Timeless appeal: sexy men with adorable animals, like this American soldier at an Australian military base with his pet kangaroo.
An old-school Los Angeles beach in the days before bikinis.
The mysterious Lucie de Souza Cardoso, striking a pose. Or maybe just stretching after a long day at the office.
1972, hot guys and little critters strike again with this hitchhiker on U.S. 66.
One very deadpan uniformed postal carrier with baby in mailbag. So, that's where babies come from.
Pacific Southwest Airlines flight attendants ready to break hearts at 30,000 feet.
A beach sandman in Florida.
A sponge diver in Florida. That was a noble profession now rendered obsolete by fake sponges. (We assume.)
A possum gets on a camera in 1943, goes on to direct "Double Indemnity."
"Co-eds with hoes," back when that wasn't a double entendre.
Albert Einstein and "others"...everyone is an other when you stand next to Albert Einstein!
An All-American Girls Professional Baseball player gets just as mad with an umpire as a male counterpart in Opa-Locka Florida.
Ridiculously photogenic unidentified solider of the First Australian Imperial Force.
In a less litigious world, a crate of kiddies is loaded onto the HMAS Canberra in 1931.
The Eagle Nebula, known for making viewers start reverently humming the "Star Wars" theme.
Nothin' but a hound dog and Elvis Presley, at the White House.
A man tries to reason with his imaginary best friend in this photograph "Skeleton."
From the Australian National Maritime Museum, a duo as old as photography: baby and dog.
Abraham Lincoln during his Heidi phase. Wait, no! Unidentified Scandinavian man and child. Easy mistake to make.
"The Big Three." You just know Winston Churchill is saying something sassy about Yalta.
3-D moviegoers in the 1950s, looking very pleased with themselves.
"Couple with female spirit." Now off to "wardrobe for fresh underpants."
Smoking doesn't make you look cooler, unless it's a pipe and you are a dog from the early 1900s.
Paradise Glacier Cave in Mount Rainier National Park is supposed to be in this photo, but all we see is hubba hubba hubba.
Of course, this photo is used all the time. A woman with giant pieces of bacon on her feet gliding around a giant frying pan with a giant spatula — now, that's a universal concept.
A sobering view of Berlin in 1937.
A young skater with "safety cushion." Now, why don't they still make those?
Flickr Commons is a tremendous resource for photographs from all over the world, whether you’re using them to spruce up a PowerPoint, make a DIY greeting card or print out a bunch of fake family photos. (You know, so you can pull off an elaborate imposter/inheritance heist or something.) The options are limitless. Let’s be real though; even among a royalty-free collection of photographs mostly from government archives, things quickly boil down to a popularity contest. In honor of the site’s fifth anniversary, Flickr Commons is showing off its most popular free photos — including one of a dog smoking a pipe. See 28 of the best in the gallery above.
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