10 Stunning Events Caught on Film or Tape Before Cell Phones

It seems that when anything happens—good or bad—people are ready with their smartphones to immediately capture the moment. From wedding proposals to funny animal videos to people going wild, there isn’t much that people aren’t willing to film and share online. Even user-generated content is commonly used on television newscasts. However, even before the first cell phones with cameras were introduced to the masses in 2002, members of the public captured stunning moments on film or tape.

Ten examples of this are listed chronologically below.

Related: 10 Rare Events Photographed By Sky-Gazers And Satellites

10 Mark Twain, 1909

Thomas Edison and Mark Twain appear to have met in 1888 when Twain stopped by Edison’s lab in New Jersey to get a first-hand look at the newly invented phonograph. He briefly used such a device to help him write some of his books. Later, during a 1909 visit to Twain’s home in Stormfield, Connecticut, Edison captured the only known film of Twain. The inventor filmed the author for about one minute and 48 seconds meandering about the house and playing cards with his daughters Clara and Jean.

Twain seemingly had a curiosity for other inventions; he was among the first to use a typewriter and have a phone set up in a private home. He even made some recordings on a phonograph.^[1]

9 Amelia Earhart, 1920s

Harold Trott, a doctor from upstate New York who was also an avid aviation fan and co-owner of Amelia Earhart’s plane, captured her on film. This was perhaps during the ceremonies that commemorated the opening of Woodward Airport near Rochester, New York, in January 1929.

If that New York event is indeed where Earhart was captured on film, she was in the early stages of her fame. The summer before, she had become the first female passenger on a transatlantic flight that took her and two male co-pilots from Newfoundland to Wales. Later that same year, she wrote a book about the experience, endorsed several products, and became a magazine’s aviation editor. In 1937—in the pilot’s seat this time—she and co-pilot Fred Noonan disappeared during an attempt to fly around the world.^[2]

8 Lindbergh Baby, 1930s

In March 1932, shortly before the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh making his historic solo flight from New York to Paris, his 20-month-old son and namesake was kidnapped from the family’s home in New Jersey. Home movies of the toddler were included in newsreels about the kidnapping, marking the first time such a combination of film sources was used for news purposes.

Unfortunately, the use of the home movies did not yield the younger Lindbergh’s safe return; his remains were found less than 5 miles (8 kilometers) from his home in May 1932. In February 1935, carpenter Bruno Richard Hauptmann was found guilty of first-degree murder in the toddler’s death and was executed about 14 months later.^[3]

7 Hindenburg Crash, 1937

In 1937, a German passenger airship—LZ 129, known commonly as the Hindenburg—caught fire and crashed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 people. Recently, a researcher revealed that a man named Howard Schenck had used a Kodak 8-mm wide-angle lens camera to film the airship that same day on its final descent a bit sooner than the news crews.

Most believe atmospheric electricity released near a hydrogen gas leak caused the Hindenburg fire and crash. However, the point of view that the Schenck film provides has led at least one person to speculate the disaster occurred when the ground crew dropped the airship’s ropes to the ground from a higher altitude than protocol called for, causing sparks that began the fire that led to the crash.^[4]

6 Anne Frank, 1941

Millions are familiar with the story of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager whose diary was turned into a 1947 book that described how she, her family, and several others hid in an attic in the city of Amsterdam from the Gestapo during part of World War II. Millions also know the tragic epilogue that she was ultimately discovered and did not survive the Holocaust.

Not all those who read the book are aware that Anne was captured in a 1941 film after she poked her head out of a window to get a glimpse of a bride and groom walking near the house she lived in immediately before she and her family went into hiding. In 2005, the house Frank was living in at the time she was filmed became the home of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.^[5]

5 JFK Assassination, 1963

On November 22, 1963, dressmaker Abraham Zapruder intentionally stepped outside with his wind-up Bell & Howell Zoomatic in hand and unintentionally into history when he captured then-President John F. Kennedy on film being fatally shot. In the days following the assassination, Life Magazine paid Zapruder $150,000 for the film and rights. In 1975, the film was returned to the family; they paid $1 for it. Three years later, the film became part of the National Archives collection.

Orville Nix was using an 8-millimeter camera in Dallas that fateful day. He captured the limousine carrying Kennedy near the Texas School Book Depository and the shots that killed him as the limousine headed down Elm Street. Like Zapruder, Nix sold his film. Unlike Zapruder, however, the buyer was United Press International, and he was paid $5,000.

In 2015, Nix’s granddaughter unsuccessfully sued the National Archives and Records Administration when the entity could not provide her with the original film. Another 8-millimeter film taken by Dale Carpenter on that fateful day showed the limousine containing Kennedy rushing toward the hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead. This film apparently remained in the family’s possession for years and was put up for auction in September 2024.^[6]

4 Ogopogo, 1968

Hundreds of years after the first sighting of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, Native Americans living near the Okanagan Lake in Canada reported seeing a dark green humped creature. It was generally described as being 1–2 feet (0.5 meters) in diameter and anywhere between 15 and 70 feet (4.5 and 21 meters) in length. Eventually, the creature was given the name Ogopogo.

Other eyewitness accounts followed, and in 1968, Arthur Folden captured something breaking the same lake’s surface on film and believed it was Ogopogo. However, a 2005 analysis determined that Folden had likely, but not definitively, filmed a beaver or a waterfowl.^[7]

3 Challenger Explosion, 1986

Not long after optometrist Jack Moss pointed his Betamax camera toward the Challenger space shuttle in the sky from the yard of his second home in Winter Haven, Florida, on January 26, 1986, his wife Mildred noticed the same object had broken in two. Soon after, the couple realized, as did millions of others, that the shuttle had exploded, killing everyone on board. Investigators later determined that the cold weather preceding Challenger’s takeoff caused a seal between two lower segments of a right-hand solid rocket booster to fail, allowing hot exhaust gas to escape from inside the booster as the shuttle climbed in the sky.

The existence of the Moss tape remained largely unknown until December 2009, when Jack—shortly before he died—donated it to a nonprofit educational organization near his primary home in Kentucky. The Space Exploration Archive digitized the tape’s contents and released them to the public around the 24th anniversary of the disaster in 2010.^[8]

2 Stockton Arson, 1988

In 1989, a family found a tape wrapped in a military jacket in Stockton, California, that contained a house fire and narration consisting of what some considered satanic overtones.

A subsequent investigation yielded approximately 1,600 tips and ultimately led to the arrest of two males on suspicion of arson in a fire that had occurred the year before in nearby Redwood City. Both were minors when the arson was committed and tried as such. One was sent to a juvenile detention facility, while the other was sent to a state mental hospital.^[9]

1 Rodney King Beating, 1991

When police sirens, lights, and a helicopter woke up Los Angeles plumber George Holliday shortly before 1 a.m. on March 3, 1991, he took the Sony camcorder he had recently bought and headed outside. There, he taped some of the source of the chaos unfolding less than a football field’s length from his home. Later analysis determined the tape contained recent parolee Rodney King—who was pulled over for speeding moments before Holliday started taping—lunging at several of that city’s law enforcement officers and some of those officers beating, tasing, and kicking him.

In response to the incident, four members of the Los Angeles Police Department—Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, and Stacey Koon—were charged in state court with assault and excessive use of force charges. When they were found innocent of those charges, several days of riots occurred in the area that left dozens dead and hundreds of buildings looted, damaged, or destroyed.

While King filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles regarding the beating and received a $3.8 million settlement, Powell and Koon were found guilty at a second trial of violating King’s civil rights. Wind and Briseno were found innocent at the second trial.^[10]