Starving Child Vulture

One photograph that has helped awaken the world about the effects of poverty in Africa is the one above showing a Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture nearby. It is quite obvious that the child was starving to death, while the vulture was patiently waiting for the toddler to die so he can have a good meal.

Nobody knows what happened to the child, who crawled his way to a United Nations food camp. Photographer Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for this shocking picture, but he eventually committed suicide three months after he took the shot.

5 year old Mother (1939)

One of the photographs meanwhile that changed medical history is that of Lina Medina, the youngest mother who gave birth at the age of five. Born in Peru in 1933, Lina was brought to the local hospital by her parents because of an increasingly enlarged belly, which they first thought of a tumor. After a series of tests however, the doctors confirmed that she was seven months pregnant. A month later Lina gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Gerardo, after her doctor.

Lina Medina is the first known case of precocious pregnancy, and based on studies it was shown that she had an advanced menarche development resulting to menstruation at the age of 8 months, prominent breasts upon turning four, and bone maturation at age 5.

Her son Gerardo was first raised knowing that Lina was his sister, but eventually he found out that she was his mother at the age of 10. In 1972, Lina married and gave birth to her second son, 33 years after Gerardo was born. Gerardo soon died seven years later at the age of 40, due to a bone marrow disease. Lina, who is now aged 74, continues to live with her husband in Chicago, Chico, in Lima, Peru.

The Baby Hand

Some of us may be familiar with a picture called “The Baby Hand,” taken on Aug. 19, 1999, by photojournalist Michael Clancy for USA Today, which first published the picture. Clancy was assigned to document a spina bifida operation performed in utero on a 21-week unborn baby named Samuel Armas by Dr. Joseph Bruner, a surgeon at Nashville’s Vanderbuilt University Medical Center.

The picture and its story have been circulated on the internet so often that some question whether they are authentic. They are.

Clancy describes the famous picture this way: “Samuel thrusts his tiny hand out of the surgical opening of his mother’s uterus. As the doctor lifts his hand, Samuel reacts to the touch and squeezes the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shakes the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. At that moment, I took this ‘Fetal Hand Grasp’ photo.”

In a story he wrote about the incident, Clancy added,

“As a doctor asked me what speed of film I was using, out of the corner of my eye I saw the uterus shake, but no one’s hands were near it. It was shaking from within. Suddenly, an entire arm thrust out of the opening, then pulled back until just a little hand was showing. The doctor reached over and lifted the hand, which reacted and squeezed the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shook the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. I took the picture! Wow! It happened so fast that the nurse standing next to me asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘The child reached out,’ I said. ‘Oh. They do that all the time,’ she responded.”

Clancy said the experience changed him from pro-choice to pro-life.

Not only did USA Today run the photo, but so did a number of other media sources in the United States, Canada, Ireland, England, France, Norway, Singapore, and South America.
The photo generated controversy at Fox News, where then-talk show host Matt Drudge was prevented by the network from broadcasting the image on his show. That was in the early years of Fox, before the cable giant rose to the top by appealing to conservatives. Drudge–who is strongly pro-life–quit over the dispute in the fall of 1999. Not long afterward, Fox ran the picture, anyway, as part of a story on spina bifida.

Samuel was born on Dec. 2, 1999, weighing 5 pounds 11 ounces–four weeks premature. By all indications, he appeared healthy. Today, he’s a “chattering, brown-eyed 3½-year-old.”

Lenna Playboy

Picture of Lena Söderberg, scanned out of a Playboy article. The image is probably the most widely used test image for all sorts of image processing algorithms (such as compression and denoising) and related scientific publications.

Furthermore, it is the first published image in jpeg-compression. (.jpg or .jpeg image files are by far the popular format used by websites today.. including on PTCTW.com)

Lenna or Lena is the name given to a standard test image originally cropped from a Playboy magazine centerfold picture of Lena Söderberg, a Swedish model who posed nude for the November 1972 issue. The image is probably the most widely used test image for all sorts of image processing algorithms (such as compression and denoising) and related scientific publications.

The anglicised version “Lenna” of Söderberg’s name comes from the Playboy article; Playboy changed the original “Lena”.

The use of the image has produced some controversy, with some people concerned about Playboy magazine as the source of the image, and with the image being copyrighted.

When the IS&T wanted to invite Söderberg to their meeting, Playboy helped track down the Swedish native in Stockholm, where she helps handicapped people work on (non-networked) computers. Although Playboy is notorious for cracking down on illegal uses of its images, it has decided to overlook the widespread distribution of this particular centerfold.

Says Eileen Kent, VP of new media at Playboy: “We decided we should exploit this, because it is a phenomenon.”

Coincidentally, Playboy states the issue was its best-selling ever, having sold 7,161,561 copies as of May 2006.

The Power of One

Settler woman struggling with Israeli security officers at Amona outpost in the West Bank February 1, 2006. Oded Balilty, Israel, The Associated Press.World Press Photo Contest. The prize-winning entries were announced on February 9, 2007.

Afghan Girl

Who would forget these eyes that have seemed to reflect the harshness of the war? This is the famous photo of the Afghan girl taken by Steve McCurry of National Geographic. It is very rare for a man to see faces of Afghan girls mainly because they are well-covered, thus McCurry seized the opportunity when she showed her face for a few moments. Her photograph made it to the cover of the magazine later on.

This Afghan girl, whose identity was revealed in 1992 to be Sharbat Gula, is now married and mother of three girls. She and her family lives in Pushtun, an ethnic region in Afghanistan.

And of course the afghan girl, picture shot by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image. She was approximately 12 years old at the time. She made it on the cover of National Geographic next year, and her identity was discovered in 1992.

Afghan Girl Now

She’s now the married mother of three girls and living in a remote ethnic Pushtun region of Afghanistan with her family. “There is not one family that has not eaten the bitterness of war” - Afghan merchant

Tsunami Floating Bodies

The Boxing Day Tsunami that struck Thailand in 2004 caused approximately 350,000 deaths and many more injuries.

Emmett Till Murder

Emmett Till Travels to the Mississippi Delta

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was excited about his trip from his home in Chicago’s south side to the Mississippi, Delta to visit relatives. Prior to his departure, his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, a teacher, had done her best to advise him about how to behave when interacting with Southern white people. Till’s mother understood that in Mississippi race relations were a lot different than in Chicago. In Mississippi, over 500 blacks had been lynched since 1882 and racially motivated murders were not unfamiliar, especially in the Delta where Till was going. Racial tensions were also on the rise; the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ordered the end of segregation in schools, created dismay throughout many Southern white communities. Furthermore, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups began working to maintain life as they knew it.

With his mother’s warning and wearing the ring that had belonged to his deceased father, on August 20, 1955, Emmett Till setoff with his cousin Curtis Jones on the train to Mississippi. When Till and Jones arrived on August 21, they stayed at the home of Till’s great-uncle Mose Wright, just on the outskirts of Money, Mississippi.
Emmett Till is Kidnapped and Murdered

On August 24, the boys drove Wright’s car into the small town of Money and stopped at Bryant’s Grocery store to buy some candy. Prior to entering the store, Till pulled out some pictures of his white friends in Chicago and showed them to some local boys outside of the store. The boys dared Till to talk to Carolyn Bryant, the store clerk. Till went into the store, purchased some candy, and what happened as he was leaving is unclear. Till either said, “Bye, baby” or he whistled at Carolyn Bryant.

Neither Till nor Jones understood the magnitude of Till’s act, so they did not tell Mose Wright what had happened. They continued to think nothing of the event as three days passed without incident. However, on the fourth day early Sunday morning, Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, and J.W. Milam, Roy’s half-brother, knocked on the door of Wright’s home. With a pistol and flashlight in hand, they asked Mose Wright whether three boys from Chicago were staying with him. Wright led them to the room where Till was sleeping, and the men told Till to get dressed. Wright unsuccessfully pleaded with them to just whip Till. As they were leaving, they threatened to kill Wright if he told anyone.

Several hours later, Mamie Till was notified of her son’s kidnapping. A search of the area was conducted, and Mamie Till notified Chicago newspapers of her son’s disappearance. Wright told Money’s sheriff who had taken Till, and he arrested Bryant and Milam for kidnapping.
The Mutilation of Emmett Till’s Face

Three days later, Till’s body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. It was weighted down by a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan, which was tied around Till’s neck with barbed wire. His face was so mutilated that when Wright identified the body, he could only do so based on the ring that Till was been wearing.

Although Mamie Till experienced difficulty in getting her son’s body sent to Chicago, when it finally arrived she made the decision to have an open casket funeral. Mamie wanted the world to know what had happened to her son. His right eye was missing, his nose was broken, and there was a hole in the side of his head. Fifty-thousand people attended the funeral. Jet magazine ran photos of Till’s body; soon Till’s murder became an international story.
The Trial of Milam and Bryant

Meanwhile, Milam and Bryant had garnered support. Whites in their community claimed they were innocent and supported their defense financially. The trial began on September 19, 1955 in Sumner, Mississippi. The entire jury was composed of white men from the defendants’ home county. At trial they asserted that the body recovered from the river was not Till’s body. Instead, claimed Milam and Bryant, they had taken Till but had let him go. They alleged that the NAACP and Mamie Till had dug up a body and claimed that it was Till. According to their defense, Till was hiding out in Chicago.

Finding witnesses was difficult for the prosecution. In the South, it was dangerous for blacks to testify against any white person, so those who knew anything were reluctant to come forward. However, white and black reporters and the NAACP were able to find witnesses against the defendants. Willie Reed testified on the stand in barely a whisper that he had seen Bryant, Milam, and another man with Till. Further, he testified that he heard screaming coming from the Milam barn. When Milam came out of the barn with a .45 on his hip, Milam asked Reed if he saw anything, and Reed said no. Mose Wright had decided from the beginning that he was going to testify. When Wright took the stand, he testified that Milam and Bryant had taken Till at gunpoint from his home. After Reed and Wright testified, they were quickly escorted out of Mississippi by the NAACP.

Testimony also came from Mamie Till. She testified that the body she buried was her son, Emmett Till. Neither Milam nor Bryant testified. The trial lasted five days. In the defense’s closing argument, Milam and Bryant’s attorney forewarned the jury about convicting the defendants: “Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I’m sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men.” The jury deliberated for only 67 minutes; according to one juror, it lasted that long only because they stopped to drink soda. The jury found Milam and Bryant not guilty. They concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove that the body recovered from the river was Emmett Till.
Milam and Bryant Confess to Murdering Emmett Till

On January 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confession of Milam and Bryant, who had agreed to tell their story for $4,000. According to their confession, they beat Till with a .45 in Milam’s barn. They proceeded to take him to the Tallahatchie River where they had him undress and then shot him. A gin fan was tied around his neck with wire in order to weigh the body down in the river. They proceeded to burn Till’s clothes and shoes.

Justice Didn’t Prevail

Milam and Bryant were never charged with any other crimes relating to Till’s murder. After the trial, blacks boycotted the Bryants’ store, which forced them out of business. Both Milam and Bryant remained in Mississippi until their deaths; Milam died of cancer in 1980 and Bryant died of cancer in 1994.

The murder of Emmett Till was a shocking example to the world of the danger, inequality, and prejudice that blacks often faced in the South. However, Till’s murder helped spur the civil rights movement. It was only one hundred days after Till’s death that Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus.

The Falling Man

Burning Monk

As a protest to the Di?m slow and unreliable reforms in Vietnam, the Buddhist monks have resorted to immolation, such as this Mahayana Buddhist monk, Th?ch Qu?ng Ð?c. Ð?c burned himself alive across the outskirts of Saigon, mainly because of the harshness done by the South Vietnam government to his fellow Buddhist monks.

Ð?c was re-cremated after he burned himself; his heart meanwhile remained in one piece, and because of this he was regarded as a Bodhisattva by the other Buddhist monks and followers. His act of self-immolation increased the pressure on the Di?m administration to implement their reform laws in South Vietnam.

More monks followed Ð?c’s footsteps as well, and later on in November 1963, Di?m was killed by an army coup.

Palestinian father shields son

Images from the video footage of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah being shot dead in the Gaza Strip.

Little Rock desegregation

Little Rock Desegregation

In the effort to desegregate the American people on the basis of skin color, the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared that segregated schools are unconstitutional, and that all schools must be segregated from then on. The decision was agreed upon by the school boards and councils across the United States, but the white residents and students were not welcome to the new rule.

On September 4, 1957, nine black students were about to enter Little Rock Central School in Little Rock Arkansas when their entrance was blocked by the white segregationists supported by the Arkansas National Guard. The deployment of the guards was ordered by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus as a support to his white constituents. The blockade however caused a national issue, which led the President Dwight Eisenhower to intervene and summoned the governor to meet him. Faubus was then reminded not to interfere with the court’s decision.

The first nine black students in Little Rock Central School spent their first few weeks guarded by the police since they were still being blocked by the segregationists to enter the school. They also suffered physical and emotional abuse from their schoolmates. The Little Rock School Board meanwhile was pressured by its citizens to reverse the desegregation, which resulted to its closing in the following school year. It did reopen later on, in fall of 1959.

The thing is… she is not the subject of the photograph. Will Counts, the photographer shot Hazel Massery, the white girl shouting in front of the man. 40 years later she apologized to Elisabeth.

The Boston Fire

On July 22, 1975, Stanley J. Forman was working in the newsroom of the Boston Herald American newspaper when a police scanner picked up an emergency: “Fire on Marlborough Street!” Forman rushed to the scene, where multiple fire crews were battling an intense blaze. There was a distress call for a ladder team to the rear of the building to help a stranded woman and child. Forman followed.

Climbing atop the fire truck for a better view, Forman instinctively began covering the events before him. As firemen on the scene focused on their work, Forman’s attention was directed to a young woman, Diana Bryant, and a very young girl, Tiare Jones. Both were seeking help from fireman, Bob O’Neil, located on the roof directly above them. O’Neil moved to the fire escape and motioned for the truck’s ladder to be brought to them. The flames came closer and closer to the fire escape as Forman continued to shoot.

Then, at the very instant the ladder reached the trio, the fire escape gave way. O’Neil clung to the ladder, but Bryant and Jones fell helplessly. Forman snapped a last picture before turning away, knowing the bodies were falling to the ground. Diana Bryant was pronounced dead at the scene. The young girl lived. Despite a heroic effort, O’Neil knew he had been just seconds away from saving the lives of both. Forman’s work captured a vivid scene where mere seconds had meant life or death.

Photo coverage from the tragic event garnered Stanley Forman a Pulitzer Prize. But more important, his work paved the way for Boston and other states to mandate tougher fire safety codes.

Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud

This is the picture of the “mushroom cloud” showing the enormous quantity of energy. The first atomic bomb was released on August 6 in Hiroshima (Japan) and killed about 80,000 people. On August 9 another bomb was released above Nagasaki. The effects of the second bomb were even more devastating - 150,000 people were killed or injured. But the powerful wind, the extremely high temperature and radiation caused enormous long term damage.

Tiananmen Square 1989A hunger strike by 3,000 students in Beijing had grown to a protest of more than a million as the injustices of a nation cried for reform. For seven weeks the people and the People’s Republic, in the person of soldiers dispatched by a riven Communist Party, warily eyed each other as the world waited. When this young man simply would not move, standing with his meager bags before a line of tanks, a hero was born. A second hero emerged as the tank driver refused to crush the man, and instead drove his killing machine around him. Soon this dream would end, and blood would fill Tiananmen. But this picture had shown a billion Chinese that there is hope.

Child Draws Home

The effects of the World Wart II have not only resulted to the death of millions, but also a long-standing disturbance on the lives of those who survived, particularly children. They were the ones who greatly suffered from the pain and trauma brought by the war. They not only witnessed killings of their families and friends; they also lost their future. They may have survived the war, but the pain will forever be there.

Among those who suffered this effect is Teresa, a young Polish girl who lost her family during the war. While in staying in a concentration camp, she drew an unrecognizable image on the blackboard, which was somewhat chaotic. When ask what her drawing was, she pertained to it as her “home”.

SWAT vs. Cuban Boy

Alan Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph.

US federal agents have seized six-year-old Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez in an early morning raid on the home of his relatives in Miami.

About 25 officers broke down the door of the house and re-emerged minutes later with Elian wrapped in a blanket.

They bundled the screaming boy into a vehicle and drove him away, as the crowd outside the house shouted protests.

Chaotic scenes followed as the officers retreated and pepper spray was used to keep back the crowd.

Elian was put on a plane and flown to Andrews Air force base outside Washington where he was reunited with his father for the first time in five months.

Elian has been at the center of a bitter custody battle between his Miami relatives and his father in Cuba since being shipwrecked off the Florida coast last November.

His mother, and 10 other people attempting to enter the US as illegal immigrants, drowned.

One of the fishermen who rescued Elian, Donato Dalrymple, was in the house when he was taken.

Mr Dalrymple said agents pointed guns at the family and shouted: “Give me the boy or I’ll shoot you!”

But Attorney-General Janet Reno, who ordered the raid after the failure of negotiations with Elian’s relatives about surrendering him, defended the use of armed officers.

She said they had had information that there could have been guns in the house and among the crowd outside.

Ms Reno confirmed Elian would remain in the US in accordance with the appeal court injunction against the boy being taken to Cuba.

In a brief statement, President Bill Clinton said that he supported Janet Reno’s decision.

“The law was upheld and that was the right thing to do,” he said.

The affair has greatly strained US/Cuban relations with accusations from Cuba that the delay in returning Elian is politically motivated.

After a series of court hearings Elian was allowed to return home to Cuba with his father in June 2000.

They received a rapturous welcome and Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, attended Elian’s seventh birthday party.

In an interview broadcast on US television a year after Elian’s return his father said their life had gone back to normal and Elian was enjoying school in the small town of Cardenas, in central Cuba.

In spite of the fate of Elian’s mother, thousands of other Cuban would-be illegal immigrants still attempt the dangerous crossing to the United States each year.

9/11 Attacks

In the morning September 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. This was no accident, but rather a series of attacks done by suicide bombers engaged with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group.

The attacks killed all the passengers on board the hijacked planes, and took away 2,974 innocent lives at the World Trade Center. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attack, and the stock market was closed for a week. In response to the attacks, the United States government declared a War on Terror, while many other nations strengthened their law enforcement powers to fight terrorism. However, the suicide attacks done by the Al Qaeda terrorists have forever marked a sense of fear not just in America, but in the whole world.

Oklahoma City bombing

Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields carries a dying Baylee Almon away from the rubble. She had celebrated her first birthday just one day earlier.
Charles Porter’s photo was widely distributed by The Daily Oklahoman and the Associated Press and quickly became recognized around the world.

The photo earned the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.

Niagara falls frozen

Starving boy and a missionary

World Press Photo of the Year: 1980 Mike Wells, United Kingdom. Karamoja district, Uganda, April 1980. Starving boy and a missionary. About the image Wells felt indignant that the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes with pictures of people starving to death.

Segregated water fountains

Flower Power

The most lasting image from the last big march on the Pentagon, on October 21, 1967, survives in the collective memory as summing up an era. Carnations in gun barrels were the essence of Flower Power. “I knew I had a good picture,” says photographer Bernie Boston, 73, who took the photo for the Washington Star. His editors, not imagining the significance, buried it deep inside the A section.

What became of the young demonstrator? By most accounts, he was George Harris, about 18 years old, a young actor from New York. He was on his way to San Francisco, where he would come out of the closet, take the name Hibiscus, and co-found the flamboyant, psychedelic gay-themed drag troupe called the Cockettes, according to filmmaker David Weissman, who made a critically acclaimed documentary of the group in 2002. Harris died in the early 1980s of complications from AIDS, at the dawn of that epidemic.

Real life, amidst chaos

World Press Photo of the Year: 2006 Spencer Platt, USA, Getty Images. Young Lebanese drive through devastated neighborhood of South Beirut, 15 August About the image After a long morning walking through the rubble of a bombed Beirut and documenting people returning to what was left of their homes, Platt saw the red convertible out of the corner of his eye and had only a few seconds to capture the moment.

Reagan Assassination Attempt

Reagan’s shooter was a mentally ill John Hinckley Jr who had an obsession with actress Jodie Foster after seeing the film, Taxi Driver. He stalked her for a number of years before he decided that he needed to do something grand to get her attention. Hinckley decided to try and kill the president imitating Travis Bickle the lead character (played by Robert De Niro) of the movie Taxi Driver who also tried to kill a famous politican. On March 30, 1981 Hinkley ambushed the President who was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel after delivering a luncheon address to AFL-CIO representatives. The attempt on Reagan’s life was caught on camera and is often used as one of the most famous pieces of footage of that era.

Video :





Ronald Regan

“My speech at the Hilton Hotel was not riotously received - I think most of the audience were Democrats - but at least they gave me polite applause. After the speech, I left the hotel through a side entrance and passed a line of press photographers and TV cameras.

I was almost to the car when I heard what sounded like two or three firecrackers over to my left - just a small fluttering sound, pop, pop, pop. I turned and said, “What the hell’s that?” Just then, Jerry Parr, the head of our Secret Service unit, grabbed me by the waist and literally hurled me into the back of the limousine. I landed on my face atop the armrest across the back seat and Jerry jumped on top of me. When he landed, I felt a pain in my upper back that was unbelievable. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever felt. “Jerry,” I said, “get off, I think you’ve broken one of my ribs.”

“The White House,” Jerry told the driver, then scrambled off me and got on the jump seat and the car took off. I tried to sit up on the edge of the seat and was almost paralyzed by pain. As I was straightening up, I had to cough hard and saw that the palm of my hand was brimming with extremely red frothy blood. “You not only broke a rib, I think the rib punctured my lung,” I said.

Jerry looked at the bubbles in the frothy blood and told the driver to head for George Washington University Hospital instead of the White House. By then my handkerchief was sopped with blood and he handed me his. Suddenly, I realized I could barely breathe. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get enough air. I was frightened and started to panic a little. I just was not able to inhale enough air. We pulled up in front of the hospital emergency entrance and I was first out of the limo and into the emergency room. A nurse was coming to meet me and I told her I was having trouble breathing. Then all of a sudden my knees turned rubbery. The next thing I knew I was lying face up on a gurney and my brand-new pinstriped suit was being cut off me, never to be worn again.

The pain near my ribs was still excruciating, but what worried me most was that I still could not get enough air, even after the doctors placed a breathing tube in my throat. Every time I tried to inhale, I seemed to get less air. I remember looking up from the gurney, trying to focus my eyes on the square ceiling tiles, and praying. Then I guess I passed out for a few minutes. I was lying on the gurney only half-conscious when I realized that someone was holding my hand. It was a soft, feminine hand. I felt it come up and touch mine and then hold on tight to it. It gave me a wonderful feeling. Even now I find it difficult to explain how reassuring, how wonderful, it felt. It must have been the hand of a nurse kneeling very close to the gurney, but I couldn’t see her. I started asking, “Who’s holding my hand? Who’s holding my hand?” When I didn’t hear any response, I said, “Does Nancy know about us?”

Regan again lost conscious and when he again woke up he saw his wife, First Lady Nancy Reagan. Still keeping his wits he jokingly explained, “Honey, I forgot to duck” (borrowing Jack Dempsey’s line to his wife the night he was beaten by Gene Tunney for the heavyweight championship).

Shortly before surgery to remove the bullet, which barely missed his heart, Reagan remarked to the surgical team, “Please tell me you’re all Republicans.” The head surgeon, liberal Democrat Joseph Giordano, replied, “Mr. President, today we are all Republicans.”

Reagan had been scheduled to visit Philadelphia on the day of the shooting. He told a nurse, “All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia,” a reference to the W.C. Fields’s tagline (which was itself a reference to an old vaudeville joke among comedians: “I would rather be dead than play Philadelphia”).

Olympics Black Power

Two black American athletes have made history at the Mexico Olympics by staging a silent protest against racial discrimination.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200m, stood with their heads bowed and a black-gloved hand raised as the American National Anthem played during the victory ceremony.

The pair both wore black socks and no shoes and Smith wore a black scarf around his neck. They were demonstrating against continuing racial discrimination of black people in the United States.

As they left the podium at the end of the ceremony they were booed by many in the crowd.

At a press conference after the event Tommie Smith, who holds seven world records, said: “If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say ‘a Negro’. We are black and we are proud of being black.

“Black America will understand what we did tonight.”

Smith said he had raised his right fist to represent black power in America, while Carlos raised his left fist to represent black unity. Together they formed an arch of unity and power.

He said the black scarf represented black pride and the black socks with no shoes stood for black poverty in racist America.

Within a couple of hours the actions of the two Americans were being condemned by the International Olympic Committee.

A spokesperson for the organization said it was “a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit.”

It is widely expected the two will be expelled from the Olympic village and sent back to the US.

In September last year Tommie Smith, a student at San Jose State university in California, told reporters that black members of the American Olympic team were considering a total boycott of the 1968 games.

He said: “It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro.”

The boycott had been the idea of professor of sociology at San Jose State university, and friend of Tommie Smith, Harry Edwards.

Professor Edwards set up the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) and appealed to all black American athletes to boycott the games to demonstrate to the world that the civil rights movement in the US had not gone far enough.

He told black Americans they should refuse “to be utilized as ‘performing animals’ in the games.”

Although the boycott never materialized the OPHR gained much support from black athletes around the world.

That evening, the silver medallist in the 200m event, Peter Norman of Australia, who was white, wore an OPHR badge in support of Smith and Carlos’ protest.

But two days later the two athletes were suspended from their national team, expelled from the Olympic village and sent home to America.

Many felt they had violated the Olympic spirit by drawing politics into the games.

On their return both men were welcomed as heroes by the African-American community but others regarded them as trouble-makers. Both received death threats.

Statue in honor of Smith and Carlos at San José State University

Face Off: Oka Crisis

The Oka Crisis was one of the well-publicized violent conflicts the Canadian government faced against the First nations that began on July 11, 1990 and lasted until September 26, 1990. The immediate cause of the conflict was due to a land dispute between the Mohawk nation and the town of Oka, Quebec, which resulted to one direct and two indirect casualties.

How important is the land you stand on? For some, a piece of land means a highly profitable investment, but for the Mohawk Nation, their land is not just a piece of soil, but a legacy passed to them by their ancestors. And this was something they had to fight for even it had to cost their lives. During the conflict, Mohawk Warriors set up barricades around the town of Oka, and a series of confrontations between the Mohawk Nation and the Sûretè de Quebec that often led to violent face offs.

The Oka Crisis ended on September 26, 1990, almost a month after the Mohawk Warriors negotiated an end to their protest. The proposed expansion of the golf course was eventually cancelled.

Flag raising on Iwo Jima

Man walks on the Moon

In one of the most famous photographs of the 20th Century, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.

As the world remembers the thrilling Apollo 11 mission 35 years later, NASA’s newVision calls for a return to the moon, followed by journeys of discovery to Mars and beyond.

Execution of a Viet Cong

This picture was shot by Eddie Adams who won the Pulitzer prize with it. The picture shows Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief executing a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain. Once again the public opinion was turned against the war.

The lynching of young blacks

This is a famous picture, taken in 1930, showing the young black men accused of raping a Caucasian woman and killing her boyfriend, hanged by a mob of 10,000 white men. The mob took them by force from the county jail house. Another black man was left behind and ended up being saved from lynching. Even if lynching photos were designed to boost white supremacy, the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting many.

Dying Soldier Hangs to Priest

Puerto Cabello naval base, Venezuela, 4 June 1962. A soldier who has been mortally wounded by a sniper clings onto navy chaplain Luis Padillo. About the image Braving the streets amid sniper fire, to offer last rites to the dying, the priest encountered a wounded soldier, who pulled himself up by clinging to the priest’s cassock, as bullets chewed up the concrete around them. Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture.

Abu Ghraib

Last Jew of Vinnitsa

Picture from an Einsatzgruppen soldier’s personal album, labelled on the back as “Last Jew of Vinnitsa, it shows a member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1941. All 28,000 Jews from Vinnitsa and its surrounding areas were massacred at the time.

First Black Student

Dorothy Counts First Black Student

World Press Photo of the Year: 1957 Douglas Martin, USA, The Associated Press. Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, 4 September 1957. Dorothy Counts, one of the first black students to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School. About the image Reporters and photographers bore witness and recorded the violence that erupted when Dorothy Counts showed up for her first day at an all-white school. People threw rocks and screamed “Go back where you came from”. They got their way - after a string of abuses, Dorothy’s family withdrew her from the school after only four days.

Boy throws Rock at Tank

Palestinian Boy throws rock at Israeli tank.

A Brave Palestinian boy throws stones at an Israeli tank during a clash May 19, 2003 at Beit Hanoun town in the northern Gaza Strip.

Burial of an unknown child

Burial of an unknown child. This unknown child has become the icon of the world’s worst industrial disaster, caused by the US multinational chemical company, Union Carbide.

The struggle still continues.

First pic on the internet

Back in 1992, after their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked me for a few scanned photos of “the CERN girls” to publish them on some sort of information system he had just invented, called the “World Wide Web”. I had only a vague idea of what that was, but I scanned some photos on my Mac and FTPed them to Tim’s now famous “info.cern.ch”. How was I to know that I was passing an historical milestone, as the one above was the first picture ever to be clicked on in a web browser!”

The First X-ray

In 1901 Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics, and he truly deserves his place in history because his discovery revolutionized the medical world. A series of experiments helped him notice that barium platinocyanide emits a fluorescent glow. Combining his observation with a photographic plate and his wife’s hand, he made the first X-ray photo, and thus, made it possible to look inside the human body without surgical intervention.

How Life Begins

In 1957 he began taking pictures with an endoscope, an instrument that can see inside a body cavity, but when Lennart Nilsson presented the rewards of his work to LIFE’s editors several years later, they demanded that witnesses confirm that they were seeing what they thought they were seeing. Finally convinced, they published a cover story in 1965 that went on for 16 pages, and it created a sensation. Then, and over the intervening years, Nilsson’s painstakingly made pictures informed how humanity feels about . . . well, humanity. They also were appropriated for purposes that Nilsson never intended. Nearly as soon as the 1965 portfolio appeared in LIFE, images from it were enlarged by right-to-life activists and pasted to placards.

Loch Ness Monster

Man mutilated Rwanda

World Press Photo of the Year: 1994 James Nachtwey, USA, Magnum Photos for Time. Rwanda, June 1994. Hutu man mutilated by the Hutu ‘Interahamwe’ militia, who suspected him of sympathizing with the Tutsi rebels. About the image Nachtwey says his specialty is dealing with ground level realities with a human dimension. He feels that people need photography to help them understand what’s going on in the world, and believes that pictures can have a great influence on shaping public opinion and mobilizing protest.

Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper

Lunch atop a Skyscraper (New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam) is a famous photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets during construction of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932.

The photograph depicts 11 men eating lunch, seated on a girder with their feet dangling hundreds of feet above the New York City streets. Ebbets took the photo on September 29, 1932, and it appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in its Sunday photo supplement on October 2. Taken on the 69th floor of the GE Building during the last several months of construction, the photo Resting on a Girder shows the same workers napping on the beam.

Eare image by the same photographer showing the workers sleeping on the crossbeam

Solomos Solomou

Following the funeral of Tassos Isaac who was beaten to death by a Turkish mob in the UN buffer zone three days earlier, a group of unarmed Greek Cypriots re-entered the area where Isaac was murdered in order to demonstrate against his unlawful killing.

Among these demonstrators was Solomou who was a second cousin of Isaac. At around 2:20 pm, Solomou distanced himself from the rest of the demonstrators and walked towards a Turkish military post in Dheryneia. With a cigarette in his mouth, Solomou climbed the flag pole with the intention of removing the Turkish flag but was shot by Turkish snipers three times; in the mouth, in the neck and in the stomach.The whole scene was taped by bystanding journalists and was seen on live television. Solomou’s funeral was held on the 16th of August in Paralimni, among thousands of people and an official Cypriot day of mourning.

A few days after the killings of Isaac and Solomou, the then Prime Minister of Greece, Costas Simitis came to Cyprus and together with the then President of Cyprus, Glafcos Clerides visited the homes of the families of the two cousins.

On her part, the then Turkish Foreign Minister, Tansu Ciller who also visited Cyprus (the occupied north) a few days after Isaac and Solomou were killed, addressed a rally saying that Turks would “break the hands” of anyone who insulted their flag.

Mouse with Human Ear

Back in 1997, a rather bizarre photograph suddenly became very famous. It showed a totally hairless mouse, with what appeared to be a human ear growing out of its back. That photograph prompted a wave of protest against genetic engineering, which continues today. But there was absolutely no genetic engineering involved in getting that ear to cover almost all of the mouse’s back.

Anne Frank

Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. For many throughout the world, one teenage girl gave them a story and a face. She was Anne Frank, the adolescent who, according to her diary, retained her hope and humanity as she hid with her family in an Amsterdam attic. In 1944 the Nazis, acting on a tip, arrested the Franks; Anne and her sister died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen only a month before the camp was liberated. The world came to know her through her words and through this ordinary portrait of a girl of 14. She stares with big eyes, wearing an enigmatic expression, gazing at a future that the viewer knows will never come.

Stopping Time

Harold Edgerton’s famous high speed picture of a bullet going through an apple. Taken in 1964, it became a very famous image , not least because it was such an unusual photo based on a great achievement in high speed photography. Edgerton, professor at MIT, is also inventor of the strobe flash and a pioneer of stop-action photography. He collaborated with Jacques-Yves Cousteau to experiment photographing some of the deepest seabeds in the world.

Palestinian woman Pleads with Soldier

World Press Photo of the Year: 1976 Françoise Demulder, France, Gamma. Beirut, Lebanon, January 1976. Palestinian refugees in the district La Quarantaine. About the image She was the first woman to win the World Press Photo, and did so on the 20th anniversary of the award. Demulder stated at the time that she hated war, but felt compelled to document how it’s always the innocent who suffer, while the powerful get richer and richer.

Iraqi man comforts son

World Press Photo of the Year: 2003 Jean-Marc Bouju, France, The Associated Press. An Najaf, Iraq, 31 March 2003. Iraqi man comforts his son at a holding center for prisoners of war. About the image Working quickly and discreetly, Bouju couldn’t help thinking about his own child, and how it would be if the roles were reversed.

Take the picture already!

In terms of of a changing the world this photo is minor league but It just had to be included because its a very famous and renowned photograph.

The shot is more commonly known as “Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park”

The photo shows a boy, with the left strap of his jumper awkwardly hanging off his shoulder, tensely holding his long, thin arms by his side. Clenched in his right hand is a toy grenade, and his left hand is held in a claw-like gesture; his facial expression is maniacal. Arbus captured this photograph by having the boy stand while moving around him, claiming she was trying to find the right angle. The boy became impatient and told her to “Take the picture already!” His expression conveys his exasperation and impatience with the whole endeavor, as the contact sheet for the shoot reveals. In other pictures, he is seen as a happy child.
The boy in the photograph is Colin Wood, son of tennis player Sidney Wood. An interview with Colin, with his recollections about Arbus taking this photograph, is presented in the BBC documentary “The Genius of Photography”.
An original print of the photograph sold for $408,000 April 2005, New York at Christie’s.

Sadly the Photographer Diane Arbus committed suicide in July 1971, at the age of 48 by ingesting a large quantity of barbiturates and then slashing her wrists. The reasons are unknown.

The challenger space shuttle disaster

The American space shuttle, Challenger, has exploded killing all seven astronauts on board.

The five men and two women - including the first teacher in space - were just over a minute into their flight from Cape Canaveral in Florida when the Challenger blew up.

The astronauts’ families, at the airbase, and millions of Americans witnessed the world’s worst space disaster live on TV.

The danger from falling debris prevented rescue boats reaching the scene for more than an hour.

In 25 years of space exploration seven people have died - today that total has been doubled.

President Ronald Reagan has described the tragedy as “a national loss”.

The Challenger’s flight, the 25th by a shuttle, had already been delayed because of bad weather. High winds, then icicles caused the launch to be postponed from 22 January.

But Nasa officials insist safety remains their top priority and there was no pressure to launch the shuttle today.

The shuttle crew was led by Commander Dick Scobee, 46. Christa McAuliffe, 37, married with two children, was to be the first school teacher in space - picked from among 10,000 entries for a competition.

Speaking before the launch, she said: “One of the things I hope to bring back into the classroom is to make that connection with the students that they too are part of history, the space programme belongs to them and to try to bring them up with the space age.”

President Reagan has put off his state of the union address. He was meeting senior aides in the Oval Office when he learned of the disaster.

We will never forget them

US President Ronald Reagan
He has called for an immediate inquiry into the disaster but he said the space programme would go on - in honour to the dead astronauts. Vice-President George Bush has been sent to Cape Canaveral to visit the victims’ families.

This evening, the president went on national television to pay tribute to the courage and bravery of the seven astronauts.

He said: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

Dolly the Sheep

Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned adult animal. The scientists who cloned Dolly are to stop experiments involving genetically modifying pigs for human organ transplants because of concerns that deadly new diseases could be passed on to people.

Nelson Mandela walks free
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years as a political prisoner in South Africa before becoming the country’s first black president. Mandela was a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC), which opposed South Africa’s white minority government and its policy of racial separation, known as apartheid. The government outlawed the ANC in 1960. Mandela was captured and jailed in 1962, and in 1964 he was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison. Instead of disappearing from view, Mandela became a prison-bound martyr and worldwide symbol of resistance to racism. South African President F.W. de Klerk finally lifted the ban on the ANC and released Mandela in 1990. Mandela used his stature to help dismantle apartheid and form a new multi-racial democracy, and he and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Mandela was elected the country’s president in 1994. He served until 1999, when he was succeeded by his deputy Thabo Mbeki. Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was published in 1994.

On February 11, 1990, after 27 years of incarceration, Mr Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison outside Paarl, following the relaxation of South Africa’s apartheid laws by the then ruling National Party and President FW de Klerk.

Mr Mandela was accompanied by his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and was greeted at the gates of the prison by thousands of waiting supporters. From there, Mr Mandela was taken in a motorcade to Cape Town City Hall, where he addressed a 50 000-strong crowd and millions of television viewers in South Africa and worldwide from the balcony. Before he began his speech, Mr Mandela greeted the world with “Amandla!” (“Power!”), an expression used as a rallying cry by activists and organisations through the decades of racist policies and persecution by the apartheid government.

In the speech, Mr Mandela described himself as a servant of the people, and placed the remaining years of his life in their hands.

Patterson Bigfoot

The most famous recording of an alleged Bigfoot is a short film shot in 1967. Filmed in Bluff Creek, California, it shows a large, manlike creature striding through a clearing. In many ways the veracity of the film is crucial; unlike many alleged Bigfoot photographs, the subject in the film cannot be a misidentification. Either the film is a hoax or it is an unknown, hairy giant. The film’s authenticity has been hotly debated, both among the public and among Bigfoot researchers.

Ruby shoots Oswald

Ruby (also known as “Sparky,” reportedly because of his short temper) frequently carried a handgun, and witnesses saw him with a handgun in the halls of the Dallas police headquarters on several occasions after President Kennedy’s assassination and arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963. In addition, WFAA-TV (Dallas) and NBC newsreel footage show Ruby impersonating a newspaper reporter during a press conference, at Dallas Police Headquarters, on the night of the assassination. At the press conference, District Attorney Henry Wade said that Lee Oswald was a member of the anti-Castro Free Cuba Committee. Ruby corrected Wade by stating that it was the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Ruby received international attention two days later. After driving into town and sending a money order to one of his employees, he walked the short distance to the nearby police headquarters. There is some evidence it was on a whim, for he left his favorite dog, Sheba, in the car, when he shot and fatally wounded the 24-year-old Oswald on Sunday, November 24, 1963, at 11:21 am CST, while authorities were preparing to transfer Oswald by car from police headquarters to the nearby county jail. Stepping out from a crowd of reporters and photographers, Ruby fired a snub-nosed Colt Cobra .38 into Oswald’s abdomen

When Ruby was arrested immediately after the shooting, he told several witnesses that his killing of Oswald would show the world that “Jews have guts,” that he helped the city of Dallas “redeem” itself in the eyes of the public, and that Oswald’s death would spare Jacqueline Kennedy the ordeal of appearing at Oswald’s trial Ruby stated that he shot Oswald to avenge Kennedy. Later, however, he claimed he shot Oswald on the spur of the moment when the opportunity presented itself, without considering any reason for doing so. At the time of the shooting Jack Ruby was taking Preludin, a slimming tablet which, while removing appetite, also roused the metabolism to hyperactivity.

Hector Peterson

Hector Pieterson (1964 – 16 June 1976) became the iconic image of the 1976 Soweto uprising in apartheid South Africa when a news photograph by Sam Nzima of the dying Hector being carried by a fellow student, was published around the world. He was killed at the age of 12 when the police opened fire on protesting students. For years, June 16 stood as a symbol of resistance to the brutality of the apartheid government. Today, it is known as National Youth Day — a day on which South Africans honour young people and bring attention to their needs..

Death of a loyalist soldier

From 1936 to 1939 Robert Capa photographed the horrors the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, he became known across the globe for a photo he took on the Cordoba Front of a Loyalist Militiaman who had just been shot and was in the act of falling to his death. Because of his proximity to the victim and the timing of the capture, there was a long controversy about the authenticity of this photograph. Historians eventually succeeded in identifying the dead soldier as Federico Borrell García and proved it authentic. This is the best-known picture of the Spanish civil war.

Migrant Mother

The photograph that has become known as “Migrant Mother” is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach was the code name of one of the points where the Allies would land and invade France, which was then conquered by Germany during the World War II. The beach is located in the shores of Normandy, facing the English Channel.

The British troops invaded Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and waged an attack on the German forces in three bloody assaults. To land on the beach was a difficult task due to the rocky terrains of the area, but because of the joined powers of the Air Force and Navy, the Germans were defeated by end of the day, and the D-Day objectives were fulfilled.

Conrad Schumann
On 15 August 1961 he found himself, aged 19, guarding the Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction, at the corner of Ruppinerstraße and Bernauerstraße. At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed wire fence. As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rüber! (”come over”), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car. Photographer Peter Leibing captured a photograph of his escape on film and it became a well-known image of the Cold War.

Assassination of Asanuma
This picture was taken only a second before the japanese socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma was assassinated by an right wing student. Photographer Yasushi Nagao said he was only on the right place and on the right time. He received a Pulitzer price for this photo.

Che Guevara
Photograph of Che Guevara was taken on March 5, 1960 by Alberto Korda at a funeral service for victims of the La Coubre explosion, it was published seven years later. Che Guevara was 31 at the time of the photo.

Reichstag flag
Soviet Union soldiers Raqymzhan Qoshqarbaev and Georgij Bulatov raising the flag on the roof of Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany in May, 1945.

The Kiss at Times Square
At the end of World War II, in US cities everybody went to the streets to salute the end of combat. Friendship and unity were everywhere. This picture shows a sailor kissing a young nurse in Times Square. The fact is he was kissing every girl he encountered and for that kiss, this particular nurse slapped him.

The First Photograph
Known as the World’s First Photograph but actually this is the earliest surviving photograph, c. 1826. It required an eight-hour exposure, which resulted in sunlight on both sides of the buildings.

It represents the view of the courtyard of Niépce’s house at Gras, France, taken from the window of his workroom. On the left side of the image is the pigeon-house (an upper loft in the Niépce family house), to the right of it is a pear-tree with a patch of sky showing through an opening in the branches. In the center of the image is the slanting roof of the barn; the long building behind it is the bake house, with chimney. On the right side of the image is another wing of the house.

JFK Assassination
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, USA at 12:30 p.m. CST (18:30 UTC). John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded by gunshots while riding with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in a Presidential Motorcade. The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963–1964, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1976–1979, and other government investigations concluded that the President was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. This conclusion was initially met with widespread support among the American public, but polls conducted after the original 1966 Gallup poll show a majority of the public hold beliefs contrary to these findings. The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, though none of these theories has been proven.

I Have A Dream
WASHINGTON, D.C.—At the climax of his “I Have A Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. raises his arm on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and calls out for deliverance with the electrifying words of an old Negro spiritual hymn, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”, 1963.

Kent State Shootings

The news that Richard Nixon was sending troops to Cambodia caused a chain of protests in the U.S. colleges. At Kent State the protest seemed more violent, some students even throwing rocks. In consequence, The Ohio National Guard was called to calm things down, but the events got out of hand and they started shooting. Some of the victims were simply walking to school. The photo shows 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller who had been shot by the Ohio National Guard moments earlier.

Biafra
When the Igbos of eastern Nigeria declared themselves independent in 1967, Nigeria blockaded their fledgling country-Biafra. In three years of war, more than one million people died, mainly of hunger. In famine, children who lack protein often get the disease kwashiorkor, which causes their muscles to waste away and their bellies to protrude. War photographer Don McCullin drew attention to the tragedy. “I was devastated by the sight of 900 children living in one camp in utter squalor at the point of death,” he said. “I lost all interest in photographing soldiers in action.” The world community intervened to help Biafra, and learned key lessons about dealing with massive hunger exacerbated by war-a problem that still defies simple solutions.

Earthrise
The late adventure photographer Galen Rowell called it “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” Captured on Christmas Eve, 1968, near the end of one of the most tumultuous years the U.S. had ever known, the Earthrise photograph inspired contemplation of our fragile existence and our place in the cosmos. For years, Frank Borman and Bill Anders of the Apollo 8 mission each thought that he was the one who took the picture. An investigation of two rolls of film seemed to prove Borman had taken an earlier, black-and-white frame, and the iconic color photograph, which later graced a U.S. postage stamp and several book covers, was by Anders.

First Flight
December 17, 1903 was the day humanity spread its wings and rose above the ground - for 12 seconds at first and by the end of the day for almost a minute - but it was a major breakthrough. Orville and Wilbur Wright, two bicycle mechanics from Ohio, are the pioneers of aviations, and although Alberto Santos-Dumont was the actual first flight this photo is more well known.

Dead on the Beach
When LIFE ran this stark, haunting photograph of a beach in Papua New Guinea on September 20, 1943, the magazine felt compelled to ask in an adjacent full-page editorial, “Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore?” Among the reasons: “words are never enough . . . words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.” But there was more to it than that; LIFE was actually publishing in concert with government wishes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Americans had grown too complacent about the war, so he lifted the ban on images depicting U.S. casualties. Strock’s picture and others that followed in LIFE and elsewhere had the desired effect. The public, shocked by combat’s grim realities, was instilled with yet greater resolve to win the war.

Buchenwald camp

Flag raising at ground zero

Saddam Hussein execution

Dragging Vietcong Soldier
This is a truly sad picture but unfortunately I don’t have much information about it. At the time the public saw it, it made quite a buzz, people realized how wrong the war is. The picture shows American trooper dragging the body of a vietcong soldier with their tank (or APC more exactly).

Photos that Changed the World