Things From the Past

Nearly 2,000-year-old surgical instruments. Associated with Pompeii’s House of the Surgeon, these tools offer rare evidence of how advanced Roman medicine could be before the city was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Wheelchair made for Holy Roman Empress Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 1740.

Two girls gallop full speed on sheep in Cornwall, England 1969. Photo by John Drysdale.

Martha Stewart, the first female self-made billionaire, modeling for Chanel in the early 1960s.

Raquel Welch, 1971.

The ornate helmet of Ferdinand Hapsburg II, the Holy Roman Emperor. 16th century.

Monica Bellucci for Vogue Hommes fr 1994 shot by Manuela Pavesi

Niagara Falls in winter, early 20th century. Long before mass tourism looked the way it does today, crowds were already gathering to witness Niagara transformed by ice. Scenes like this helped turn the falls into one of North America’s great winter spectacles—where freezing spray, packed snow, and towering sheets of ice could make the landscape look almost unreal.

Earliest known drawings of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner by Chuck Jones, circa 1945.

The graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, who were not allowed to be buried together because of their differing faiths. Netherlands, 1888.

Betty Broadbent, 1938. The 'Tattooed Venus'. Photo by Ray Olsen.

Cat’s Dream, b. 1860, by Louis Wain.

A baby rattle from the 1930s.

Evening cape by Emile Pingat, 1890s. Whitaker Auctions.

Massive swords of Hungarian origin dating back to the 14th century.

Amsterdam, 1967 by Eduard van der Elsken.

Marpessa Dawn being carried and kissed by husband Eric Vander, ca. 1961.

"Léon: The Professional" (1994), what a duo!

An 8,000-year-old marble figurine of a voluptuous woman unearthed in a Neolithic urban settlement in Çatalhöyük, Turkey.

Annette Funicello with her custom-painted, purple 1957 Thunderbird, around 1963.