Historical Photos To Blow Your Mind: New Release!

Norwegians Receive First Ever Shipment of Bananas

Are you bananas about bananas? This popular fruit was once a novelty in parts of the world where it didn’t naturally grow. This 1905 photo shows the first banana shipment that was ever sent to Norway. It weighed a whopping 3,000 kilos and came in crates. One of the people depicted is Christian Matthiessen, the founder of Norway’s largest fruit importer, Bama.

Norway was ahead of the curve when it came to importing bananas. After the United Kingdom, they were the second country to import the tasty fruit. The bananas in the photo aren’t the same kind we eat today. That variety was wiped out in the 1950s by a fungus; the variety was said to have a unique fragrance.

Tolstoy Tells a Story

Here’s Leo Tolstoy telling a story to his grandchildren in 1909. Hopefully, the story was a little bit shorter than War and Peace. Tolstoy had a large family. The Russian author married Sophia Andreyevna Behrs in 1862 when she was 16 years his junior. Together, they had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood.

He also had six grandchildren, five of whom were his son Illya Tolstoy’s children: Anna Tolstoy, Illya Jr. Tolstoy, Andrei Tolstoy, Vera Tolstoy, and Mikhail Tolstoy. Tatyana Sukhotina was the daughter of Tatiana Sukhotina-Tolstaya. This quiet family moment shows a different side of the serious, classic author.