17 Rarest Photos of Significant Figures In History You Probably Don’t Know

Have you ever wondered what famous historical figures looked like when they were younger? Or when they were not attending official events? Was the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid really that young? Or Abraham Lincoln that tall? Find out what they were really like in some of the rarest photos ever discovered and made public.

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, self-proclaimed mystic and holy man

Rasputin (c. 1869–1916) was a Russian peasant and mystic and visionary who, succeeded in becoming a favorite member of the court of Czar Nicholas II. Rasputin is said to have had healing powers (or so he claimed) and to have helped the heir to the Russian throne, Alexei Romanov, who suffered from hemophilia.

The self-proclaimed mystic and visionary earned his name, Rasputin, due to his debauchery and immorality. In fact, that’s what Rasputin means in Russian: the debauched one. Rasputin was murdered sometime between December 29-30, 1916, before the Russian Revolution. The most famous story goes that after failing to poison him with cakes, and then wine, laced with potassium cyanide, Prince Felix Yusupov, or one of his five aristocratic co-conspirators, shot Rasputin four times then threw his corpse from Bolshoy Petrovsky Bridge into an ice hole in the Malaya Neva. There are a few other theories, but the most likely one is that Rasputin was shot dead the moment he step foot in the Moika Palace.