THE HEADLESS QUEEN AND OTHER RARITIES

 Note: I originally posted this on one of my old blogs several years ago.

We'll get to the queen later. First, a preliminary photo story.

When I was a teenager in Southern California, my mother had an elderly friend whose husband used to be a European news correspondent during World War II. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the woman gave my Mom a packet of about twenty original, unpublished photos of Adolph Hitler. Most of the photos were taken in Rome during Hitler's visit with Pope Pius XII (the Pope was nearly as corrupt as Hitler - I think there was more than one visit).

Anyway, my mother and I were fascinated with the photos because of their rarity and historical value. 

My father - who never valued anything and was notorious for throwing things away - tossed the packet of photos into a big box of "junk" and  donated it to Goodwill. My Mom and I didn't discover this until weeks later.


I still get sick and disgusted every time I think of the Hitler photos. I might as well mention that the box which went to Goodwill also contained an autographed copy of the novel 1984 by George Orwell which belonged to me.

I've always loved history and I have had a lifelong passion for old photos. I have a large collection of antique photos.

Just for the record - none of the following photos are from my collection. These were all found via the Internet.


Let's begin with the queen.
Off with her head!!

 A photo of Queen Victoria and five of her children (date unknown). For some strange reason the Queen hated how she looked in this photo - - so she personally scratched her head off of it.

I suppose queens have the power and privilege
to behead themselves..... 

This is 94 year old Hannah Stilley.

The photo was taken in 1840.

Hannah was born in 1746!

This makes her the person with the oldest birth date to ever be photographed.

A bird's eye view of Boston in 1860.

Photo was taken from a hot air balloon.

 Abraham Lincoln's granddaughters,

Mary and Jessie.

They were the daughters of Lincoln's son Robert.

A beggar running after the carriage of

King George V and pleading for money.

The King was probably saying

"Why can't these bloody horses go any faster?"

Photo taken in 1920

Russian Tsar Nicholas II, letting his daughter

Grand Duchess Anastasia have a puff

 from his pipe.

Anastasia was fifteen at the time, so the photo was probably taken in 1916.

Tragically, Nicholas, his wife Empress Alexandra, and their five children were executed less than two years later.

 Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan.
Photo taken at Cape Cod, July, 1888.
I love this photo. It's a classic captured in time.

The ice berg that sunk the Titanic. Red paint is visible on it. This photo was taken on April 15, 1912 - from the German ocean liner S.S. Prinz Adalbert

Supposedly the last photo ever taken of the Titanic.
This photo was taken by the Jesuit Priest Francis Browne. Browne was a passenger on the Titanic but got off in Queenstown, Ireland . (That's not a lifeboat in the lower right - it's just a group of curious onlookers).

 

 White Sheets on Ferris Wheel

 The KKK, attending a carnival in Canon City, Colorado, 1925.
When I first saw this photo I thought it was just a "joke". It was a sobering shock to find out it is real.

This is supposedly the very last photo ever taken of Hitler. April 30, 1945.
Taken only hours before his death
(or alleged death - whatever you choose to believe).

 The last photo of Anne Frank

An extremely poignant photo
of Anne Frank and her sister Margot, taken in the attic where they hid before being captured by the Nazis. 

The photo is dated 1942

Anne Frank's father Otto
revisiting the attic in 1960.
He was the only one in the family who survived
imprisonment in the Nazi death camp.

An unrelated but very powerful photo.

This is a menorah in a window on Chanukah
in Kiel, Germany, 1931
defying the Nazi flag outside.

On the verso of the photo is written:
"Judea will live forever"