In June and July 1941, detachments of German Einsatzgruppen, together with Lithuanian auxiliaries, began murdering the Jews of Lithuania. Groups of partisans, civil units of nationalist-rightist anti-Soviet affiliation, initiated contact with the German…
In the early 20th century, polio was one of the most feared diseases in industrialized countries, paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children every year. A highly infectious disease, polio attacks the nervous system and can lead to paralysis, disabilit…
These images are chilling, bordering on surreal: as World War II raged on December 18, 1941, Adolf Hitler presided over a Christmas party in Munich. The color-enhanced images were captured by Hugo Jaeger, one of Adolf Hitler's personal photographers. …
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 …
A picture of the fountain taken by Emmanuil Yevzerikhin on August 23, 1942, conveyed the devastation of the Battle of Stalingrad by juxtaposing a pastoral scene of children dancing around a playful crocodile and the city's bombed-out, burning buildings in …
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 picture was taken during the wedding of the Kaiser's daughter Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia. The wedding, an extravagant affair, took place on 24 May 1913 in Berlin. In a diplomatic gesture, Emperor Wilhelm invited almost his entire extended fam…
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 Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings were one of the worst IRA atrocities on the British mainland, killing 11 soldiers and seven horses and leaving dozens injured. The bombs were detonated just a couple of hours apart on July 20, 1982, and timed to …
"Bloody Saturday" - Depicting a Chinese baby crying within the bombed-out ruins of Shanghai South Railway Station, the photograph became known as a cultural icon demonstrating Japanese wartime atrocities in China. Taken a few minutes after a Japanese ai…
Mankind's road to the stars had its unsung heroes. One of them was the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. His spaceflight on Soyuz 1 made him the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly into outer space more than once, and he became the first human to die on a sp…
Members of the French Resistance are photographed in the midst of a battle against German troops during the Liberation of Paris. We see a man in makeshift army fatigues to the left and a young man on the right. Then, most strikingly, we see a woman in s…
Rat-catchers were employed in Europe to control rat populations. Keeping the rat population under control was practiced in Europe to prevent the spread of diseases to man, most notoriously the Black Plague and to prevent damage to food supplies. Today this…
It was the eighth night of Chanukah in Kiel, Germany, a small town with a Jewish population of 500. That year, 1931, the last night Chanukah fell on Friday evening, and Rabbi Akiva Boruch Posner, spiritual leader of the town was hurrying to light the Menor…
The photo was taken at the launch of a German army vessel in 1936, during a ceremony that was attended by Adolf Hitler himself. Within the picture, a lone man stood with arms crossed as hundreds of men and women around him held up their arms in salute a…
After the Civil War, the availability of natural resources, new inventions, and a receptive market combined to fuel an industrial boom. The demand for labor grew, and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many children were drawn into the labor for…
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 firebombs and atomic bombs. Over the next seven months starting September 1945, he tra…
On a hot August night in 1930, a crowd gathered in front of an Indiana jail — men, women, and children shouting and jeering, demanding that the sheriff release his three prisoners. Three African-American teenagers: Tom Shipp, Abe Smith, and James Camero…
On November 24, 1963, about 300,000 people watched a horse-drawn caisson, which had borne the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Unknown Soldier, carry Kennedy's flag-covered casket down the White House drive, past parallel rows of soldiers bearing the …
The short-barreled version of the Thompson was Winston's personal favorite weapon of all time. He looks like a gangster from an old Hollywood movie. This photo was taken during an inspection of invasion defenses near Hartlepool, on July 21, 1940. The in…