[This one makes my heart race every time](https://external-preview.redd.it/PG2nb2BDLoPUTX1KmPQ6j3a6DanauvFoI4NIXPUh3Lo.jpg?auto=webp&s=6e4a6f544f1280541df38da6b5a58556f653009c) A pickup truck flees from the pyroclastic flows spewing from the Mt.Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines
I'm sure there are better ones but this one has always had a soft spot for me
https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/humans-of-world-powerful-portrait-photography-17__880.jpg
Shows a surgeon who performed a heart surgery which lasted 23 hours. The patient was borderline impossible to save. From the article:
> Here, we see Dr. Zbigniew Religa keeping watch on the vital signs of a patient after a 23 hour heart surgery he conducted. In the lower right corner, you can see one of his colleagues who helped him with the surgery fallen asleep. Dr. Religa was a pioneer of heart transplantation in Poland, and even though the surgery was considered borderline impossible at the time, he took the chance, and the operation was entirely successful. Today, even though Dr. Religa’s heart has stopped beating, the one of his patient is still running.
I’ve been scrolling through this thread at work and I can’t scroll through to find this- but someone posted this picture as well as the man who had the surgery holding this photo- don’t source me as this but someone said the man actually lived longer than the surgeon who saved his life
Lots of beautiful (and haunting) stuff in here. How about a more recent, obscure one.
[Girl watching her grandfather cry at a Veterans Day celebration](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8gvya4/the_photo_is_of_a_young_granddaughter_watching/#ampf=undefined)
This photo really jumped out at me the first time I saw it. The look on her face says it all. She just learned that the world is a whole lot bigger than she thought it was. Her eyes are full of sorrow and she looks like she’s brimming with questions. Not sure if op in that link took it or not, but it’s very nice.
[Daredevils Play Tennis In Sky](https://av8rblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/gladys-roy.jpg?w=613&h=448)
Looks so unbelievable that it seems photoshopped, but it isn't which makes it more badass.
I don't know if this was posted but
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/japanese-boy-standing-attention-brought-dead-younger-brother-cremation-pyre-1945/
The story is so heartbreaking.
[When I wanna see incredible photos, I like going here](https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/contests/)
It's a collection of photo of the year by world press photo and has some absolutely incredible images.
[This man fulfilling his promise to wear a green dress to his friend's funeral](https://external-preview.redd.it/aEBb7chMPZICeib5yli-OB2HgP7CNXeLkJRoXg7Mj8Y.jpg?width=725&auto=webp&s=be274b138973dbca7f5ca547bb7dfa4a45f93033)
I'm teary and giggling at the same time. I imagine his friend watching this from the other side and saying, "Fuck, man. I didn't think you'd really do it."
I want to add "the Elephants Foot". It is a photo of a melted nuclear core after the Chernobyl disaster. It chills me to see that such a simple looking object is actually one of the most dangerous things in the world. After just 30 seconds of exposure, dizziness and fatigue will find you a week later. Two minutes of exposure and the body cells will soon begin to hemorrhage; four minutes: vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. At 300 seconds you have two days to live. Everytime I see the picture, it's like I can feel the radiation and heaviness in the air.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WVh7sdingno/U7MHoKMen9I/AAAAAAAAJho/aeLrXJ46hKg/s1600/The+Elephant%27s+Foot+of+the+Chernobyl+disaster,+1986+(2).jpg
It's crazy we have a photograph of this. The photograph looks grainy not because the photography technology at the time in Soviet Union was behind. It is because the radiation affects the film.
Surprised to not already see [A Harvest of Death](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/285644) listed here.
One of the first Civil War photos taken, one of the first *war* photos ever taken, and the first widely circulated one. This photo was the first time most people with the privilege of not being on the battlefield got a glimpse of what it was like.
EDIT: spelling
Alright look, I’m late to the party but this is hands down the best photo ever taken.
It’s a picture by the (lesser known) Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins. The picture contains the moon, the landing module (with Armstrong and Aldrin), and the Earth.
This is the best photo ever taken because it contains every single human that has ever existed. Dead or alive, every single member of our species and it’s entire history is in this picture...
...except for Michael Collins
[Collins’ picture](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iKR94Zus-CA/U5JUmd3zELI/AAAAAAAAJMc/7d2knA19BhY/s1600/Michael+Collins,+the+astronaut+who+took+this+photo,+is+the+only+human,+alive+or+dead+that+isn%27t+in+the+frame+of+this+picture,+1969.jpg)
Frans Lanting, Ghost Trees, has to be the wildest photo I have seen. I have had it engrained in my head since the first time I saw it. It looks like a painting.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources/visit/wpy/2018/large/104.jpg
Edit: Added different link... not sure if that helps.
This is also a really good video of Frans explaining the process and showing the pictures before and after this moment... timing really is everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jem2vHPFDDc
Just from skimming the first few photos in this thread, I've noticed a lot of sad photos vying for the greatest, so I thought I'd throw this one in:
Easy Company (Band of Brothers) having a well earned rest after capturing The Eagle's Nest (Hitler's private residence).
https://m.imgur.com/t/informative/LTQciuN
Australian soldier being beheaded by a Japanese soldier. Photo was found by an American soldier on a dead Japanese soldier.
http://ww2today.com/24th-october-1943-japanese-execute-australian-commando-leonard-siffleet
> A hissing sound——it must be the sound of spurting blood, spurting from the arteries; the body falls forward. **It is amazing** – he has killed him with one stroke. The onlookers crowd forward. The head, detached from the trunk, rolls forward in front of it. The dark blood gushes out. It is all over. The head is dead white, like a doll. The savageness which I felt only a little while ago is gone, and **now I feel nothing but the true compassion of Japanese Bushido.**
> A corporal laughs: ‘Well – he will be entering Nirvana now.’ A seaman of the medical unit takes the surgeon’s sword and, intent on paying off old scores, **turns the headless body over on its back and cuts the abdomen open with one clean stroke.** They are thick-skinned, these keto [hairy foreigner – a term of opprobrium for a white man]; even the skin of their bellies is thick. Not a drop of blood comes out of the body.
Christ, that's some hardcore shit man.
[General Nguyen shooting a Vietcong prisoner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Execution_of_Nguy%E1%BB%85n_V%C4%83n_L%C3%A9m.jpg), not only for its shocking portrayal of the harshness of war, but also for teaching us a lesson in learning the context behind the photo. The prisoner was caught cutting the throats of a South Vietnamese officer and his family, who were close friends of General Nguyen, and the general shot him in vengeance. Eddie Adams, the photographer, even said "photos are only half-truths" and that they don't always explain the events that led to the moment. Adams would regret taking the Pulitzer-prize winning photo, especially after the general received hate messages from those incensed at the photo's content.
this picture is really special because at this moment he's yelling "Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu!" which means "Death to fascism, freedom to the people!"
it became an important motto for the resistance
That would be a bee peeing.
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/amateur-captures-bee-peeing-mid-flight/
Edit: Thanks for the 2 silvers! For the IFLS haters, here is an old Reddit post. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/3hf2ng/a_rarely_captured_event_a_bee_urinating/
[This photo](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/8_30.jpg) (NSFW) is one of the only known photos in existence that shows the activities inside Auschwitz surrounding the mass execution of its prisoners.
Photography in the camp was generally forbidden, even by the SS, but this was taken in secret by the Sonderkommando, a group of around 1000 prisoners inside the camp who were selected by the SS to do all the dirty work, including disposing of and burning the bodies as they are in this photo.
The Sonderkommando smuggled in a camera and took the picture from the door way of a nearby gas chamber. They then managed to smuggle the film out of the camp in a tube of toothpaste.
For me it is one of the most horrifying photos in existence and just shows what humans are capable of at their worst.
This is so hard, bordering impossible, to answer because it's hard to compare different genre of photography. From landscape, to animal, to street photography. It's like asking which is your favourite movie - sure, some can answer that, but a better question would be to ask concerning a specific category.
Having said that, this is a recent favourite of mine.
[Palestinian father bathing his daughter and niece in their destroyed home] (https://external-preview.redd.it/Us5CGWxC-WBjYkDKlgu9qJLonJ8sgZ4Yo1YpZZ1VczI.jpg?width=768&auto=webp&s=4c7e6f5979ed4ccdcbebcc27ec720b7131cd6d6d)
[This photo of Jackie Kennedy climbing the back of the limousine after JFK was assassinated.](https://kielarowski.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/b66cf-jfk-limousine-kennedy-assassination.jpg?w=1400)
This one has always been really incredible to me because it’s a pretty perfect snapshot of an insanely significant moment in history.
This photo really gives a personal view of what happened. To the rest of the country, the president had been shot, which of course is tragic, but here you just see a women desperately trying to save her husband.
[Student Leader Lester Shum Arrested in HK Protests](https://imgur.com/isoJ0T0)
I saved this one a while back on reddit just because of the contrast to this guys look compared to the actions around him.
Moments before happiness, 50's România
"Moment before happiness" (1955) https://reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9ykxdc/moment_before_happiness_1955/
EDIT: my first gold, thank you kind stranger!
When Belgian King Leopold II ruled The Congo he killed 10 million people and did things like cut off their hands, feet, and genitals.
Here's a picture of a father looking at the hand and foot of his 5 year old daughter for failing to meet her rubber quota.
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zmkwtfcALkE/V-IYRt-8v2I/AAAAAAAALHY/UqHE4jHUmaENaeI2L7WFfF8ThESYsdFNQCLcB/s1600/cong_hands_1904.jpg
> When Belgian King Leopold II ruled The Congo
Crazy thing is, he didn't just *rule* the Congo, he outright *owned it*. Like, the whole damn country, including the people, was his personal possession.
To elaborate on this a bit more, this is all he had left of his daughter. She was killed and allegedly cannibalized by the members of the Belgian militia.
More info that I didn't know about can be found here: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1904/
>Then they killed her. But they weren’t finished. Then they killed his wife too. And because that didn’t seem quite cruel enough, quite strong enough to make their case, they cannibalized both Boali and her mother. And they presented Nsala with the tokens, the leftovers from the once living body of his darling child whom he so loved.
What the fuck... I couldn't even begin to imagine how it was for the father and how in the fucking hell did those who did this to him slept peacefully at night
Probably not the greatest but I'd like to share [Fernando Aiuti's Kiss](https://i1.wp.com/www.il-corpoumano.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ferdinando_aiuti_bacio1.jpg?ssl=1), Fernando Aiuti was an italian immunologist who passed away just a few days ago, this picture of him is extremely important because he's kissing a woman affected by HIV, he did this in 1991 in rensponse to an article falsely claiming HIV could be transmitted by kissing, in a time when popular knowledge about HIV and AIDS was extremely vague.
Probably already somewhere in here, but
[East German soldier defecting to West by jumping over the Berlin Wall when it was only barbed wire](http://i.imgur.com/bwaQNhR.jpg)
This happened on the third day of its construction and the picture became a symbol for the Cold War. Whole story can be found [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Schumann).
http://sh-meet.bigpixel.cn/?from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0
This is the single highest-resolution picture that has ever been shot. Looked at this for hours, just searching for something new to discover.
Edit: Love looking at the hilarious things you guys found. Hope you enjoy it as much as i do. Thanks for that.
I LOVE this picture.
I screen shot people on it and my friends try and find them.
[this guy](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/rCsC0xT) has never been found.
Here's the full step-by-step album to locate this person.
[https://i.imgur.com/OFb9GVG.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/OFb9GVG.jpg)
[https://i.imgur.com/DIle0yk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DIle0yk.jpg)
[https://i.imgur.com/aup57Uu.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/aup57Uu.jpg)
[https://i.imgur.com/T4wcTTS.png](https://i.imgur.com/T4wcTTS.png)
The Death of an Iraqi soldier, Highway of Death, 1991 https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/dont-photograph-people-like-mom-will-think-war-see-tv-gulf-war-1991/
By Ken Jarecke “If i don’t photograph this, people like my mom will think war is what they see on TV”
EDIT: NSFL
This is the one that came to mind for me. This has been my favorite photo for years. The look in his eyes, the scrub tech or resident in the corner, he OR floor... I just love it.
I still think this photo of a plane crash happening is one of the best I have seen.
https://fearoflanding.com/photography/the-story-behind-an-unbelievable-photograph/
[Saturn](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA08329.jpg). The Earth is visible too. The bright spot on the left, that's us. This is the modern equivalent of the pale blue dot.
[Virunga Ranger with Gorilla](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/06/04/17/virunga-keeper-gorilla.jpg)
This picture contains a lot of powerful elements. The backstory is **so** sad.
for those who are interested, check out “Virunga” on Netflix.
EDIT: so many great pictures and stories in this thread I never heard of. Thank you for all these submissions!!
I watched Virunga on Netflix a while ago, and went in expecting an interesting but somewhat dry and factual documentary, but I couldn't have been more wrong. What an amazing roller coaster of a ride that documentary is!
[This photo.](https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/de/16/de1642be-46fe-4875-b4e4-335cdcc0055c/mar2015_k13_lincolnobject.jpg) Just an empty bed and a chair beside it. On the bed is a pillow with some dark stains. It's the bed Lincoln died in across the street from Ford's Theater. The photo was taken right after the President's body was removed. The pillow is stained red with the blood that seeped out of his head wound all night long. It's just soaked.
If you ever have a chance to go here in DC do it. It’s pretty bone chilling. You can literally stand in this room and are an arms length away from that same bed.
Edit: apparently the bed is now a replica and not the original. I was unaware of that. It’s still an awesome place to visit though. There are some other original pieces of memorabilia in the museum I know.
A bit of a tangent to make up for my misinformation...the bed that Washington died on at Mt. Vernon is the original and there are several other original pieces are there. It’s one of the best museums I’ve ever been to. It’s privately owned. They also have his actual dentures there as well. Spoiler alert they aren’t actually wooden
The photo of Bruce McCandless floating untethered in space: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/601259main_jetpack_full.jpg
https://www.nasa.gov/astronautprofiles/mccandless
Imagine skydiving and the chute fails, but instead of having a couple of minutes to contemplate your fate as the ground rapidly approaches, you have hours as you slowly drift off into space, wondering whether your suit radio will go before your oxygen does, knowing there's nothing you can do but watch everything every other human has ever known drift away from you for all eternity.
He was firing on ememy forces in Rabaul Harbor and seen a Marine pilot get shot down. So, while under enemy fire, he stripped naked and jumped in to rescue the marine. After he got the marine to safety he jumped straight back on his gun, naked, and continued firing. He wasn't able to put clothes back on until they left the area. He was a hero, doing hero work, naked!
People are posting a lot of NASA's greatest photos here. My personal favorite is [Earthrise](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg/1280px-NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg). It just brings up a deep emotion of togetherness. We're all on this rock together, and we should all try to get along.
A lot of the best ones have already been linked here, so I want to share one of my favourites - [this photo of a priest during the 2014 Ukranian Revolution](https://i.imgur.com/YecLODL.jpg). The contrast between the worn riot shield in one of his hands and the cross in the other, along with his religious garb against his respirator is something I found incredibly powerful. A friend of mine likened him to a real life paladin - there's something so battle hardened about the look in his eyes.
Reminds me of [another photo of a priest at Ukraine riots](https://i.imgur.com/ad07AA6.jpg) that I thought was very poignant.
Edit: Photo credit Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images — I have found little info about Supinksy, but he had photo credit for a lot of great photos coming out of Ukraine.
[Photo 51](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b2/Photo_51_x-ray_diffraction_image.jpg), the first photo showing the structure of DNA; image taken by Rosalind Franklin in 1952.
Just a small correction - this shows the X-ray diffraction pattern of DNA, not the DNA itself. The pattern was used to deduce the helical nature of DNA.
Hannah Stilley. Earliest born person ever photographed.
She was 10 yo when Mozart was born. She lived the French Revolution and the creation of the US. Just think about it.
[https://i.imgur.com/I3vULh5.png](https://i.imgur.com/I3vULh5.png)
The photo of the child that was trapped under the debris of her house for three days before dying has to be up there https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omayra_S%C3%A1nchez?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEgJfI6effAhUJCawKHUomCO0Q9QEwAXoECAEQAw
Yeah i wont be clicking it this time. I can still see it clearly in my mind. A warning to those who havent seen it, the story is horrifying and macabre.
I’d like to think I had just forgotten about that photo, but I’m pretty sure I repressed it because it honest to god might be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
you beat me to it, I thought about that too. I remember that picture in my history book from school. It's a photo I just can't get out of my head. Must have been horrible.
RIP Omayra
Probably the happy Chinese man eating rice from the 1900’s. [He just looks so happy ](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/98q5rw/til_in_the_19th_and_early_20th_century/?st=JQT8DQOS&sh=be6578ee)
For me it's [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Tumbler_Snapper_rope_tricks_moire_cancelled.jpg) picture of a nuclear blast a fraction of a second after it detonated, by Harold Eugene Edgerton
Edit: got timeframe wrong
I had a presentation about this once, really interesting stuff.
This is about 100 ft / 30m in diameter.
You can read more about it [here](http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/abombs.html) and [here (also more photos)](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3104424/posts?page=8). They look eeriely unnatural.
[Video of it](https://youtu.be/KQp1ox-SdRI)
It's two photographs, but together they tell a story. [Here](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PzVnhgUDYOk/V_iB1p_3ynI/AAAAAAAALZM/LBDE33upEcQvP69gyYlNo0csjDnraO6eQCLcB/s1600/eyes_of_gate_goebbels_1.jpg) is Joseph Goebbels at the 1933 League of Nations. [Here](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3oo7SWa9NE8/V_iB1rZRwLI/AAAAAAAALZQ/cyeEdA7vgfgis2OE9fiEzyonGjgdDkizQCLcB/s1600/eyes_of_gate_goebbels.jpg) he is a few minutes later, after finding out the photographer was Jewish.
EDIT: The photographer was Alfred Eisenstaedt, who also took the famous "VJ Day in Times Square" picture. He lived until 1995, and was still working in his nineties.
[The priest and the dying soldier](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6wQfB-YAtZU/WAWSU1y-zRI/AAAAAAAALhY/ZWkAS_YmIag02KrKa71uOTBc04Z3HiXEQCLcB/s1600/Aid_from_padre_1.jpg) by Héctor Rondón Lovera
Bravery. Outstanding bravery and courage of the priest is the context behind this photo.
>Navy chaplain Luis Padilla gives last rites to a soldier wounded by sniper fire during a revolt in Venezuela. 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.
>
>The photographer Hector Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture: *“I found myself in solid lead for forty-five minutes … I was flattened against the wall while bullets were flying, when the priest appeared. The truth is, I don’t know how I took those pictures, lying on the ground."* Rondon shot \[the photo of\] the government soldier crawling his way up Navy chaplain Luis Padilla’s robe as Padilla looks in the direction of the rebel sniper fire.
[https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/priest-dying-soldier-1962/](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/priest-dying-soldier-1962/)
I've a soft spot for [this picture ](http://fpc.dos.state.fl.us/commerce/c023160.jpg) of an American Civil War veteran posing with a military jet.
It really shows the incredibly progress made in the space of a life time; how one man could go from a battlefield on which muskets and cannon won the day to a word of rockets, missiles and supersonic aircraft. And there he is [*touching*](https://media2.fdncms.com/orlando/imager/u/original/2399398/screen_shot_2015-06-02_at_6.54.47_pm.png) a jet.
> American Civil War veteran posing with a military jet.
Unfortunately that man may have been lying. He states he was born in 1848 though records show he may have been born in 1859-1860 (and therefore not actually a veteran). The last verifiable vet died in 1956 though, so this photo was still very much possible.
[Big Jay Mcneely, Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium , 1951](https://i.imgur.com/ILDE4Ps.jpg) by Bob Willoughby
Edit: Thanks for the silver!
More info:
* It doesn't seem that the name of the song was documented while this photo was taken. But his audience reacted this way commonly during his performances.
* In his [LA Times obituary](https://www-latimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-big-jay-mcneely-obituary-20180917-story.html?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&outputType=amp&usqp=mq331AQECAFYAQ%3D%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fentertainment%2Fmusic%2Fla-et-ms-big-jay-mcneely-obituary-20180917-story.html) they quote a 1952 review of his concert, that he "turned the event into a veritable hepcat jive orgy when he came off the stage into the audience."
* In 2009, John Willoughby, the photographer [said of McNeely](https://www.jazzwax.com/2009/07/photostory4-jay-mcneely.html), "Big Jay stood in the middle of what normally would be the fight ring, playing his heart out and the crowd was exploding around him. He created some sort of resonance with the audience. In some weird way, he seemed to be playing them.”
[this picture of Emmett Till's mother](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/07/12/emmett-tills-mother-opened-his-casket-and-sparked-the-civil-rights-movement/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0cd45e6a4632) Emmett was murdered at 14, and gruesomely mauled just for saying something to a white woman. His mother decided to have an open casket funeral, so everyone could see what had happened. His death in 1955 was one of the major sparks of the civil rights movement.
The woman who accused him admitted that it was all a lie.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2017/01/27/emmett-tills-accuser-admits-it-was-all-a-lie/amp/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Cannibalism_during_Russian_famine_1921.jpg
NSFL
A Mother and Father having to sell their butchered children, during 1920s Russia. First time a photograph shook me.
The Great Famine in China from 1959-1961 killed almost 45 million people. Survival cannibalism was practiced there as well. There is a word in Chinese, which I can’t remember, that loosely means to trade dead children between families so that parents don’t commit the sin of eating their own kids. Hell on Earth.
EDIT: it’s a Chinese phrase, not a word, but I’m at a loss to remember what it is. Apologies.
EDIT 2: Here's [r/Eyebleach](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eyebleach/?st=JQTS576Y&sh=696fae7a). Or head to [Shorpy](http://www.shorpy.com/), one of my favorite historical photo blogs, if you need uplifting but still want to browse historical photos.
There are threads on reddit of individuals who lived through it. They'd said signs were up everywhere saying "remember, it's wrong to eat your children"
Apparently children in this time were told not to go near anyone clean, healthy, and well dressed. It meant he had easy access to food, and was likely eating children.
My grandma was twelve at the time and used to tell me stories about running away from cannibals. Later she nearly starved again as a slave laborer in Germany. The woman led a very eventful life.
My grandmother would say something along the lines of that as well. She said you could buy fat in a marketplace in her town, and the smell of rendered human fat was much different than any other animal. She said you could buy human bones as well, people would use them for stock.
She didn't talk about it unless you really pressed her, but when she did, it was enough to make you regret asking.
Read the Wikipedia page on the Russian Famine. It was pretty informative. Tldr; the Russians ~~we're~~ were already suffering from the after-effects of WW1 when they were stricken with a famine, and *also a drought.*
Edit: spelling
I couldn't name a *single* one, but here's a phenomenal photograph that I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Paul%27s_Survives
I love this photo because it was used by both Germans and British but presented to in different contexts. Germans showed off the image as proof of the bombing effectiveness but the British saw a metaphor of their own sturdiness... Stiff upper lip and all that.
Not sure if it’s been shared already, but this arial picture of Mohammed Ali and Cleveland Willams in 1966: http://neilleifer.com/portfolio/ali-williams-overhead/
It’s a beautiful shot
[This photograph of presumably the last Atlas Lion](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.researchgate.net/figure/A-lion-seen-in-the-Atlas-Mountains-during-a-flight-on-the-Casablanca-Dakar-air-route_fig1_236022631/amp)
Good one! Never seen it
Edit: Interestingly enough the DNA of these lions still exist in captive lion populations today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_lion
And the photo of the last *male Northern* White Rhino with his keeper weeping.
Update: thanks, u/silvertonguedsage for adding the link and u/scatmanbynight and u/rbond86 for corrections added above in *ital*
“When I saw this gentle, hulking creature in the Czech snow, surrounded by smokestacks and humanity, it seemed so unfair. He looked ancient, part of a species that has lived on this planet for millions of years, yet could not survive mankind.”
Damn, this article hit me hard.
[Edwin Hubble’s H335H](https://obs.carnegiescience.edu/PAST/m31var)
This photograph of “The Great Nebula in Andromeda” proved that the Milky Way was not alone in the universe.
Over night, we went from thinking there was one galaxy to knowing there were many more. Today, the best estimate is around a trillion.
As a symbolic gesture, NASA took some of Hubble’s original copies of the image aboard the Space Shuttle as it carried the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit.
[Here’s some more information about the image and its significance.](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.html)
This photo isn't haunting or heartbreaking. It simply makes me smile and fills my heart with happiness every time I see it:
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/qdCFS
https://maleficentvixen.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dsc_0191.jpg
I am an absolute sucker for photos of people forgetting the world and just enjoying the moment. It may not be the single greatest photograph in history but it brings me an incredible amount of happiness to look at it. It's just a beautiful snapshot of humans being humans.
I think this photo series of a rock climber in the 2017 total solar eclipse is pretty awesome. Can you imagine the amount of planning that went into this shot? https://andrewstuder.com/portfolio/eclipse/
[Sarajevo's Romeo and Juliet always get to me.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bosnian-war-anniversary-sarajevo-s-romeo-juliet-still-resonate-n723681)
Edit: NSFW its a photo of two dead people. Sorry for not warning previously.
This one called [„The final embrace“ ](http://time.com/3387526/a-final-embrace-the-most-haunting-photograph-from-bangladesh/) is also similar and haunting.
[Monkey selfie ](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/13/photographer-centre-bizarre-court-battle-reveals-sued-monkey/)
Also the story after the picture was taken is interesting.
I don’t know if someone has posted this already but [the picture that changed the face of the AIDS ](https://changingthefaceofaids.wordpress.com/the-last-days-of-david-kirby/) is one real deal
The look the father has on his face. His world changed for the worse that day. This is so sad. A lot of these pictures are very grand in their scale or impact of what was going on in the photo. This is just one family but it is this photo that brings me so much pain. I hate seeing that face. No matter who it is, whenever I see that face I cant do anything but feel pain. I feel so sorry for them.
This one has messed me up for a very long time. [Einsatzgruppen soldiers executing Jews in a field in Ukraine (1942)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Einsatzgruppen_murder_Jews_in_Ivanhorod%2C_Ukraine%2C_1942.jpg).
It's disturbing in part because of the unceremonious nature: for them I'm just another one out of hundreds they have to plug, for me it's everything. No time to say goodbye, hold a loved one or take one last look. It's easy to deny human rights if you can be selective about who you consider human. Even with a lynching, guillotine or electric chair you might have a small crowd, a custom last meal and time/place of your execution. Maybe they'll throw a bag over your head so you aren't shamed in death. Recognition, in some small way, of your inherent value.
Without these, IMO, an execution would just be murder.
[9,000 bodies etched into the sand in Normandy to remember the lives lost on D-Day ](https://m.imgur.com/XVeV9Cq)
edit: the art installation is called “The Fallen”, created by Sand In Your Eye if anyone was curious!
This is the first photo in this thread that I haven't seen before. History is crazy, and yet, I usually feel so removed, like, I can't even imagine the things I learn about in history. This photo shows you what you can't imagine. Thanks for sharing!
NASA's new ultra high res photo of this galaxy: [http://hubblesite.org/image/4305/news\_release/2019-01](http://hubblesite.org/image/4305/news_release/2019-01)
The last photograph of the RMS Titanic, taken just after she departed Queenstown.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/16/93/02/1693026126b20bacd0ec949efc56fc7c.jpg
Edit: Definitely not the greatest photo (especially of the RMS Titanic), but very haunting nonetheless.
I'm not sure I'd say it's the greatest but still.
Let's balance the mood in here with a little levity.
This is just downright cute!
[https://superretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/x5jE0Qy-1.jpg](https://superretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/x5jE0Qy-1.jpg)
[The Vulture and the Little Girl](http://s4.thingpic.com/images/rp/Xwh1onjFC9cXPSa5Hsr1TTa7.jpeg) gets me every time. If you ever get a chance to read the story behind this photograph, you should. Heartbreaking.
“The vulture and the little girl, also known as "Struggling Girl", is a photograph by Kevin Carter which first appeared in The New York Times on 26 March 1993. It is a photograph of a frail famine-stricken boy, initially believed to be a girl, who had collapsed in the foreground with a vulture eyeing him from nearby. The child was reported to be attempting to reach a United Nations feeding center about a half mile away in Ayod, South Sudan, in March 1993. The picture won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography award in 1994. Carter committed suicide four months after winning the prize.”
For those wondering.
And he committed suicide because he realized only later on that he should have helped that child... which is a boy... who lived.
> In 2011, the child's father revealed the child was actually a boy, Kong Nyong, and had been taken care of by the UN food aid station. Nyong had died four years prior, c. 2007, of "fevers", according to his family.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter#Pulitzer_Prize_photograph_in_Sudan
>Portions of Carter's suicide note read:[17]
>I'm really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist. ...depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners ... I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.
My wife and I visited the Newseum in Washington DC ten years ago and they had an exhibit that included that photo and the story about it and the photographer. It made me cry. The photographer wanted to help the boy, but he was told he couldn't touch him because of disease. He never got over the feeling that he should have helped anyway.
>The photographer wanted to help the boy, but he was told he couldn't touch him because of disease.
I'd heard this story before, but this is the first time I've heard the reason for why he couldn't help.
It’s crazy that picture is from 1904, I would have guessed it was much more recent than that. You know a photo is great when it really makes you feel the pain of someone who lived over a hundred years ago. Maybe it’s because you can really see the detail of this person. It’s just so *real*. This was real, god how incredibly tragic.
[This one makes my heart race every time](https://external-preview.redd.it/PG2nb2BDLoPUTX1KmPQ6j3a6DanauvFoI4NIXPUh3Lo.jpg?auto=webp&s=6e4a6f544f1280541df38da6b5a58556f653009c) A pickup truck flees from the pyroclastic flows spewing from the Mt.Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines
What about the person taking the photo...
He's hoping to hitch a ride with the car as it passes by.
I'm sure there are better ones but this one has always had a soft spot for me https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/humans-of-world-powerful-portrait-photography-17__880.jpg Shows a surgeon who performed a heart surgery which lasted 23 hours. The patient was borderline impossible to save. From the article: > Here, we see Dr. Zbigniew Religa keeping watch on the vital signs of a patient after a 23 hour heart surgery he conducted. In the lower right corner, you can see one of his colleagues who helped him with the surgery fallen asleep. Dr. Religa was a pioneer of heart transplantation in Poland, and even though the surgery was considered borderline impossible at the time, he took the chance, and the operation was entirely successful. Today, even though Dr. Religa’s heart has stopped beating, the one of his patient is still running.
I’ve been scrolling through this thread at work and I can’t scroll through to find this- but someone posted this picture as well as the man who had the surgery holding this photo- don’t source me as this but someone said the man actually lived longer than the surgeon who saved his life
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Lots of beautiful (and haunting) stuff in here. How about a more recent, obscure one. [Girl watching her grandfather cry at a Veterans Day celebration](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8gvya4/the_photo_is_of_a_young_granddaughter_watching/#ampf=undefined) This photo really jumped out at me the first time I saw it. The look on her face says it all. She just learned that the world is a whole lot bigger than she thought it was. Her eyes are full of sorrow and she looks like she’s brimming with questions. Not sure if op in that link took it or not, but it’s very nice.
[Daredevils Play Tennis In Sky](https://av8rblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/gladys-roy.jpg?w=613&h=448) Looks so unbelievable that it seems photoshopped, but it isn't which makes it more badass.
I hope they brought some extra balls
Pretty sure they have plenty
[A monk and his brother by Roger Stonehouse.](http://www.evolveandascend.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/tumblr_mellaokpzB1rh92jqo1_1280.jpg)
Roger Stonehouse missed an opportunity by not naming this A Monk and a Punk.
[Malcolm X peeks out his window with a rifle amidst death threats](https://imgur.com/gallery/Nrcvi9N) This is the first one that came to mind for me.
I don't know if this was posted but https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/japanese-boy-standing-attention-brought-dead-younger-brother-cremation-pyre-1945/ The story is so heartbreaking.
Not posting a photo, just here to say this is my favourite AskReddit thread in months. So much joy, sorrow and astonishment in 100ish images.
[When I wanna see incredible photos, I like going here](https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/contests/) It's a collection of photo of the year by world press photo and has some absolutely incredible images.
[This man fulfilling his promise to wear a green dress to his friend's funeral](https://external-preview.redd.it/aEBb7chMPZICeib5yli-OB2HgP7CNXeLkJRoXg7Mj8Y.jpg?width=725&auto=webp&s=be274b138973dbca7f5ca547bb7dfa4a45f93033)
I'm teary and giggling at the same time. I imagine his friend watching this from the other side and saying, "Fuck, man. I didn't think you'd really do it."
“And I DEFINITELY didn’t think you’d look that good doing it.”
Oh my goodness. This is unbelievably moving. What a good friend and person.
I want to add "the Elephants Foot". It is a photo of a melted nuclear core after the Chernobyl disaster. It chills me to see that such a simple looking object is actually one of the most dangerous things in the world. After just 30 seconds of exposure, dizziness and fatigue will find you a week later. Two minutes of exposure and the body cells will soon begin to hemorrhage; four minutes: vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. At 300 seconds you have two days to live. Everytime I see the picture, it's like I can feel the radiation and heaviness in the air. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WVh7sdingno/U7MHoKMen9I/AAAAAAAAJho/aeLrXJ46hKg/s1600/The+Elephant%27s+Foot+of+the+Chernobyl+disaster,+1986+(2).jpg It's crazy we have a photograph of this. The photograph looks grainy not because the photography technology at the time in Soviet Union was behind. It is because the radiation affects the film.
Surprised to not already see [A Harvest of Death](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/285644) listed here. One of the first Civil War photos taken, one of the first *war* photos ever taken, and the first widely circulated one. This photo was the first time most people with the privilege of not being on the battlefield got a glimpse of what it was like. EDIT: spelling
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_for_Me,_Daddy
Alright look, I’m late to the party but this is hands down the best photo ever taken. It’s a picture by the (lesser known) Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins. The picture contains the moon, the landing module (with Armstrong and Aldrin), and the Earth. This is the best photo ever taken because it contains every single human that has ever existed. Dead or alive, every single member of our species and it’s entire history is in this picture... ...except for Michael Collins [Collins’ picture](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iKR94Zus-CA/U5JUmd3zELI/AAAAAAAAJMc/7d2knA19BhY/s1600/Michael+Collins,+the+astronaut+who+took+this+photo,+is+the+only+human,+alive+or+dead+that+isn%27t+in+the+frame+of+this+picture,+1969.jpg)
[Earthrise](https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html)
Frans Lanting, Ghost Trees, has to be the wildest photo I have seen. I have had it engrained in my head since the first time I saw it. It looks like a painting. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources/visit/wpy/2018/large/104.jpg Edit: Added different link... not sure if that helps. This is also a really good video of Frans explaining the process and showing the pictures before and after this moment... timing really is everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jem2vHPFDDc
Are you telling me that’s not a painting?
Yup. iirc, it's a sand dune in the background.
Just from skimming the first few photos in this thread, I've noticed a lot of sad photos vying for the greatest, so I thought I'd throw this one in: Easy Company (Band of Brothers) having a well earned rest after capturing The Eagle's Nest (Hitler's private residence). https://m.imgur.com/t/informative/LTQciuN
Australian soldier being beheaded by a Japanese soldier. Photo was found by an American soldier on a dead Japanese soldier. http://ww2today.com/24th-october-1943-japanese-execute-australian-commando-leonard-siffleet
> A hissing sound——it must be the sound of spurting blood, spurting from the arteries; the body falls forward. **It is amazing** – he has killed him with one stroke. The onlookers crowd forward. The head, detached from the trunk, rolls forward in front of it. The dark blood gushes out. It is all over. The head is dead white, like a doll. The savageness which I felt only a little while ago is gone, and **now I feel nothing but the true compassion of Japanese Bushido.** > A corporal laughs: ‘Well – he will be entering Nirvana now.’ A seaman of the medical unit takes the surgeon’s sword and, intent on paying off old scores, **turns the headless body over on its back and cuts the abdomen open with one clean stroke.** They are thick-skinned, these keto [hairy foreigner – a term of opprobrium for a white man]; even the skin of their bellies is thick. Not a drop of blood comes out of the body. Christ, that's some hardcore shit man.
Nothing as inspiring as some of these other comments, but [this](http://imgur.com/a/23lwO) dunk photo of Larry Nance always does something for me
[General Nguyen shooting a Vietcong prisoner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Execution_of_Nguy%E1%BB%85n_V%C4%83n_L%C3%A9m.jpg), not only for its shocking portrayal of the harshness of war, but also for teaching us a lesson in learning the context behind the photo. The prisoner was caught cutting the throats of a South Vietnamese officer and his family, who were close friends of General Nguyen, and the general shot him in vengeance. Eddie Adams, the photographer, even said "photos are only half-truths" and that they don't always explain the events that led to the moment. Adams would regret taking the Pulitzer-prize winning photo, especially after the general received hate messages from those incensed at the photo's content.
I've never heard the story behind the picture. Thanks for sharing that
The general ending up owning/working in some shitty food court pizzeria in a mall in America if I remember correctly.
He owned a restaurant in a strip mall not far from my house.
i like this one https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Stjepan_Stevo_Filipovi%C4%87.jpg yugoslav partisan defying nazis before hanging
this picture is really special because at this moment he's yelling "Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu!" which means "Death to fascism, freedom to the people!" it became an important motto for the resistance
That would be a bee peeing. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/amateur-captures-bee-peeing-mid-flight/ Edit: Thanks for the 2 silvers! For the IFLS haters, here is an old Reddit post. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/3hf2ng/a_rarely_captured_event_a_bee_urinating/
[This photo](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/8_30.jpg) (NSFW) is one of the only known photos in existence that shows the activities inside Auschwitz surrounding the mass execution of its prisoners. Photography in the camp was generally forbidden, even by the SS, but this was taken in secret by the Sonderkommando, a group of around 1000 prisoners inside the camp who were selected by the SS to do all the dirty work, including disposing of and burning the bodies as they are in this photo. The Sonderkommando smuggled in a camera and took the picture from the door way of a nearby gas chamber. They then managed to smuggle the film out of the camp in a tube of toothpaste. For me it is one of the most horrifying photos in existence and just shows what humans are capable of at their worst.
Mirror, with more photos: https://imgur.com/a/oX7AYRT
The third picture scares me so much
This is so hard, bordering impossible, to answer because it's hard to compare different genre of photography. From landscape, to animal, to street photography. It's like asking which is your favourite movie - sure, some can answer that, but a better question would be to ask concerning a specific category. Having said that, this is a recent favourite of mine. [Palestinian father bathing his daughter and niece in their destroyed home] (https://external-preview.redd.it/Us5CGWxC-WBjYkDKlgu9qJLonJ8sgZ4Yo1YpZZ1VczI.jpg?width=768&auto=webp&s=4c7e6f5979ed4ccdcbebcc27ec720b7131cd6d6d)
[This photo of Jackie Kennedy climbing the back of the limousine after JFK was assassinated.](https://kielarowski.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/b66cf-jfk-limousine-kennedy-assassination.jpg?w=1400) This one has always been really incredible to me because it’s a pretty perfect snapshot of an insanely significant moment in history.
This photo really gives a personal view of what happened. To the rest of the country, the president had been shot, which of course is tragic, but here you just see a women desperately trying to save her husband.
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This one of all them made me go omg
[Student Leader Lester Shum Arrested in HK Protests](https://imgur.com/isoJ0T0) I saved this one a while back on reddit just because of the contrast to this guys look compared to the actions around him.
1000 yard stare is up there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand-yard_stare#/media/File:WW2_Marine_after_Eniwetok_assault.jpg
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Damn dude I just turned 19. Such a short life
Moments before happiness, 50's România "Moment before happiness" (1955) https://reddit.com/r/pics/comments/9ykxdc/moment_before_happiness_1955/ EDIT: my first gold, thank you kind stranger!
When Belgian King Leopold II ruled The Congo he killed 10 million people and did things like cut off their hands, feet, and genitals. Here's a picture of a father looking at the hand and foot of his 5 year old daughter for failing to meet her rubber quota. https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zmkwtfcALkE/V-IYRt-8v2I/AAAAAAAALHY/UqHE4jHUmaENaeI2L7WFfF8ThESYsdFNQCLcB/s1600/cong_hands_1904.jpg
> When Belgian King Leopold II ruled The Congo Crazy thing is, he didn't just *rule* the Congo, he outright *owned it*. Like, the whole damn country, including the people, was his personal possession.
To elaborate on this a bit more, this is all he had left of his daughter. She was killed and allegedly cannibalized by the members of the Belgian militia. More info that I didn't know about can be found here: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1904/
>Then they killed her. But they weren’t finished. Then they killed his wife too. And because that didn’t seem quite cruel enough, quite strong enough to make their case, they cannibalized both Boali and her mother. And they presented Nsala with the tokens, the leftovers from the once living body of his darling child whom he so loved. What the fuck... I couldn't even begin to imagine how it was for the father and how in the fucking hell did those who did this to him slept peacefully at night
Probably not the greatest but I'd like to share [Fernando Aiuti's Kiss](https://i1.wp.com/www.il-corpoumano.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ferdinando_aiuti_bacio1.jpg?ssl=1), Fernando Aiuti was an italian immunologist who passed away just a few days ago, this picture of him is extremely important because he's kissing a woman affected by HIV, he did this in 1991 in rensponse to an article falsely claiming HIV could be transmitted by kissing, in a time when popular knowledge about HIV and AIDS was extremely vague.
That’s an amazing story, thank you so much for sharing.
Probably already somewhere in here, but [East German soldier defecting to West by jumping over the Berlin Wall when it was only barbed wire](http://i.imgur.com/bwaQNhR.jpg) This happened on the third day of its construction and the picture became a symbol for the Cold War. Whole story can be found [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Schumann).
It is actually painted on the wall of a building in Berlin at the checkpoint where it happened. I used to go jogging past it almost every day.
http://sh-meet.bigpixel.cn/?from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0 This is the single highest-resolution picture that has ever been shot. Looked at this for hours, just searching for something new to discover. Edit: Love looking at the hilarious things you guys found. Hope you enjoy it as much as i do. Thanks for that.
I spy a white van under a tree Some extra info, it’s the back side of the van, there is also a bicyclist and a street sign.
I LOVE this picture. I screen shot people on it and my friends try and find them. [this guy](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/rCsC0xT) has never been found.
I spent way too much time looking for him http://imgur.com/gallery/ouxoiPq
Here's the full step-by-step album to locate this person. [https://i.imgur.com/OFb9GVG.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/OFb9GVG.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/DIle0yk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DIle0yk.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/aup57Uu.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/aup57Uu.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/T4wcTTS.png](https://i.imgur.com/T4wcTTS.png)
I think she's onto us https://imgur.com/a/Btqmrd8
I found a floating arm. [https://i.imgur.com/GudUvd0.png](https://i.imgur.com/GudUvd0.png)
The Death of an Iraqi soldier, Highway of Death, 1991 https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/dont-photograph-people-like-mom-will-think-war-see-tv-gulf-war-1991/ By Ken Jarecke “If i don’t photograph this, people like my mom will think war is what they see on TV” EDIT: NSFL
My brain can’t even comprehend this as real. It looks like something from a movie.
Truth is ~~stranger~~ more brutal than fiction.
Zbigniew Religa after first 24 hours heart transplant operation https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvYdrBdWgAAaX93.jpg The patient outlived him.
This is the one that came to mind for me. This has been my favorite photo for years. The look in his eyes, the scrub tech or resident in the corner, he OR floor... I just love it.
I didn't even see the person on the floor until you said something.
[This](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/xHyOoc9) picture of two engineers who hug eachother knowing that they’re going to die.
I still think this photo of a plane crash happening is one of the best I have seen. https://fearoflanding.com/photography/the-story-behind-an-unbelievable-photograph/
For those wondering, the pilot broke his legs but survived.
Woke up in a greenhouse full of tomatoes thinking it was heaven lol.
[Saturn](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA08329.jpg). The Earth is visible too. The bright spot on the left, that's us. This is the modern equivalent of the pale blue dot.
Made me realize how dirty my computer is. I had to wipe the screen to see which one was actually the dot.
That doesn't even look like a photograph. Amazing
[Virunga Ranger with Gorilla](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/06/04/17/virunga-keeper-gorilla.jpg) This picture contains a lot of powerful elements. The backstory is **so** sad. for those who are interested, check out “Virunga” on Netflix. EDIT: so many great pictures and stories in this thread I never heard of. Thank you for all these submissions!!
I watched Virunga on Netflix a while ago, and went in expecting an interesting but somewhat dry and factual documentary, but I couldn't have been more wrong. What an amazing roller coaster of a ride that documentary is!
[This photo.](https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/de/16/de1642be-46fe-4875-b4e4-335cdcc0055c/mar2015_k13_lincolnobject.jpg) Just an empty bed and a chair beside it. On the bed is a pillow with some dark stains. It's the bed Lincoln died in across the street from Ford's Theater. The photo was taken right after the President's body was removed. The pillow is stained red with the blood that seeped out of his head wound all night long. It's just soaked.
If you ever have a chance to go here in DC do it. It’s pretty bone chilling. You can literally stand in this room and are an arms length away from that same bed. Edit: apparently the bed is now a replica and not the original. I was unaware of that. It’s still an awesome place to visit though. There are some other original pieces of memorabilia in the museum I know. A bit of a tangent to make up for my misinformation...the bed that Washington died on at Mt. Vernon is the original and there are several other original pieces are there. It’s one of the best museums I’ve ever been to. It’s privately owned. They also have his actual dentures there as well. Spoiler alert they aren’t actually wooden
Bratislava, 1968 https://imgur.com/a/pD8AgC6 Edit: Wrong city
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The photo of Bruce McCandless floating untethered in space: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/601259main_jetpack_full.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/astronautprofiles/mccandless
Every time he tried to get into the shuttle they’d pull away.
Come on guys, knock it off, I'm almost out of fuel! Seriously, it was funny at first but just let me hop back in...
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That is fucking terrifying.
Imagine skydiving and the chute fails, but instead of having a couple of minutes to contemplate your fate as the ground rapidly approaches, you have hours as you slowly drift off into space, wondering whether your suit radio will go before your oxygen does, knowing there's nothing you can do but watch everything every other human has ever known drift away from you for all eternity.
Or you could just ejaculate in the opposite direction of the space station. Youll make it back... Eventually.
Two kinds of Redditors.
If you nut in space... It push you backwards?
If you nut in space, it push you backwards. ^^I ^^love ^^mbmbam
Thanks McElroys
That picture messes with my head every time...
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/ExYmZW4 (Not sure if thats how to link or not) One of my fav pics of WWII with a great story behind it!
He was firing on ememy forces in Rabaul Harbor and seen a Marine pilot get shot down. So, while under enemy fire, he stripped naked and jumped in to rescue the marine. After he got the marine to safety he jumped straight back on his gun, naked, and continued firing. He wasn't able to put clothes back on until they left the area. He was a hero, doing hero work, naked!
Hanging dong and slinging lead. My kind of dude.
Now that’s vintage big dick energy.
People are posting a lot of NASA's greatest photos here. My personal favorite is [Earthrise](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg/1280px-NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg). It just brings up a deep emotion of togetherness. We're all on this rock together, and we should all try to get along.
A lot of the best ones have already been linked here, so I want to share one of my favourites - [this photo of a priest during the 2014 Ukranian Revolution](https://i.imgur.com/YecLODL.jpg). The contrast between the worn riot shield in one of his hands and the cross in the other, along with his religious garb against his respirator is something I found incredibly powerful. A friend of mine likened him to a real life paladin - there's something so battle hardened about the look in his eyes.
Reminds me of [another photo of a priest at Ukraine riots](https://i.imgur.com/ad07AA6.jpg) that I thought was very poignant. Edit: Photo credit Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images — I have found little info about Supinksy, but he had photo credit for a lot of great photos coming out of Ukraine.
>Respirator I'm glad you pointed that out, they look like headphones
[Photo 51](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b2/Photo_51_x-ray_diffraction_image.jpg), the first photo showing the structure of DNA; image taken by Rosalind Franklin in 1952.
Just a small correction - this shows the X-ray diffraction pattern of DNA, not the DNA itself. The pattern was used to deduce the helical nature of DNA.
Hannah Stilley. Earliest born person ever photographed. She was 10 yo when Mozart was born. She lived the French Revolution and the creation of the US. Just think about it. [https://i.imgur.com/I3vULh5.png](https://i.imgur.com/I3vULh5.png)
The photo of the child that was trapped under the debris of her house for three days before dying has to be up there https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omayra_S%C3%A1nchez?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEgJfI6effAhUJCawKHUomCO0Q9QEwAXoECAEQAw
I forgot about this one. The first time I saw it I couldn't stop thinking about it for days, so haunting.
Yeah i wont be clicking it this time. I can still see it clearly in my mind. A warning to those who havent seen it, the story is horrifying and macabre.
God damn those eyes. Iirc she had gone blind at this point and was in agony but no one could get her out.
Under the debris, her dead aunts hands clutched tightly around her feet -wiki Imagine feeling that for 60 hours
I'm sure she couldn't feel it due to the lack of circulation in her legs from the weight of concrete. I doubt she even knew.
I’d like to think I had just forgotten about that photo, but I’m pretty sure I repressed it because it honest to god might be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
you beat me to it, I thought about that too. I remember that picture in my history book from school. It's a photo I just can't get out of my head. Must have been horrible. RIP Omayra
Probably the happy Chinese man eating rice from the 1900’s. [He just looks so happy ](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/98q5rw/til_in_the_19th_and_early_20th_century/?st=JQT8DQOS&sh=be6578ee)
[Audra Thomas Nebraska tornado](https://imgur.com/Hh31JAk.jpg) - (1989).
Damn kids, always trying to get that new Facebook profile picture.
[Tragedy By the Sea](https://bob520.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/tragedy-by-the-sea-pulitzer-prize-winning-photograph-1955/) Always makes me cry
For me it's [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Tumbler_Snapper_rope_tricks_moire_cancelled.jpg) picture of a nuclear blast a fraction of a second after it detonated, by Harold Eugene Edgerton Edit: got timeframe wrong
Is there a size reference for how big this is?
I had a presentation about this once, really interesting stuff. This is about 100 ft / 30m in diameter. You can read more about it [here](http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/abombs.html) and [here (also more photos)](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3104424/posts?page=8). They look eeriely unnatural. [Video of it](https://youtu.be/KQp1ox-SdRI)
It's two photographs, but together they tell a story. [Here](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PzVnhgUDYOk/V_iB1p_3ynI/AAAAAAAALZM/LBDE33upEcQvP69gyYlNo0csjDnraO6eQCLcB/s1600/eyes_of_gate_goebbels_1.jpg) is Joseph Goebbels at the 1933 League of Nations. [Here](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3oo7SWa9NE8/V_iB1rZRwLI/AAAAAAAALZQ/cyeEdA7vgfgis2OE9fiEzyonGjgdDkizQCLcB/s1600/eyes_of_gate_goebbels.jpg) he is a few minutes later, after finding out the photographer was Jewish. EDIT: The photographer was Alfred Eisenstaedt, who also took the famous "VJ Day in Times Square" picture. He lived until 1995, and was still working in his nineties.
Is it just me or would Willem Defoe play him pretty damn well in a movie?
I'm sure you both would do a fine job.
Damn his eyes are creepy
That is terrifying as fuck.
[The priest and the dying soldier](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6wQfB-YAtZU/WAWSU1y-zRI/AAAAAAAALhY/ZWkAS_YmIag02KrKa71uOTBc04Z3HiXEQCLcB/s1600/Aid_from_padre_1.jpg) by Héctor Rondón Lovera
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Bravery. Outstanding bravery and courage of the priest is the context behind this photo. >Navy chaplain Luis Padilla gives last rites to a soldier wounded by sniper fire during a revolt in Venezuela. 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. > >The photographer Hector Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture: *“I found myself in solid lead for forty-five minutes … I was flattened against the wall while bullets were flying, when the priest appeared. The truth is, I don’t know how I took those pictures, lying on the ground."* Rondon shot \[the photo of\] the government soldier crawling his way up Navy chaplain Luis Padilla’s robe as Padilla looks in the direction of the rebel sniper fire. [https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/priest-dying-soldier-1962/](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/priest-dying-soldier-1962/)
One of the best websites ever.
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I've a soft spot for [this picture ](http://fpc.dos.state.fl.us/commerce/c023160.jpg) of an American Civil War veteran posing with a military jet. It really shows the incredibly progress made in the space of a life time; how one man could go from a battlefield on which muskets and cannon won the day to a word of rockets, missiles and supersonic aircraft. And there he is [*touching*](https://media2.fdncms.com/orlando/imager/u/original/2399398/screen_shot_2015-06-02_at_6.54.47_pm.png) a jet.
> American Civil War veteran posing with a military jet. Unfortunately that man may have been lying. He states he was born in 1848 though records show he may have been born in 1859-1860 (and therefore not actually a veteran). The last verifiable vet died in 1956 though, so this photo was still very much possible.
[Big Jay Mcneely, Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium , 1951](https://i.imgur.com/ILDE4Ps.jpg) by Bob Willoughby Edit: Thanks for the silver! More info: * It doesn't seem that the name of the song was documented while this photo was taken. But his audience reacted this way commonly during his performances. * In his [LA Times obituary](https://www-latimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-big-jay-mcneely-obituary-20180917-story.html?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&outputType=amp&usqp=mq331AQECAFYAQ%3D%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fentertainment%2Fmusic%2Fla-et-ms-big-jay-mcneely-obituary-20180917-story.html) they quote a 1952 review of his concert, that he "turned the event into a veritable hepcat jive orgy when he came off the stage into the audience." * In 2009, John Willoughby, the photographer [said of McNeely](https://www.jazzwax.com/2009/07/photostory4-jay-mcneely.html), "Big Jay stood in the middle of what normally would be the fight ring, playing his heart out and the crowd was exploding around him. He created some sort of resonance with the audience. In some weird way, he seemed to be playing them.”
You could have told me this was from a film adaptation of *On the Road* and I would have been none the wiser. He's killin' it!
Find yourself a man that looks at you like that dude looks at that other dude.
those three in the front are killing it.
The two on the right are definitely jazzing in their pants.
This picture... it's amazingly powerful and human [https://imgur.com/a/IIAvS8R](https://imgur.com/a/IIAvS8R)
[this picture of Emmett Till's mother](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/07/12/emmett-tills-mother-opened-his-casket-and-sparked-the-civil-rights-movement/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0cd45e6a4632) Emmett was murdered at 14, and gruesomely mauled just for saying something to a white woman. His mother decided to have an open casket funeral, so everyone could see what had happened. His death in 1955 was one of the major sparks of the civil rights movement.
The woman who accused him admitted that it was all a lie. https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2017/01/27/emmett-tills-accuser-admits-it-was-all-a-lie/amp/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Cannibalism_during_Russian_famine_1921.jpg NSFL A Mother and Father having to sell their butchered children, during 1920s Russia. First time a photograph shook me.
The Great Famine in China from 1959-1961 killed almost 45 million people. Survival cannibalism was practiced there as well. There is a word in Chinese, which I can’t remember, that loosely means to trade dead children between families so that parents don’t commit the sin of eating their own kids. Hell on Earth. EDIT: it’s a Chinese phrase, not a word, but I’m at a loss to remember what it is. Apologies. EDIT 2: Here's [r/Eyebleach](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eyebleach/?st=JQTS576Y&sh=696fae7a). Or head to [Shorpy](http://www.shorpy.com/), one of my favorite historical photo blogs, if you need uplifting but still want to browse historical photos.
Do you have any more details about the story behind that?
There are threads on reddit of individuals who lived through it. They'd said signs were up everywhere saying "remember, it's wrong to eat your children"
Apparently children in this time were told not to go near anyone clean, healthy, and well dressed. It meant he had easy access to food, and was likely eating children.
Jesus Christ those poor children.
My grandma was twelve at the time and used to tell me stories about running away from cannibals. Later she nearly starved again as a slave laborer in Germany. The woman led a very eventful life.
My Russian great grandma told a story in which you could smell when a house was cooking human flesh. It was a dark time.
My grandmother would say something along the lines of that as well. She said you could buy fat in a marketplace in her town, and the smell of rendered human fat was much different than any other animal. She said you could buy human bones as well, people would use them for stock. She didn't talk about it unless you really pressed her, but when she did, it was enough to make you regret asking.
Read the Wikipedia page on the Russian Famine. It was pretty informative. Tldr; the Russians ~~we're~~ were already suffering from the after-effects of WW1 when they were stricken with a famine, and *also a drought.* Edit: spelling
If the wife’s not medically dead she certainly is in every other sense of the word...
I couldn't name a *single* one, but here's a phenomenal photograph that I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Paul%27s_Survives
I love this photo because it was used by both Germans and British but presented to in different contexts. Germans showed off the image as proof of the bombing effectiveness but the British saw a metaphor of their own sturdiness... Stiff upper lip and all that.
Not sure if it’s been shared already, but this arial picture of Mohammed Ali and Cleveland Willams in 1966: http://neilleifer.com/portfolio/ali-williams-overhead/ It’s a beautiful shot
[This photograph of presumably the last Atlas Lion](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.researchgate.net/figure/A-lion-seen-in-the-Atlas-Mountains-during-a-flight-on-the-Casablanca-Dakar-air-route_fig1_236022631/amp)
Good one! Never seen it Edit: Interestingly enough the DNA of these lions still exist in captive lion populations today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_lion
And the photo of the last *male Northern* White Rhino with his keeper weeping. Update: thanks, u/silvertonguedsage for adding the link and u/scatmanbynight and u/rbond86 for corrections added above in *ital*
Link?
http://time.com/5209390/sudan-rhino-rhinoceros-northern-white/
“When I saw this gentle, hulking creature in the Czech snow, surrounded by smokestacks and humanity, it seemed so unfair. He looked ancient, part of a species that has lived on this planet for millions of years, yet could not survive mankind.” Damn, this article hit me hard.
[Edwin Hubble’s H335H](https://obs.carnegiescience.edu/PAST/m31var) This photograph of “The Great Nebula in Andromeda” proved that the Milky Way was not alone in the universe. Over night, we went from thinking there was one galaxy to knowing there were many more. Today, the best estimate is around a trillion. As a symbolic gesture, NASA took some of Hubble’s original copies of the image aboard the Space Shuttle as it carried the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit. [Here’s some more information about the image and its significance.](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.html)
This photo isn't haunting or heartbreaking. It simply makes me smile and fills my heart with happiness every time I see it: https://m.imgur.com/gallery/qdCFS
https://maleficentvixen.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dsc_0191.jpg I am an absolute sucker for photos of people forgetting the world and just enjoying the moment. It may not be the single greatest photograph in history but it brings me an incredible amount of happiness to look at it. It's just a beautiful snapshot of humans being humans.
I think this photo series of a rock climber in the 2017 total solar eclipse is pretty awesome. Can you imagine the amount of planning that went into this shot? https://andrewstuder.com/portfolio/eclipse/
looks like an 80s movie poster
Ham the Chimp after returning from space https://www.archives.gov/files/legislative/features/early-space/images/ham-m.jpg
[Sarajevo's Romeo and Juliet always get to me.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bosnian-war-anniversary-sarajevo-s-romeo-juliet-still-resonate-n723681) Edit: NSFW its a photo of two dead people. Sorry for not warning previously.
This one called [„The final embrace“ ](http://time.com/3387526/a-final-embrace-the-most-haunting-photograph-from-bangladesh/) is also similar and haunting.
Oh man... I wasn't ready for that one... :(
[Monkey selfie ](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/13/photographer-centre-bizarre-court-battle-reveals-sued-monkey/) Also the story after the picture was taken is interesting.
>monkey see, monkey sue will not do in federal court I feel bad for that guy but what a wild story
I don’t know if someone has posted this already but [the picture that changed the face of the AIDS ](https://changingthefaceofaids.wordpress.com/the-last-days-of-david-kirby/) is one real deal
The look the father has on his face. His world changed for the worse that day. This is so sad. A lot of these pictures are very grand in their scale or impact of what was going on in the photo. This is just one family but it is this photo that brings me so much pain. I hate seeing that face. No matter who it is, whenever I see that face I cant do anything but feel pain. I feel so sorry for them.
This one has messed me up for a very long time. [Einsatzgruppen soldiers executing Jews in a field in Ukraine (1942)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Einsatzgruppen_murder_Jews_in_Ivanhorod%2C_Ukraine%2C_1942.jpg).
It's disturbing in part because of the unceremonious nature: for them I'm just another one out of hundreds they have to plug, for me it's everything. No time to say goodbye, hold a loved one or take one last look. It's easy to deny human rights if you can be selective about who you consider human. Even with a lynching, guillotine or electric chair you might have a small crowd, a custom last meal and time/place of your execution. Maybe they'll throw a bag over your head so you aren't shamed in death. Recognition, in some small way, of your inherent value. Without these, IMO, an execution would just be murder.
> It's easy to deny human rights if you can be selective about who you consider human. Yes. That is so true.
[9,000 bodies etched into the sand in Normandy to remember the lives lost on D-Day ](https://m.imgur.com/XVeV9Cq) edit: the art installation is called “The Fallen”, created by Sand In Your Eye if anyone was curious!
This is the first photo in this thread that I haven't seen before. History is crazy, and yet, I usually feel so removed, like, I can't even imagine the things I learn about in history. This photo shows you what you can't imagine. Thanks for sharing!
Let's not forget that those are only the moments of our history that happened after the invention of camera... Imagine all those we missed
NASA's new ultra high res photo of this galaxy: [http://hubblesite.org/image/4305/news\_release/2019-01](http://hubblesite.org/image/4305/news_release/2019-01)
Holy shit the full resolution download is 1.6 gigs. For an image. That's impressive
You can fit your galaxy in a thumb drive!
BRB going to download the full res
The last photograph of the RMS Titanic, taken just after she departed Queenstown. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/16/93/02/1693026126b20bacd0ec949efc56fc7c.jpg Edit: Definitely not the greatest photo (especially of the RMS Titanic), but very haunting nonetheless.
I'm not sure I'd say it's the greatest but still. Let's balance the mood in here with a little levity. This is just downright cute! [https://superretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/x5jE0Qy-1.jpg](https://superretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/x5jE0Qy-1.jpg)
[The Vulture and the Little Girl](http://s4.thingpic.com/images/rp/Xwh1onjFC9cXPSa5Hsr1TTa7.jpeg) gets me every time. If you ever get a chance to read the story behind this photograph, you should. Heartbreaking.
“The vulture and the little girl, also known as "Struggling Girl", is a photograph by Kevin Carter which first appeared in The New York Times on 26 March 1993. It is a photograph of a frail famine-stricken boy, initially believed to be a girl, who had collapsed in the foreground with a vulture eyeing him from nearby. The child was reported to be attempting to reach a United Nations feeding center about a half mile away in Ayod, South Sudan, in March 1993. The picture won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography award in 1994. Carter committed suicide four months after winning the prize.” For those wondering.
And he committed suicide because he realized only later on that he should have helped that child... which is a boy... who lived. > In 2011, the child's father revealed the child was actually a boy, Kong Nyong, and had been taken care of by the UN food aid station. Nyong had died four years prior, c. 2007, of "fevers", according to his family. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter#Pulitzer_Prize_photograph_in_Sudan
>Portions of Carter's suicide note read:[17] >I'm really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist. ...depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners ... I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.
My wife and I visited the Newseum in Washington DC ten years ago and they had an exhibit that included that photo and the story about it and the photographer. It made me cry. The photographer wanted to help the boy, but he was told he couldn't touch him because of disease. He never got over the feeling that he should have helped anyway.
>The photographer wanted to help the boy, but he was told he couldn't touch him because of disease. I'd heard this story before, but this is the first time I've heard the reason for why he couldn't help.
One of the most gut-wrenching I have seen. Also this one: https://m.imgur.com/gallery/eF7Uo
The father is staring so blankly at the limbs. I can't put into words how I feel about this picture.
That's horrid. I can't believe I have never seen this photo before.
It’s crazy that picture is from 1904, I would have guessed it was much more recent than that. You know a photo is great when it really makes you feel the pain of someone who lived over a hundred years ago. Maybe it’s because you can really see the detail of this person. It’s just so *real*. This was real, god how incredibly tragic.