One of the most appalling disasters that have ever been recorded in American history befell San Francisco in 1906 when an earthquake struck the Californian city on the early morning of April 18th. Modern analysis estimates it registered 8.25 on the Rich…
It's Friday, the 13th of April, 1945. A few miles northwest of Magdeburg there was a railroad siding in a wooded ravine not far from the Elbe River. Major Clarence L. Benjamin in a jeep was leading a small task force of two light tanks on a routine job …
The Battle of Verdun is considered by many the most blood-stained battlefield in world history. Never before or since has there been such a lengthy battle, involving so many men, situated on such a tiny piece of land. The battle, which lasted from 21 Fe…
Conveying the officials in the photograph is a section of 30ft diameter steel penstock of the soon-to-be-completed Hoover Dam. In the same year, the pouring of the project's concrete had concluded - a total of 3.25million cubic yards. As the United Stat…
This interesting picture, taken in 1919, shows employees of the New York Central Railroad at a celebration in Victory Way, showing off a pyramid of recovered German helmets in front of Grand Central Terminal. There were over 12,000 German Pickelhaubes on t…
This picture shows the end of a brutal boxing match between Ray Campbell and Dick Hyland. Take a look at the condition of the two fighters, battered, bloodied, bruised, and staring down at each other at the end of the fight. Boxing in those days was …
These are the last moments of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber of USAAF (United States Army Air Force). It was part of a squadron engaged in a raid on an industrial target in Austria. German fighters came up in force, downing all the bombers except …
On July 16, 1945, the United States became the first country to successfully detonate an atomic weapon, signaling the beginning of a new era in warfare and in politics. In the early 1940s, the U.S. government authorized a top-secret program of nuclear t…
By the time of this photograph, AIDS might have been more widely understood, but people were still wary about how it was transmitted because it wasn't widely understood by the general public at the time. Princess Diana was a very important figurehead in…
Downed U.S. airman Dewey Waddell was taken captive by Vietnamese communist fighters in 1967, and he was released in 1973. The photo, taken by GDR war correspondent Thomas Billhardt, features a female guerrilla holding an American soldier captive and esc…
On March 7, 1906, US troops under the command of Major General Leonard Wood massacred as many as 1,000 Filipino Muslims, known as Moros, who were taking refuge at Bud Dajo, a volcanic crater on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines. The First B…
This set of pictures from 1865 shows the hanging execution of the four Lincoln conspirators: David Herold, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt. Their deaths were a culmination of sorts of a nation ravaged by war, bitter conflict, and the dea…
The United States Marine Corps Private Theodore James Miller assigned to the 22nd Marine Independent Regiment returns to Coast Guard-manned attack transport USS Arthur Middleton (APA-25) at 1400 hours after two days of combat on Engebi. Engebi was the f…
The American Eugenics Society presented eugenics exhibits at state fairs throughout the USA and provided information encouraging “high-grade” people to reproduce at a greater rate for the benefit of society. The Society even sponsored Fitter Family contest…
This picture is widely considered the photo that changed the face of AIDS. It showed AIDS victims as humans and people with families. The biggest opponents of doing anything about AIDS, anything at all, were conservatives trumpeting family values. This …
The assassins' bullets ended the life of a man who earned a reputation for making bold decisions in foreign affairs, a reputation based in large part on his decision in 1977 to journey to the camp of Egypt's foe, Israel, to make peace. President Sadat w…
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…
On December 11, 1941, several days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States declaration of war against the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany declared war on the United States, in response to what was claimed to be a series of provocation…
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…