History takes on a new meaning when famous black and white photos are colorized

The practice of colorizing historical black and white photos is always a subject for debate.

Some believe that images from the past should stay preserved in their original form, while others think it’s a unique way to show what life was like in a particular era.

Either way, the practice is eye-opening and puts us right in the midst of history, rather than looking at a colorless memory from the outside.

Look:

Boxing match aboard the U.S.S. New York, July 3, 1899

Siblings Yvonne, 13, and Alexander, 12, take drink and smoke on yacht near Majorca

An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, 1908

Adolf Hitler with Mussolini’s son-in-law and Joachim von Ribbentrop, attend a Nazi Party rally, 1930s

Soldiers wearing gas masks while peeling onions at Tobruk, October 15, 1941

Captain Walter “Waddy” Young and his crew pose in front of their caricatures on their B-29 Superfortress, November 24, 1944

British tattoo artist George Burchett, the “King of Tattooists”, 1930

Post officers show off their brand-new “Autopeds” scooters, Washington, D.C., 1917

Performer Sarah Vaughan, 1946

Joe Lincoln of Accord, champion decoy maker of New England, 1926

Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia, sling cart used in removing captured artillery during the American Civil War, 1865

A mother helps her child off the trolley on a Broadway in New York City, July, 1913

A black man drinking at ‘Colored’ water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahom ca July, 1939

A young John F. Kennedy immediately after his graduation from Harvard, in the summer of 1940

Times Square, D-Day, 1944

Observer on Iwo Jima, February, 1945

Children watch as their neighborhood is bombed in Minsk, Belorussia. The bombing was part of Operation Barbarossa. June, 1941

Stalin and Churchill in Livadia Palace during the Yalta Conference, February, 1945