20 Pics That Show Off A Different Side Of The Past

At some point, we may find ourselves digging through photos taken of our older relatives, and while we might find that most of them don't exactly defy our expectations, others might reveal facts about them that they never thought to tell us or might just show us a bizarre scene.

But whether it's because we suddenly learn that grandma was a competitive motorcycle racer in her youth or because we simply don't know what she's standing next to, these moments captured years ago stick out in our minds today. And more often than not, the people who starred in them just end up casually explaining something awesome about themselves before saying, "Oh, I never told you that?"

Here are some of these scenes that made us look at the past a little differently.

Here we can see a cop on a motorcycle pulling over somebody's ostrich-drawn cart.

The uploader said this was because the cart was going too fast, but it definitely seems easier to believe that the idea of this vehicle at all would raise more eyebrows than its top speed.

That said, National Geographic reported that ostriches can run up to about 43 miles per hour. Maybe that was higher than the speed limit in Los Angeles back in 1930.

Even if you don't recognize her face, I'm pretty confident you can guess which of these young girls would grow to be film star Marlene Dietrich.

If you guessed the one at bottom center who seems to be staring into our souls from all the way back in 1916, you've nailed it.

You can't teach that kind of quiet intensity.

This 1984 shot of NBA star Manute Bol goes a long way to show us just how tall he was.

At 7'7'', he would be just a little taller than this stop sign if it didn't happen to be located on a one-way street.

There isn't much we know about this man other than the fact that he took this small rail car from Shelton, Alaska to Nome back in 1912.

But we don't need to know any of that to understand that he found the absolute best way to travel because I'm seeing at least 10 dogs on that thing and they all seem like very good boys.

Although it's different, I'd be surprised if this coconut was the most unusual thing Sean Connery would end up signing for somebody.

Although it's unclear how this little girl ended up on the set of Dr. No while Connery was filming in Jamaica in 1962, she nonetheless talked her way into an autograph.

This photo apparently depicts the uploader's uncle and his classmates on a field trip in South Korea back in 1965.

Although I'm curious to know what exactly they're standing next to, it seems that other commenters couldn't get past how stylish his young friend looked in her cat-eye glasses.

Apparently, we're looking at a telephone engineer maintaining some wires in London back in 1920.

I know workplace safety standards have come a long way in the 100 years since then but it's still baffling to see someone in regular clothes sitting up there like it's no big deal.

Candian geese have a reputation for being aggressive and it looks like they haven't changed a bit from over half a century ago.

Here we can see Constable Cliff Cooper getting harassed by one in Vancouver's Stanley Park back in 1954.

I've had this exact same reaction when one gave me attitude and I wasn't even trying to control a spooked horse at the time.

Although these masks look strange, they were worn for the most serious of reasons back in 1941.

It's unclear exactly how they were supposed to work but these were apparently fire masks that these women hoped would protect them during the London Blitz.

These Catholic priests happened to be brothers and this picture captures them doing something that would end up landing them in jail.

But since Daniel and Philip Berrigan were burning draft records that would have told officers in Catonsville, Maryland which local young men were about to be shipped off to fight in the Vietnam War, it's not hard to see why they believed it would be worth the consequences.

This unusual streetside photo captures the punk band Pure Hell making quite an impression back in 1978.

As Decibel Magazine reported, they made history as the first all-Black punk band after forming in Philadelphia four years before this picture was taken.

Six years after this bizarre traffic stop, these young women toured an unusual cornfield in nearby Pomona.

It's hard to tell what's made of but nothing about this giant corn cob that they're standing beside seems edible.

It's too bad because those kernels look massive.

It often seemed difficult to tell how Alfred Hitchcock felt in a given situation and this bizarre tea party was no exception.

That's not just any lion sitting next to him, by the way. This was Leo, whose roaring introduction to MGMs movies at the time played a major part in making the studio so iconic.

Here we can see a young boy in Toledo, Ohio trying on a coat provided by the Black Panther Party's Free Clothing Program in 1971.

According to PBS, this was one of 60 community programs developed by the Black Panthers to ensure the survival of African-American communities throughout the United States.

As filmmaker Roger Guenveur Smith explained, these included free breakfast programs, shoe, coat, and clothing giveaways, free busing programs that let people visit imprisoned relatives, free ambulance services, and even a sickle cell anemia testing program that served 500,000 people.

You've likely heard some of reggae artist Shaggy's songs but he figures he might never have been able to make them if he hadn't enlisted in the U.S. Marines.

As he told The Boston Globe, "The street taught me how to fire a gun. The military taught me how to balance a check book. The military prepared me for life. I remember being bitten by sand fleas and I couldn’t move. The military taught me how to be comfortable outside my comfort zone."

Moving a piano is certainly an unenviable task but the uploader could definitely tell their dad was hamming it up in this picture.

Although they're unsure whether this took place in the late '80s or the early '90s, I'm personally getting a pretty strong '80s vibe from this scene.

There's a reason why Bill Gates was sitting on this massive tower of paper while showing off a CD-ROM in 1994.

He did this to demonstrate that the CD could hold more information than all of that paper, which only makes me wonder how much paper you'd need to represent what a modern flash drive could hold.

If you lived in London back in 1930, you could pump your gas using this vaguely unnerving model of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.

I might've expected the reason behind this theming to have to do with petroleum production in Egypt but even now, they aren't a member of OPEC.

So I guess that means we're left to assume the pump was built like this "just because."

Although this photo was taken well over a decade ago, it only takes a cursory glance to recognize this busker as a teenage Ed Sheeran.

Reddit | future_beach_bum

Not only does he have a pretty distinct face but there isn't a world of difference between what he was doing back then and what we know him best for now.

These women are apparently dressed up for the first ever Venice Beach Mardi Gras celebration held in 1935.

Reddit | frosty1965

And while you can certainly find some colorful characters on Venice Beach nowadays, I'm happy to report that they're much more likely to try and sell you their mixtape than wear terrifying bobbleheads like these ones.