World Back then (150 Pics)
During the Oil Crisis, the roads were so deserted that people could have picnics on highways (1973)
Dental students observing in the Oral Surgery Clinic at the Philadelphia General Hospital in 1910
Construction of Christ the Redeemer in Rio da Janeiro, Brazil
Coney Island, NYC in 1949
Circumcision was used by Pakistani soldiers to identify Hindus during Bangladesh’s War of Independence (1971)
Chicago police arresting bathers for indecent exposure in 1922
Warren Buffett teaching at UNO (then Omaha University)
The 1937 “walking machine” tested wear on shoes (1937)
British SAS back from a 3-month patrol of North Africa in 1943
Bread and soup during the Great Depression
Back when computers didn’t have screens
Back in 1956, a PanAm plane was needed to to transport a 5 MB hard drive
Neil Armstrong
A photo of Neil Armstrong taken only moments after he returned from first walking on the moon. A teary-eyed Armstrong looks at the camera, rendered speechless by what he has just experienced. It's a beautiful portrait taken by Buzz Aldrin after they returned to the Lunar Excursion Module, and beautifully captures the emotions he later put into words when he said, "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."
Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke left this family photo behind on the moon in 1972.
An aircraft crash on board during World War II
Allied forces mock Hitler from atop his balcony at the Reich Chancellery at the end of WWII
Albert Einstein’s office photographed on the day of his death
Adolf Hitler’s pants after the failed assassination attempt at Wolf’s Lair in 1944
A young woman demonstrating a new German record player in 1959, which could be attached to the dashboard of a car
A utility worker giving mouth-to-mouth to a co-worker after he accidentally touched a high voltage wire (1967).
A stripper entertains some Wall Street employees
George Clooney
Queen Elizabeth II fires a British L85 battle rifle (1993)
A Sikh soldier of the British Indian Army fits a gas mask to a mule
A Russian spy is laughing through his execution in Finland in 1939 during the Winter War.
A priest praying over the victims of the Titanic (1912)
A New York City winter in 1905
A man on a beach in the Netherlands, being fined for not wearing appropriate bathing wear
A liberated Jew holds a Nazi guard at gunpoint
A Japanese commuter train early in the morning
A huge boxing match at Yankee Stadium in 1923
A building collapses after a 1965 fire in Iran
A boy riding his tricycle in Baltimore in 1968
Coca-Cola being served - France (1950)
Martin Luther King, Jr
Civil rights leader Andrew Young (L) and others standing on balcony of Lorraine motel pointing in direction of assailant after assassination of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is lying at their feet.
U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division soldiers disembarking from a LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) at Omaha Beach during the Normandy Landings of D-Day.
Joseph Stalin
Little girl visiting the Los Angeles Alligator Farm in the 1920s. Safety regulations have changed a lot since then.
Vladimir Putin dancing with his classmate Elena during a party
The Great Depression
Lewis Payne (co conspirator in President Abraham Lincoln assasination)
Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner took this photograph of Payne as he was held in federal custody
Mahatma Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin
The Migrant Mother
This photograph of Florence Owens Thompson is one of the great representations of the Great Depression. The photograph was taken by Dorothea Lange after Florence had sold her tent to provide food for her children.
Reunion
Major Terri Gurrola and her daughter Gaby reunite after her seven month deployment.
To promote liberty bonds, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. holds up Charlie Chaplin at Wall Street 1918
The unbroken seal of the tomb of Tutankhamun, untouched for over 3000 years (1922)
The Microsoft staff in 1978
The London sky after a bombing and dogfight between British and German planes in 1940
Golden Gate Bridge
Bill Gaure, a maintenance worker on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, nears the top of the north tower after nearly a half-mile uphill hike from the center of the span, May 15, 1952.
The Lincoln Memorial being constructed in 1922
The last known Tasmanian Tiger (now extinct) photographed in 1933
The last Jew in Vinnitsa, 1941
Anne Frank’s father Otto, revisiting the attic where they hid from the Nazis. He was the only survivor (1960).
The glasses John Lennon wore when he was assassinated (1980)
You won’t see this at the zoo anymore The only known photo of a living Quagga at the London Zoo (1870)
The first international match at Wimbledon in 1883
The first black pilot in history, Ahmet Ali Celikten
Soviet Flag raised above the Reichstag [Berlin, 1945]
Human-size chess game with actual soldiers in St. Petersburg, Russia (1924)
Racing cars on the roof of the Fiat Factory in Turin, Italy (1923)
New Yorkers always knew how to have fun. See the 1960 swimmobile drive around town
Nagasaki, 20 minutes after the atomic bombing in 1945
The Las Vegas Strip in 1968
A navigation hotline in 1963. Long, long before Google Maps
Martin Scorsese
Hitler and Speer were mesmerized by the Schwerer Gustav, one of the largest piece of artillery ever used in Combat (1941)
Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre after WWII
Cameramen shooting and recording the lion roar for the MGM logo
The real life Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh (1928)
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Warren G. Harding (29th president of USA), and Harvey Samuel Firestone (founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.) talking together.
Helen Keller meets Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood in 1919
Google Begins
German air raid on Moscow in 1941
Flower Power
Taken on October 21, 1967 during a march to the Pentagon, the iconic photo shows a young, long-haired Vietnam protestor in a turtleneck sweater, placing carnations into the barrel of a rifle of a National Guardsman.
Nelson Mandela
Fishing buddies Che Guevara and Fidel Castro (1960)
Fidel Castro at the Lincoln Memorial
Almost 1,00,000 Bison skulls
Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to a few hundred by the mid-1880s. They were hunted for their skins, with the rest of the animal left behind to decay on the ground. Here we see a poacher standing on a pile of an estimate 100,000 Bison skulls.
Elephants know how to have fun. Just ask Queenie, the first one to water surf (circa 1950)
Dental students observing in the Oral Surgery Clinic at the Philadelphia General Hospital in 1910
Construction of Christ the Redeemer in Rio da Janeiro, Brazil
Coney Island, NYC in 1949
Circumcision was used by Pakistani soldiers to identify Hindus during Bangladesh’s War of Independence (1971)
Chicago police arresting bathers for indecent exposure in 1922
Warren Buffett teaching at UNO (then Omaha University)
The 1937 “walking machine” tested wear on shoes (1937)
British SAS back from a 3-month patrol of North Africa in 1943
Bread and soup during the Great Depression
Back when computers didn’t have screens
Back in 1956, a PanAm plane was needed to to transport a 5 MB hard drive
Neil Armstrong
A photo of Neil Armstrong taken only moments after he returned from first walking on the moon. A teary-eyed Armstrong looks at the camera, rendered speechless by what he has just experienced. It's a beautiful portrait taken by Buzz Aldrin after they returned to the Lunar Excursion Module, and beautifully captures the emotions he later put into words when he said, "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."
Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke left this family photo behind on the moon in 1972.
An aircraft crash on board during World War II
Allied forces mock Hitler from atop his balcony at the Reich Chancellery at the end of WWII
Albert Einstein’s office photographed on the day of his death
Adolf Hitler’s pants after the failed assassination attempt at Wolf’s Lair in 1944
A young woman demonstrating a new German record player in 1959, which could be attached to the dashboard of a car
A utility worker giving mouth-to-mouth to a co-worker after he accidentally touched a high voltage wire (1967).
A stripper entertains some Wall Street employees
George Clooney
Queen Elizabeth II fires a British L85 battle rifle (1993)
A Sikh soldier of the British Indian Army fits a gas mask to a mule
A Russian spy is laughing through his execution in Finland in 1939 during the Winter War.
A priest praying over the victims of the Titanic (1912)
A New York City winter in 1905
A man on a beach in the Netherlands, being fined for not wearing appropriate bathing wear
A liberated Jew holds a Nazi guard at gunpoint
A Japanese commuter train early in the morning
A huge boxing match at Yankee Stadium in 1923
A building collapses after a 1965 fire in Iran
A boy riding his tricycle in Baltimore in 1968
Coca-Cola being served - France (1950)
Martin Luther King, Jr
Civil rights leader Andrew Young (L) and others standing on balcony of Lorraine motel pointing in direction of assailant after assassination of civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is lying at their feet.
U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division soldiers disembarking from a LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) at Omaha Beach during the Normandy Landings of D-Day.
Joseph Stalin
Little girl visiting the Los Angeles Alligator Farm in the 1920s. Safety regulations have changed a lot since then.
Vladimir Putin dancing with his classmate Elena during a party
The Great Depression
Lewis Payne (co conspirator in President Abraham Lincoln assasination)
Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner took this photograph of Payne as he was held in federal custody
Mahatma Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin
The Migrant Mother
This photograph of Florence Owens Thompson is one of the great representations of the Great Depression. The photograph was taken by Dorothea Lange after Florence had sold her tent to provide food for her children.
Reunion
Major Terri Gurrola and her daughter Gaby reunite after her seven month deployment.
To promote liberty bonds, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. holds up Charlie Chaplin at Wall Street 1918
The unbroken seal of the tomb of Tutankhamun, untouched for over 3000 years (1922)
The Microsoft staff in 1978
The London sky after a bombing and dogfight between British and German planes in 1940
Golden Gate Bridge
Bill Gaure, a maintenance worker on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, nears the top of the north tower after nearly a half-mile uphill hike from the center of the span, May 15, 1952.
The Lincoln Memorial being constructed in 1922
The last known Tasmanian Tiger (now extinct) photographed in 1933
The last Jew in Vinnitsa, 1941
Anne Frank’s father Otto, revisiting the attic where they hid from the Nazis. He was the only survivor (1960).
The glasses John Lennon wore when he was assassinated (1980)
You won’t see this at the zoo anymore The only known photo of a living Quagga at the London Zoo (1870)
The first international match at Wimbledon in 1883
The first black pilot in history, Ahmet Ali Celikten
Soviet Flag raised above the Reichstag [Berlin, 1945]
Human-size chess game with actual soldiers in St. Petersburg, Russia (1924)
Racing cars on the roof of the Fiat Factory in Turin, Italy (1923)
New Yorkers always knew how to have fun. See the 1960 swimmobile drive around town
Nagasaki, 20 minutes after the atomic bombing in 1945
The Las Vegas Strip in 1968
A navigation hotline in 1963. Long, long before Google Maps
Martin Scorsese
Hitler and Speer were mesmerized by the Schwerer Gustav, one of the largest piece of artillery ever used in Combat (1941)
Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre after WWII
Cameramen shooting and recording the lion roar for the MGM logo
The real life Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh (1928)
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Warren G. Harding (29th president of USA), and Harvey Samuel Firestone (founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.) talking together.
Helen Keller meets Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood in 1919
Google Begins
German air raid on Moscow in 1941
Flower Power
Taken on October 21, 1967 during a march to the Pentagon, the iconic photo shows a young, long-haired Vietnam protestor in a turtleneck sweater, placing carnations into the barrel of a rifle of a National Guardsman.
Nelson Mandela
Fishing buddies Che Guevara and Fidel Castro (1960)
Fidel Castro at the Lincoln Memorial
Almost 1,00,000 Bison skulls
Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to a few hundred by the mid-1880s. They were hunted for their skins, with the rest of the animal left behind to decay on the ground. Here we see a poacher standing on a pile of an estimate 100,000 Bison skulls.
Elephants know how to have fun. Just ask Queenie, the first one to water surf (circa 1950)
Last picture of Nikola Tesla, 1943
The “Big Three” – Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill – meet at the Tehran Conference, 1943.
Underwater detonation of 23 kiloton nuclear weapon, 1946.
Crossroads Baker, showing the white surface “crack” under the ships, and the top of the hollow spray column protruding through the hemispherical Wilson cloud. Bikini Island beach in the background.
Young Stalin
Women protesting forced hijab days after the Iranian Revolution, 1979
At the time, photographer Golestan recalls, Iranian people were very “politically charged” and believed change could be effected by demonstrating in the streets.
The protest was held on International Women’s Day.
The soldiers fed the polar bears with condensed milk tins. Soviet Union, 1950.
The photo ‘Wait for me, Daddy’ shows Private Jack Bernard, B.C. Regiment saying goodbye to his son Warren Bernard in New Westminster, 1940.
Father and son after the war was over.
Hitler and generals inspecting the largest-caliber rifled weapon ever used in combat, 1941
Heavy gustav blueprint
The Gustav shells were massive, 800 mm caliber.
The Heavy Gustav during its service.
Statue in the center of Stalingrad after Nazi air strikes, 1942
The statue of six children dancing around a crocodile became famous worldwide due to several pictures that a Soviet photographer took after the German army’s devastating bombings.
The Elephants Foot of the Chernobyl disaster. Photo was taken later after the radiation weakened.
Why all the photos from the Chernobyl disaster appear grainy? This isn’t because the photography technology at the time in Soviet Union was behind. Previous photos are of better quality. It is because the radiation affects the film.
Soviet soldiers sexually harass a German woman in Leipzig, Germany, August 1945.
Soviet soldiers openly sexually harass a passing German woman near the West Hall section of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof central railway terminus. As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of the war, mass rapes took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation.
Most historians agree, although the issue is contentious, that the majority of the sexual assaults on German female civilians were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million. In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times.
At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with sexual assaults in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. War historians have described it as the “greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history”, and have concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.
Red Army soldiers in a trench as a Soviet T-34 tank passes over them, 1943
Simone Segouin, the 18 year old French Resistance fighter, 1944
Simone Segouin poses with a German MP 40 with which she is most proficient.
President Nixon greets the returning Apollo 11 astronauts, 1969.
Photo taken mere hours after Einstein died, April 28, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey.
British M.P.s walk onto an airship gangplank, in Cardington, England, in the 1920s.
The R-101 moored here was the largest craft in the world (until the Hindenburg) and crashed on her maiden voyage, killing 48 out of 54 on board. The crash effectively ended the nascent British airship program.
The U.S. Navy’s dirigible Los Angeles, upended after a turbulent wind from the Atlantic flipped the 700-foot airship on its nose at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1926. The ship slowly righted itself and there were no serious injuries to the crew of 25.
Lucky British soldier shows off his damaged helmet, 1917
Michael Collins, the astronaut who took this photo, is the only human, alive or dead that isn't in the frame of this picture, 1969
First Miss Soviet Union beauty pageant, 1988
Seems like Lenin doesn’t approve.
Dr. Leonid Rogozov operating himself to remove his appendix in Antarctica, 1961
Leonid Rogozov was a Soviet general practitioner who took part in the sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1960–1961. He was the only doctor stationed at the Novolazarevskaya Station and, while there, developed appendicitis, which meant he had to perform an appendectomy on himself, a famous case of self-surgery.
Leonid Rogozov a few years after his return to Russia.
Japanese troops using prisoners of war for target practice, 1942
The Japanese treatment of prisoners of war in World War II was barbaric. The men shown in the above picture are part of the Sikh Regiment of the British Indian Army. All of them are sitting in the traditional cross-legged prayer position. They’re probably reciting their final prayers as this picture was being taken. It’s very morbid if you think about it. The vast majority of Indian soldiers captured when Singapore fell belonged to Sikh community. These photographs were found among Japanese records when British troops retook Singapore.
Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, October 1944.
This was a mock execution attempting to get the resistance fighter, Georges Blind, to talk. It didn’t work. Georges did not divulge any information. It’s interesting how they’ve placed him at the corner of the building rather than against the stereotypical flat wall. It must make ricochet injuries to the firing squad members much less likely. Of course this was a mock execution, but most likely they used the same site for real executions. Georges Blind was eventually forwarded to a concentration camp, where he was selected for termination on arrival, dying some time in late November 1944.
Atomic Annie firing the first atomic artillery shell, 1953
Its yield was estimated at 15 kilotons, around the same level as Little Boy.
View of the Atomic Annie from the front prime mover.
German submarine U-118 washed ashore on the beach at Hastings, 1919
The rising mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, a few minutes after the nuclear bomb was detonated, August 9, 1945. Picture taken from Koyagi-jima, 5 miles from the center of Nagasaki.
Fidel Castro lighting a cigar and wearing two Rolex watches during a meeting with Khrushchev, Kremlin, 1963
Facing the Death - Poles shot by Germans in Bydgoszcz, 9 September 1939.
A range of emotions displayed by these men. Anguish, defiance, stoicism, acceptance and fear, the third one from the left is even smiling. This execution happened during the Bloody Sunday in Bydgoszcz, Poland, 1939.
David Rothman was in his work clothes and Albert Einstein was dressed for the beach when they posed on this rock at Horseshoe Cove in Nassau Point in the summer of 1939.
Elephant-mounted machine-gun, 1914
Australian soldiers after their release from Japanese captivity in Singapore, 1945
Picture taken in 1962 at the Faculty of Medicine in Kabul of two Afghan medicine students listening to their professor (at right) as they examine a plaster cast showing a part of a human body.
A shopfront display of fruits and nuts in Kabul, in November of 1961.
This photo shows the now-destroyed Kabul-Herat highway, that linked the Afghan capital to the Iranian border city of Mashad. Built in the early second half of the 20th century, the highway has been virtually destroyed through decades of warfare.
Architecture in Kabul, Afghanistan, seen on May 28, 1968.
Children in a Kabul street, November, 1961.
Aleksandra Samusenko was the only female tank officer in the 1st Guards Tank Army, 1943
An American soldier wears a hand lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet, Vietnam, 1965
A German woman facing public humiliation because of a romantic affair with a Polish man, 1942
A Chernobyl liquidator pushes a baby in a carriage who was found during the cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, 1986
775 confirmed kills in one picture, 1945
Because of chronic problems in finding the manpower to fulfill military and industrial tasks, the Soviet government recruited some 7.75 million women, of whom 800,000 served in the military. Sniping was a precision role, which many women soldiers performed with expertise. It is estimated that in 1943 there were more than 2,000 female snipers in the Soviet armed forces. Female snipers have been credited with more than 12,000 confirmed kills.
The snipers in the picture:
First row – Guard Staff Sergeant, VN Stepanova: 20 kills, Guard Sgt JP Belousova: 80 kills, Guard Sgt AE Vinogradova: 83 kills.
Second row – Guard Lieutenant EK Zhibovskaya: 24 kills, Guard Sgt KF Marinkin: 79 kills, Guard Sgt OS Marenkina: 70 kills.
Third row – Guard Lieutenant NP Belobrova: 70 kills, Lieutenant N. Lobkovsky: 89 kills, Guard Lieutenant VI Artamonova: 89 kills, Guard Staff Sergeant MG Zubchenko: 83 kills.
Forth row – Guard Sergeant, NP Obukhova: 64 kills, Guard Sergeant, AR Belyakova 24 kills.
Total number of confirmed kills: 775. Photo taken in Germany, May 4, 1945.
A hired reader reads to cigar makers hard at work in Cuban cigar factory, ca. 1900-1910.
The practice of reading aloud while others listen intently as they engage in manual labor has a long and distinguished tradition through out the Caribbean in the practice of cigar manufacture. Because the job of rolling cigar after cigar could become monotonous, the workers wanted something to occupy and stimulate the mind. Thus arose the tradition of lectors, who sat perched on an elevated platform in the cigar factory, reading to the workers. It started in Cuba and was brought to the United States more particularly to Key West in 1865 when thousands of Cuban cigar workers emigrated to Florida to escape Spanish oppression.
A girl who grew up in a concentration camp draws a picture of home while living in a residence for disturbed children, 1948
A German World War II prisoner is released by the Soviet Union and reunited with his 12-year-old daughter, who has not seen him since infancy.
A picture of a crowd in New York and there is not one unhatted head, 1930
A lady with two slaves, in Bahia, Brazil, 1860.
These two men are manumitted slaves. Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. They borrowed the clothes and the hats just for the picture. It’s a posed photograph and a statement about being manumitted rather than a picture of a woman posing with her slaves. To answer the question of why they are dressed up but shoeless – it’s part of the old custom of using shoes to denote class, position, or wealth. It was highly traditional that slaves be barefooted. Some countries went so far as to mandate that slaves always be without shoes.
A Japanese boy standing at attention after having brought his dead younger brother to a cremation pyre, 1945
Joe O’Donnell, the man who took this photo at Nagasaki, was sent by the U.S. military to document the damage inflicted on the Japanese homeland caused by air raids of fire bombs and atomic bombs. Over the next seven months starting September 1945, he traveled across Western Japan chronicling the devastation, revealing the plight of the bomb victims including the dead, the wounded, the homeless and orphaned. Images of the human suffering was etched both on his negatives and his heart.
In the photo, the boy stands erect, having done his duty by bringing his dead brother to a cremation ground. Standing at attention was an obvious military influence. Looking at the boy who carries his younger sibling on his back, keeps a stiff upper lip, tries so hard to be brave is heart-breaking. He has epitomized the spirit of a defeated nation.
A police officer issuing a woman a ticket for wearing a bikini on an Italian beach, 1957
The priest and the dying soldier, 1962
The uprising against the Venezuelan government of Rómulo Betancourt was quickly crushed but not before Hector Rondon was able to capture these iconic photos.
The photo was taken on June 4 (1962) by Hector Rondón Lovera, photographer of Caracas, for the Venezuelan newspaper “La Republica”. It won the World Press Photo of the Year and the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Photography. The original title of work is “Aid From The Padre”.
Despite the danger surrounding him, Luis Padilla walked around giving last rites to dying soldiers.
Actress Marlene Dietrich kisses a soldier returning home from war, 1945
Albert Einstein sticks out his tongue when asked by photographers to smile on the occasion of his 72nd birthday on March 14, 1951.
Albert Einstein’s matriculation certificate, 1896
A U.S soldier offers his hand to a woman leaving a cave where she had hidden with her child during the battle between Japanese and American forces. Saipan, 1944
The “Big Three” – Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill – meet at the Tehran Conference, 1943.
Underwater detonation of 23 kiloton nuclear weapon, 1946.
Crossroads Baker, showing the white surface “crack” under the ships, and the top of the hollow spray column protruding through the hemispherical Wilson cloud. Bikini Island beach in the background.
Young Stalin
Women protesting forced hijab days after the Iranian Revolution, 1979
At the time, photographer Golestan recalls, Iranian people were very “politically charged” and believed change could be effected by demonstrating in the streets.
The protest was held on International Women’s Day.
The soldiers fed the polar bears with condensed milk tins. Soviet Union, 1950.
The photo ‘Wait for me, Daddy’ shows Private Jack Bernard, B.C. Regiment saying goodbye to his son Warren Bernard in New Westminster, 1940.
Father and son after the war was over.
Hitler and generals inspecting the largest-caliber rifled weapon ever used in combat, 1941
Heavy gustav blueprint
The Gustav shells were massive, 800 mm caliber.
The Heavy Gustav during its service.
Statue in the center of Stalingrad after Nazi air strikes, 1942
The statue of six children dancing around a crocodile became famous worldwide due to several pictures that a Soviet photographer took after the German army’s devastating bombings.
The Elephants Foot of the Chernobyl disaster. Photo was taken later after the radiation weakened.
Why all the photos from the Chernobyl disaster appear grainy? This isn’t because the photography technology at the time in Soviet Union was behind. Previous photos are of better quality. It is because the radiation affects the film.
Soviet soldiers sexually harass a German woman in Leipzig, Germany, August 1945.
Soviet soldiers openly sexually harass a passing German woman near the West Hall section of the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof central railway terminus. As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of the war, mass rapes took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation.
Most historians agree, although the issue is contentious, that the majority of the sexual assaults on German female civilians were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million. In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times.
At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with sexual assaults in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. War historians have described it as the “greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history”, and have concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.
Red Army soldiers in a trench as a Soviet T-34 tank passes over them, 1943
Simone Segouin, the 18 year old French Resistance fighter, 1944
Simone Segouin poses with a German MP 40 with which she is most proficient.
President Nixon greets the returning Apollo 11 astronauts, 1969.
Photo taken mere hours after Einstein died, April 28, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey.
British M.P.s walk onto an airship gangplank, in Cardington, England, in the 1920s.
The R-101 moored here was the largest craft in the world (until the Hindenburg) and crashed on her maiden voyage, killing 48 out of 54 on board. The crash effectively ended the nascent British airship program.
The U.S. Navy’s dirigible Los Angeles, upended after a turbulent wind from the Atlantic flipped the 700-foot airship on its nose at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1926. The ship slowly righted itself and there were no serious injuries to the crew of 25.
Lucky British soldier shows off his damaged helmet, 1917
Michael Collins, the astronaut who took this photo, is the only human, alive or dead that isn't in the frame of this picture, 1969
First Miss Soviet Union beauty pageant, 1988
Seems like Lenin doesn’t approve.
Dr. Leonid Rogozov operating himself to remove his appendix in Antarctica, 1961
Leonid Rogozov was a Soviet general practitioner who took part in the sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1960–1961. He was the only doctor stationed at the Novolazarevskaya Station and, while there, developed appendicitis, which meant he had to perform an appendectomy on himself, a famous case of self-surgery.
Leonid Rogozov a few years after his return to Russia.
Japanese troops using prisoners of war for target practice, 1942
The Japanese treatment of prisoners of war in World War II was barbaric. The men shown in the above picture are part of the Sikh Regiment of the British Indian Army. All of them are sitting in the traditional cross-legged prayer position. They’re probably reciting their final prayers as this picture was being taken. It’s very morbid if you think about it. The vast majority of Indian soldiers captured when Singapore fell belonged to Sikh community. These photographs were found among Japanese records when British troops retook Singapore.
Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, October 1944.
This was a mock execution attempting to get the resistance fighter, Georges Blind, to talk. It didn’t work. Georges did not divulge any information. It’s interesting how they’ve placed him at the corner of the building rather than against the stereotypical flat wall. It must make ricochet injuries to the firing squad members much less likely. Of course this was a mock execution, but most likely they used the same site for real executions. Georges Blind was eventually forwarded to a concentration camp, where he was selected for termination on arrival, dying some time in late November 1944.
Atomic Annie firing the first atomic artillery shell, 1953
Its yield was estimated at 15 kilotons, around the same level as Little Boy.
View of the Atomic Annie from the front prime mover.
German submarine U-118 washed ashore on the beach at Hastings, 1919
The rising mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, a few minutes after the nuclear bomb was detonated, August 9, 1945. Picture taken from Koyagi-jima, 5 miles from the center of Nagasaki.
Fidel Castro lighting a cigar and wearing two Rolex watches during a meeting with Khrushchev, Kremlin, 1963
Facing the Death - Poles shot by Germans in Bydgoszcz, 9 September 1939.
A range of emotions displayed by these men. Anguish, defiance, stoicism, acceptance and fear, the third one from the left is even smiling. This execution happened during the Bloody Sunday in Bydgoszcz, Poland, 1939.
David Rothman was in his work clothes and Albert Einstein was dressed for the beach when they posed on this rock at Horseshoe Cove in Nassau Point in the summer of 1939.
Elephant-mounted machine-gun, 1914
Australian soldiers after their release from Japanese captivity in Singapore, 1945
Picture taken in 1962 at the Faculty of Medicine in Kabul of two Afghan medicine students listening to their professor (at right) as they examine a plaster cast showing a part of a human body.
A shopfront display of fruits and nuts in Kabul, in November of 1961.
This photo shows the now-destroyed Kabul-Herat highway, that linked the Afghan capital to the Iranian border city of Mashad. Built in the early second half of the 20th century, the highway has been virtually destroyed through decades of warfare.
Architecture in Kabul, Afghanistan, seen on May 28, 1968.
Children in a Kabul street, November, 1961.
Aleksandra Samusenko was the only female tank officer in the 1st Guards Tank Army, 1943
An American soldier wears a hand lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet, Vietnam, 1965
A German woman facing public humiliation because of a romantic affair with a Polish man, 1942
A Chernobyl liquidator pushes a baby in a carriage who was found during the cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, 1986
775 confirmed kills in one picture, 1945
Because of chronic problems in finding the manpower to fulfill military and industrial tasks, the Soviet government recruited some 7.75 million women, of whom 800,000 served in the military. Sniping was a precision role, which many women soldiers performed with expertise. It is estimated that in 1943 there were more than 2,000 female snipers in the Soviet armed forces. Female snipers have been credited with more than 12,000 confirmed kills.
The snipers in the picture:
First row – Guard Staff Sergeant, VN Stepanova: 20 kills, Guard Sgt JP Belousova: 80 kills, Guard Sgt AE Vinogradova: 83 kills.
Second row – Guard Lieutenant EK Zhibovskaya: 24 kills, Guard Sgt KF Marinkin: 79 kills, Guard Sgt OS Marenkina: 70 kills.
Third row – Guard Lieutenant NP Belobrova: 70 kills, Lieutenant N. Lobkovsky: 89 kills, Guard Lieutenant VI Artamonova: 89 kills, Guard Staff Sergeant MG Zubchenko: 83 kills.
Forth row – Guard Sergeant, NP Obukhova: 64 kills, Guard Sergeant, AR Belyakova 24 kills.
Total number of confirmed kills: 775. Photo taken in Germany, May 4, 1945.
A hired reader reads to cigar makers hard at work in Cuban cigar factory, ca. 1900-1910.
The practice of reading aloud while others listen intently as they engage in manual labor has a long and distinguished tradition through out the Caribbean in the practice of cigar manufacture. Because the job of rolling cigar after cigar could become monotonous, the workers wanted something to occupy and stimulate the mind. Thus arose the tradition of lectors, who sat perched on an elevated platform in the cigar factory, reading to the workers. It started in Cuba and was brought to the United States more particularly to Key West in 1865 when thousands of Cuban cigar workers emigrated to Florida to escape Spanish oppression.
A girl who grew up in a concentration camp draws a picture of home while living in a residence for disturbed children, 1948
A German World War II prisoner is released by the Soviet Union and reunited with his 12-year-old daughter, who has not seen him since infancy.
A picture of a crowd in New York and there is not one unhatted head, 1930
A lady with two slaves, in Bahia, Brazil, 1860.
These two men are manumitted slaves. Manumission is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. They borrowed the clothes and the hats just for the picture. It’s a posed photograph and a statement about being manumitted rather than a picture of a woman posing with her slaves. To answer the question of why they are dressed up but shoeless – it’s part of the old custom of using shoes to denote class, position, or wealth. It was highly traditional that slaves be barefooted. Some countries went so far as to mandate that slaves always be without shoes.
A Japanese boy standing at attention after having brought his dead younger brother to a cremation pyre, 1945
Joe O’Donnell, the man who took this photo at Nagasaki, was sent by the U.S. military to document the damage inflicted on the Japanese homeland caused by air raids of fire bombs and atomic bombs. Over the next seven months starting September 1945, he traveled across Western Japan chronicling the devastation, revealing the plight of the bomb victims including the dead, the wounded, the homeless and orphaned. Images of the human suffering was etched both on his negatives and his heart.
In the photo, the boy stands erect, having done his duty by bringing his dead brother to a cremation ground. Standing at attention was an obvious military influence. Looking at the boy who carries his younger sibling on his back, keeps a stiff upper lip, tries so hard to be brave is heart-breaking. He has epitomized the spirit of a defeated nation.
A police officer issuing a woman a ticket for wearing a bikini on an Italian beach, 1957
The priest and the dying soldier, 1962
The uprising against the Venezuelan government of Rómulo Betancourt was quickly crushed but not before Hector Rondon was able to capture these iconic photos.
The photo was taken on June 4 (1962) by Hector Rondón Lovera, photographer of Caracas, for the Venezuelan newspaper “La Republica”. It won the World Press Photo of the Year and the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Photography. The original title of work is “Aid From The Padre”.
Despite the danger surrounding him, Luis Padilla walked around giving last rites to dying soldiers.
Actress Marlene Dietrich kisses a soldier returning home from war, 1945
Albert Einstein sticks out his tongue when asked by photographers to smile on the occasion of his 72nd birthday on March 14, 1951.
Albert Einstein’s matriculation certificate, 1896
A U.S soldier offers his hand to a woman leaving a cave where she had hidden with her child during the battle between Japanese and American forces. Saipan, 1944
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