First Photos and Videos of Rare Natural Phenomena

It was a stormy night over Philadelphia on September 2nd, 1882, and a man by the name of William Jennings saw it as an opportunity. Jennings was a pioneer in technical photography, who often experimented with new techniques, including flash shutters and dry plates. He was particularly interested in instantaneous photography. During the storm, Jennings came up with an idea. What would happen if he set up his camera towards the thunderstorm itself? Since lightning is so bright, could he potentially capture a photo of it? Something that had never been done before. So he carried his big, bulky camera all the way up to the top of the roof, set it up, and waited. Suddenly, a massive lightning strike. Jennings quickly took the plate back inside, developed it, and saw this. The first ever photograph of a lightning bolt. Not only was it the first photo of lightning, it's also a pretty sweet looking lightning strike. It's a slightly rare form of fork lightning. This was a big deal. First of all, obviously, people knew that lightning existed. A lot of people had seen lightning before, but no one really knew what it looked like. It's so fast that you're like, wait, what did I see again? I know it was like a line in the sky. In fact, textbooks and various scientific literature at the time did feature diagrams of lightning, but they were actually super inaccurate. They were too smooth or they didn't branch out enough. They weren't quite the real thing. I mean, look at these old paintings featuring lightning. They kind of resemble lightning, but in reality, lightning doesn't actually look like that. But after Jennings' iconic 1882 photograph, people really began to know the true structure of lightning. Jennings continued to produce lightning photographs throughout the latter half of the 19th century, and these photographs proved to be vital for scientific research. When it comes to natural phenomena, an actual photo means everything. Picture or it didn't happen. I mean, for real though, there are actually many cases of natural phenomena where people didn't even believe it actually existed until there was photographic proof. Some natural phenomena was in the same category as ghosts, even tornadoes. People were like, are tornadoes even real? There's some people out in Kansas that say they're real, but I've never seen it. It must be made up. But it turns out once they got photographic proof of tornadoes, people were like, okay, tornadoes are real indeed. This happens even to this day. In fact, only a few months ago, one of the best video evidences for ball lightning came out. Some people, even experts, didn't believe ball lightning actually existed in nature. But after that video, people are beginning to believe. So yeah, photographic evidence is important. Video is important. And that's the topic of today's video. The very first photos and videos of different natural phenomena. We're going to talk about all sorts of things. We're going to stay in the atmosphere. We're going to talk about electrical stuff like aurora, even geological things like volcanoes and earthquakes. We're going to cover all of it in today's video. But before we get to that, have you ever sent a private message to the wrong group chat and then instantly regretted it? That's what browsing the internet without protection is like. Your personal information, searches, and even passwords are just out there for anyone snooping to see. That's where today's video sponsor, PIA, Private Internet Access, VPN, comes in. So what is a VPN? A virtual private network creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. It hides your IP address and shields your digital life from hackers, your internet provider, or even government sensors. Without it, connecting to Wi-Fi at the airport, a coffee shop, or even at home is basically leaving the door wide open to your personal data. 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What was the very first video of lightning? Well, according to my research, the very first video of lightning came in the late 1890s from Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison was into filmmaking, and he was also into lightning, so it kind of makes sense. Unfortunately, I cannot find any copies of this footage anywhere. In fact, the earliest footage I could even find on the internet of lightning in general was a shot of man-made lightning from the British Pathé. Another classic atmospheric natural phenomenon is, of course, the rainbow. In order to capture a decent photo of a rainbow, you kind of need colored film. So I couldn't find any black and white photos of rainbows, plus taking a black and white photo of a rainbow doesn't really make sense. But there is a photo from 1906 of a rainbow in the Grand Canyon. This is the oldest verified photo of a rainbow in color. It was taken by Arnold Genthy. Also quite colorful is the aurora borealis, or northern lights. But we actually do have black and white photos of aurora from the 1800s. This photo was captured by Martin Brendel in Norway. It was captured on January 5, 1892. Only a month later, he was able to capture this photo, which is slightly more impressive, in my opinion. In terms of colored photos of aurora, well, there were probably a few in the early 1900s. I couldn't find any. But some of the very first significant colored photos of aurora came in 1953 in northern Canada from J.R. Eyerman. And look at these photos. This one looks like a bird. You see that? It's like a bird perched on a stick or something. That's crazy. Next up is brock inspectors. And I cannot find anything about brock inspectors. I don't know what the first photo of a brock inspector is. By the way, a brock inspector is a type of glory around your shadow that you can see sometimes if your if your shadow is being casted down on some clouds. Happens a lot to planes, actually. But if you're like on the edge of the clouds, you can kind of see like a ghostly figure, kind of a creepy natural phenomenon. But I could not find any early first photos of this. There are lots of sketches, though, which are pretty interesting. Scratch that. I actually did find an image of a brock inspector from 1933 that does claim to be the first ever image of the natural phenomenon. It's a pretty eerie image. It's kind of sketchy looking. This was taken in Germany, and the author is unknown. It might actually be the first photo of a brock inspector. Who knows? Either way, this is a really old photo of one. Moving on to the rainbow's less famous cousin, the sundog. And I love sundogs. Sundogs are sweet. And we're not just talking about sundogs. We're also gonna talk about halos and other arcs and stuff like that. Similar to the brock inspector, I couldn't find a verified first photo of a sundog. But there is this painting from 1535. Apparently back in 1535, there was some ridiculous halo arcs sun display up in the sky, and they made this painting of it. So technically not a photo, but pretty cool. Similar to the sun pillar is the green flash, the elusive green flash. Now this is one of those natural phenomenons that weren't 100% sure was actually real until they had a photo of it. And they didn't capture a good photo of it until 1925. It was a black and white image, but it still proved that they did indeed exist. This was captured by El Redo, featured in the magazine La Nature. But since we're talking about green flashes, keyword green, which is a color, we should probably talk about colored photography. And the very first colored photo of a green flash was in 1960 at the Vatican Observatory. This was captured by D.K.J. O'Connell. There have actually been a few natural phenomenons, phenomenas, phenomena that have been recently discovered due to social media. One example is Steve. It's a rare type of aurora. There were rumors about Steve before social media, but once people actually took photos and shared them online, the scientific community was finally like, oh, this might actually be a real thing. Same is true with the elusive crown flash. I've talked about the crown flash before. It's one of the weirdest things. It kind of looks like a beam coming out of a cloud. Before social media, before people shared videos of it online, people weren't actually sure if it existed. The scientific community was like, hmm, not sure if this is real. But since we have actual video of it now, everyone believes that it's a real thing. Moving on to tornadoes. Who doesn't love tornadoes? If you follow this channel, you probably know that I mostly talk about tornadoes. I've talked about this before, but the very first photo of a tornado is sometimes confused with this photo. This is a photo that was taken in August of 1884 in South Dakota. But this is not actually the first photo of a tornado. The first photo of a tornado would actually occur earlier that year in April near Garrett, Kansas. I will say that the South Dakota tornado photo does seem a little more robust compared to the Kansas one. The Kansas one looks like it's kind of roping out. It almost looks like a smokestack way off in the distance. But either way, this is technically the first photo of a tornado. If you want to talk about first video of a tornado, you have to go to 1933 in Cuba. This was a very, very weak hurricane spawned tornado right off of the coast. It was captured by the British Pathé. A pretty interesting video, but if you want to find the best decent video of a tornado, you have to go all the way to the 1950s. John Gossin of Corn, Oklahoma, captured this motion picture of a tornado in 1951. Since there wasn't really any video of tornadoes at all, this video right here was used all the time in like safety videos and random informational videos. Not a bad video either. The other thing about old tornado videos and photos is that they look so creepy. They are so eerie. I did another video on this. I don't know. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, check out my channel. But we're moving on. This next entry is the hurricane. This to me is actually pretty interesting because think about it. If you're in a hurricane, you're on the ground. You're going to capture a couple clouds in front of you. No. If you want to see the whole structure of a hurricane, you got to be in space, which means that the very first true photo of a hurricane with the eye and everything came from a satellite. The very first photo of a hurricane was of Hurricane Esther in 1961. And here it is. Look at that. We had some radar imagery of hurricanes, so we had an idea of what they looked like. We weren't just like completely like, whoa, that's crazy. That looks like Jupiter's eye, but on earth. We weren't that thrown off by it, but still pretty sweet to see it in its true formation. This next one is pretty interesting because it was kind of a discovery. It's always cool when you discover a new natural phenomenon through a photography or video. And we're talking about upper atmospheric lightning, specifically red sprites and blue jets. These things are ridiculous. I didn't know they existed until like five years ago. And when I found out they existed, I was like, holy buckets, that's sweet. Anyway, the very first photo of a red sprite occurred at the University of Minnesota in 1989, and it was captured on accident. People saw this and they were like, oh, what is that? What is going on? Unidentified aerial phenomenon, a true UAP. And then in 1994, we got the first footage of blue jets and red sprites from the U.S. Air Force. Speaking of elusive lightning, what about ball lightning? So unfortunately, I could not find the first photo of ball lightning. According to what I read online, it was released in 1896, but there's no example of this picture online. The oldest photo I could find was this, which is a supposed photo of ball lightning in 1950, but I am skeptical that it's real. In terms of video footage, I don't even know what to show because there's so, so many fake videos of ball lightning out there. They're all over the internet. But there is one video that came out recently. I didn't get permission to use it, so I'm not going to show it. But look it up. The link is in the description. We're moving on to chapter two, space. Space has all sorts of strange phenomena. Perhaps the most famous, at least in history, is the comet. It's believed the very first image of a comet came on September 27, 1858, and was captured by William Usherwood. Unfortunately, that photo has not survived or it's lost media. Since we don't have an example of the very first photo of a comet ever taken, here is an old photo of Halley's Comet in 1910. Photography is often used to discover comets. Sometimes you take a picture of the night sky zoomed in really close, and then you take another photo a few hours later, and if anything moves, it could be a comet. The very first photo to discover a comet came in 1892, and it was of Kind of a blurry photo, but still pretty interesting. Similar in terms of appearance to the comet is the meteor, aka a shooting star. Shooting stars are kind of like lightning. They are very quick, very difficult to capture on film. It didn't take very long after the first photo of a lightning strike for the very first photo of a meteor to appear, which was on November 27, 1885. It's this little faint guy right here. One of the most famous natural phenomenon events of all time is the solar eclipse. The very first photo of a solar eclipse was captured in Prussia. It was captured on July 28, 1951. More than just the first photo of a solar eclipse, this is the first photo of a solar corona, the atmosphere of the sun, and it's the first photo of solar prominences. These are big plasma ejecta coming out of the sun, which is sweet. This right here is the very first video of a solar eclipse. It was captured by Neville Miskellen on May 28, 1900 in North Carolina. I actually do want to spend some time talking about impact craters because it took the invention of photography and airplanes, aerial photography, to actually confirm the existence of many of these throughout our entire globe. One great example is the Wolf Creek Crater in Australia. This has been known by the natives for a long time. They didn't know it was an impact crater, but it was a special site. It wasn't until aerial photography in the 1940s that scientists were like, wait a second, what is that thing? That looks like an impact crater, and indeed it is an impact crater. Speaking of impact events, one of the craziest natural phenomenon, the lightning, jeez, scared me. One of the craziest natural phenomenons ever captured via photography was a comet impacting Jupiter in 1994. This is the first and only time such an event has been captured on film. I'm of course talking about comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacting the surface of Jupiter. This comet actually broke up into several smaller pieces, and then each one of these pieces bombarded the surface of Jupiter. We even have an image of the atmospheric fireball. This might be the largest explosion, if we're not talking about supernovas, but this might be one of the largest explosions ever documented. Not only did we capture the fireball, we also captured the massive scars on the surface of Jupiter. These are earth-sized holes in Jupiter's atmosphere. Insane. Anyway, we're going to go back to planet Earth with chapter three, geology. We're going to start off with volcanoes. What's the first photo of a volcanic eruption? There's a little bit of controversy. No one's exactly sure. Some people say that it could be this photo captured in the 1880s. There's also this photo captured in 1855 by Hugo Stegenwald. It's the earliest known photograph of Hawaii's prominent volcano. It looks like a few lava fields, but I am not interested in photos. I'm interested in video when it comes to volcanoes because you really want to capture the big boom. There is footage of Vesuvius erupting in 1906, but it's not the greatest footage. It's very brief, and it doesn't really show that big boom event. It just shows some debris being expelled from the side of the mountain. If we move forward to 1915 with Mount Lassen in California, we actually have some pretty decent video footage of it erupting. Check it out. Somewhat related to volcanoes are geysers. The very first photo of a geyser was from 1871, and it was of Old Faithful. It's captured by Thomas J. Hine. In that same year, William Henry Jackson also captured many photos of Old Faithful, and they are a bit higher in quality. Now earthquakes are kind of a difficult thing to photograph because it's really just the shaking, but technically you do get little fault ruptures, little cracks in the ground. You know in movies when there's an earthquake, and also in the ground splits, and they're like, you know what I'm talking about? The earliest photograph that I could find of a fault line or a little crack in the ground came from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but in terms of video, that hasn't been captured on video until 2025. It just recently happened for the first time according to the internet. This was the 7.7 magnitude Myanmar earthquake that occurred on March 28, 2025. In this video right here, you can actually see the ground do one of those. It's security camera footage. If you look over here, watch what happens. Crazy, but this was actually a pretty tragic event that led to 6,000 fatalities, so I don't mean to sound too excited about it, but this was the first time that such an event had been documented. I want to move on to fire, specifically fire tornadoes, because fire tornadoes were rumored to have existed. With some major fire events of the 1800s, there were rumors that a fire whirl, a huge fire tornado formed in the middle of the city or wherever this fire event was taking place. Now, no one knew for sure if this actually existed. That is until 2003 when Tom Bates captured one on film near Mount Airwing in Australia. I did not get permission to use the footage, but I'll link it in the description. Not only did this footage capture the first fire tornado on video, it also captured the first flashover event. This is an insane event where all of a sudden hundreds of acres are just burned at once, within less than a second, because an inflow of oxygen comes in and all of a sudden it lights up, also in that video. When it comes to tsunamis, one of the very first documented photo of a tsunami wave coming ashore was captured on April 1st, 1946 in Hilo, Hawaii. The tsunami was caused by a massive 8.1 magnitude earthquake near Alaska and the tsunami itself resulted in 170 fatalities. This photo is actually a pretty iconic image. I mean, it is pretty frightening. There's a massive wave approaching the town and everyone is running for their lives, but this photo has become so famous that some of the individuals in the photo have actually been identified. Specifically, the identity of this man right here, which was actually a bit of a mystery until 2002. People wanted to know, did this individual survive the tsunami? And I'm happy to say, yes. The man's name is George Wong and he now lives on the mainland. The way the identity of this man was discovered was he saw himself in a documentary. Apparently, they were watching a documentary on the event and him and his wife were just chilling watching it and all of a sudden this photo came up and he was like, yo, that's me and he called the museum to let them know that that was him. Finally, I do want to briefly mention hydrothermal vents. These are those black smoke looking things at the bottom of the ocean. These black smoker hydrothermal vents were discovered in 1979 by a scientific crew on the submarine Alvin. The expedition was led by Fred Spice and Ken McDonald. But with that, we conclude today's video. What natural phenomena events did I miss that you would put in the video? I'd like to hear in the comments below. Please like the video if you liked it. Quick reminder, stay safe online and unlock the internet with PIA VPN. Link and QR code are below. 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