the same from one year to the next, and even one day to the next, but if you look at really old photos this fact will be made clear to you without any convincing on my part.

 In 2005 the Smithsonian Institution announced
that it had some never-before published
pictures of the Scopes Monkey Trial which was
dubbed “The Trial of the Century,” The
negatives were discovered after looking through
archival material donated to the Smithsonian
back in 1971. The photo shows William Jennings
Bryan (seated at left) fielding questions from
Clarence Darrow. The heat that summer in east
Tennessee was the worst in memory, so the judge
moved the trial outside the County courthouse
to a cooler venue and to accommodate the
enormous crowds. The proceedings were held on a
platform that had been erected in front of the
Rhea County Courthouse for the benefit of
ministers who wanted to preach during the time
of the trial.

When the photo below  was found,
it backed up the claim that Jonathan is the
oldest living animal on earth. Jonathan was
brought to the small island of St Helena in the
South Atlantic Ocean in 1882 along with three
other tortoises when they were 50 years old.
The photograph above was taken around 1900 and
was recently discovered as part of a collection
of Boer War images. It shows Jonathan, eating
some grass with a Boer War prisoner and guard
next to him. Jonathan was about 70 years old
when this picture was taken which makes
Jonathan approximately 177 years old. I know
many will ask (like me) how they know for sure
that Jonathan was already 50 years old when he
came to the island. Others may ask how they are
sure that the photo of the tortoise is really
Jonathan. The truth is, I’m not sure. I found
this information from several different sources
so I decided to give good ol’ Jonathan the
benefit of the doubt.

  In Anne Frank’s Diary Anne
called Peter Schiff her “one true love.”

In
1940 at the age of 11 she writes ‘Peter was the
ideal boy: tall, slim and good-looking, with a
serious, quiet and intelligent face. He had
dark hair, beautiful brown eyes, ruddy cheeks
and a nicely pointed nose. I was crazy about
his smile, which made him look so boyish and
mischievous.’ For more than 60 years there were
no photographs known of Anne Frank’s childhood
sweetheart. The photo above was discovered when
a childhood friend, Ernest Michaelis, now 82,
came to realize that the childhood friend that
gave him this photograph (before Michaelis had
left Germany for Britain) was the 13-year-old
boy Anne Frank wrote about in her diary.
Interesting Fact: Peter Schiff does not
reappear in the diary until January 6, 1944,
after Anne had been in hiding for more than one
and a half years. After she has a dream about
Peter she writes ‘At that point I woke up,
still feeling his cheek against mine and his
brown eyes staring deep into my heart, so deep
that he could read how much I’d loved him and
how much I still do, and now Peter, my dearest
Peter. I’ve never had such a clear mental image
of him. I don’t need a photograph, I can see
him oh so well.’ The photo of Peter Schiff
along with a note that reads ‘A friendly
memento of your friend Lutz Peter Schiff’ was
donated to the Anne Frank museum by Ernst
Michaelis. Like Anne Frank’s family, Peter’s
family fled Germany for the Netherlands and
died in Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen.

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