That's Who?! 44 Rare Photos Of Historical Figures In Their Youth

By John Kuroski

Published November 28, 2017

Updated September 28, 2018

You can probably only picture these famous faces when they were old, but here they are like you've never seen them before.

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Abraham Lincoln

Circa 1846-1847. Age 36-38. (His first known photographic image.)Nicholas H. Shepherd/Library of Congress

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Mahatma Gandhi

1906. Age 36-37.Wikimedia Commons

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Albert Einstein

Circa 1904-1905. Age 24-26.Wikimedia Commons

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Adolf Hitler

Circa 1914. Age 24-25.National Archives

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Mother Teresa

Circa 1928-1929. Age 18.Vittoriano Rastelli/Corbis via Getty Images

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Saddam Hussein

1963. Age 25-26.Laurent VAN DER STOCKT/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

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Richard Nixon

Circa 1930. Age 17.Fox Photos/Getty Images

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Queen Elizabeth II

1952. Age 26.Douglas Miller/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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Joseph Stalin

1902. Age 23-24.Wikimedia Commons

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Hillary Clinton

1969. Age 21.Wellesley College/Sygma via Getty Images

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Stephen Hawking

1965. Age 23.Hawking.org

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Vincent van Gogh

1873. Age 19.Wikimedia Commons

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Vladimir Putin

1971. Age 18-19.Laski Diffusion/Getty Images

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Theodore Roosevelt

1880. Age 21-22.Library of Congress

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Bill Gates

1977. Age 22.Public Domain

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Bill Clinton

1963. Age 16. (Left, shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy.)Arnold Sachs/Getty Images

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Pope Francis

Date unspecified.Jesuit General Curia via Getty Images

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Barack Obama

1990. Age 28.Joe Wrinn/Harvard University/Corbis via Getty Images

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Mark Twain

Circa 1859. Age 24.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

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Sigmund Freud

1872. Age 15-16. (With his mother.)Wikimedia Commons

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John McCain

1965. Age 28-29.Library of Congress

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Winston Churchill

1895. Age 20-21.Imperial War Museums/Wikimedia Commons

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Pablo Picasso

1908. Age 26-27.Wikimedia Commons

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Maya Angelou

1957. Age 28-29.Library of Congress

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Nikola Tesla

1879. Age 23.Wikimedia

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Fidel Castro

1955. Age 28-29.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

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Gerald Ford

1933. Age 20.Gerald R. Ford Library

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

1904. Age 22.Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

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Ernest Hemingway

Circa 1918. Age 18-19.National Archives

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Frederick Douglass

Circa 1847-1852. Age 28-32.Samuel J. Miller/Art Institute of Chicago/Wikimedia Commons

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Calvin Coolidge

Circa 1891-1895. Age 19-22.Wikimedia Commons

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Eleanor Roosevelt

1908. Age 23-24. (With husband Franklin Roosevelt and two of their children.)Wikimedia Commons

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Dwight Eisenhower

1912. Age 21-22.National Archives

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Benito Mussolini

1903. Age 20.Wikimedia Commons

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Thomas Edison

Circa 1878. Age 30.Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons

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Vladimir Lenin

1887. Age 17.Culture Club/Getty Images

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Harry Truman

1912. Age 27-28.National Archives

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Marie Curie

Circa 1886. Age 18-19. (Left, with her sister.)Wikimedia Commons

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Mao Zedong

1927. Age 33-34.Wikimedia Commons

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Herbert Hoover

1898. Age 23.State Library of Western Australia/Wikimedia Commons

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Susan B. Anthony

Circa 1848-1849. Age 28.Wikimedia Commons

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Pope John Paul II

1945. Age 24-25.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

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Muammar Gaddafi

Date unspecified.Stevan Kragujević/Wikimedia Commons

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Nelson Mandela

1937. Age 19.Wikimedia Commons

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From Abraham Lincoln to Albert Einstein to Queen Elizabeth II, some of modern history's most famous faces exist in our minds solely as they appeared in old age. Just try to picture Lincoln, or, say, Winston Churchill or Mahatma Gandhi as a young man and you'll probably come up blank.

Whether it's because these people didn't truly make their mark on history until late in life or because they didn't assume their now iconic appearance until at least middle age, they'll live on in our minds, not to mention the history books, looking old.

But if you've ever been curious about what some of modern history's most important leaders, thinkers, and artists looked like in their youth, take a look at the rarely-seen photos above.

Next, see what some of modern history's most reviled dictators looked like when they were just kids. Then, see 29 images of American presidents when they were young.

author

Based in Brooklyn, New York, John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of expertise include modern American history and the ancient Near East. In an editing career spanning 17 years, he previously served as managing editor of Elmore Magazine in New York City for seven years.

Citation copied

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Kuroski, John. "That’s Who?! 44 Rare Photos Of Historical Figures In Their Youth." AllThatsInteresting.com, November 28, 2017, https://allthatsinteresting.com/famous-historical-figures-young. Accessed August 20, 2025.