Guardian Angels first made an appearance on the New York subway in 1979 in an attempt to quell rising levels of violence. As in all of New York, crime was rampant in the subway in the 1970s. Thefts, robberies, shootings, and killings became more frequen…
This last photo shows Vladimir Lenin in a wheelchair after suffering three stokes in the previous two years. By the end, he was paralyzed and completely mute. Beside him are his sister Anna Ilyinichna Yelizarova-Ulyanova and one of his doctors A. M. Kozhev…
In June of 1963, Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon. He was attempting to show that to fight all forms of oppression on equal terms, Buddhism too, needed to have its martyrs. …
In the strict world of British military protocol, there are even rules on how to faint with dignity. There are two main reasons why the guards of honor pass out: it can get pretty hot and they'll lock their knees. Usually, it's the combination of both t…
Five emaciated former prisoners of war sitting on the steps of an ambulance in Singapore following their release from captivity in Sumatra. Holding the newspaper is Sergeant Jack King RM, formerly of HMS Prince of Wales, while standing next to him, with…
This extraordinary picture taken in 1948 by David Seymour, one of Magnum Photos’ co-founders, has since been seen by millions. First, it was published in LIFE magazine where the caption read in part “Children’s wounds are not all outward. Those made in …
The Solvay Conference, founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912, was considered a turning point in the world of physics. Located in Brussels, the conferences were devoted to outstanding preeminent open problems in both physics and chem…
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Japanese marines landed north and south of Shanghai. This picture may have been taken on the Jiangsu coast, which is north of the city. Despite the fact that chemical weapons were prohibited by international laws, the Imperial Japanese Army frequently u…
The Holocaust was a gradual process. The Nazis didn't start mass extermination when they got into power. But gradually prepared the population by dehumanizing the Jewish people. Segregation, as shown in this photo, was part of this. The point was not to…
At the end of World War II, the city of Dresden was in ruins, all its buildings destroyed and thousands of civilians dead. The scale of the death and destruction, coming so late in the war, along with significant questions about the legitimacy of the ta…
Death mask of Napoleon, taken a day and a half after he died on the island of St. Helena at age 51. His eyes are closed, lips slightly parted, and his shaven head is tilted backward, resting on a pillow garnished with a tassel at each corner. Napoleon's…
Frenchman crying as the flags of fallen France were marched through the streets of Marseilles on their way to Africa. The man’s face conveys a sense of grief so profound as to transcend our expectations. The photo is nicknamed "The weeping Frenchman" an…
On February 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt received a terrible news, his wife and mother died within hours of one another in Roosevelt's house in New York City. His mother, age 50, succumbed to typhus, and his wife Alice died at the age of 22 giving birth…
Dagen H (H day) was the day, 3 September 1967, on which traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right. The "H" stands for "Högertrafik", the Swedish word for "right traffic". After all, Sweden’s Scandinavian neig…
Tens of thousands of soldiers, reservists, and other members of the military were arranged to form massive compositions. Although if viewed from the ground or from directly above, these masses of men would appear meaningless, when seen from the top of a…
"Toffs and Toughs" is a 1937 photograph of five boys: two dressed in the Harrow School uniform including waistcoat, top hat, boutonnière, and cane; and three nearby wearing the plainclothes of pre-war working-class youths. The picture was taken by Jimmy…
Taken in 1967 by Rocco Morabito, this photo called "The Kiss of Life" shows a utility worker named J.D. Thompson giving mouth-to-mouth to co-worker Randall G. Champion after he went unconscious following contact with a low voltage line. They h…
In the early morning of 17 June 1939, Eugène Weidmann became the last person to be publicly executed by guillotine. He had been convicted of multiple kidnappings and murders, including that of a young American socialite. Beginning with the botched kidna…
The socialist fraternal kiss became famous via Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, who were photographed exercising the ritual. During the festivities of the 30th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic of East Germany in 1979, photographer Regis …