History is more than just innovations and triumphs. In truth, much of it involves numerous instances of brutality, warfare, and other unsettling, regrettable realities.
Take a look below at some of the most haunting moments from history.
A Muslim woman covers the yellow star of her Jewish neighbor with her veil to protect her, Sarajevo, 1941.Carl McCunn was an American photographer lost and fatally stranded in the Alaskan wilderness. He was ignored by a state trooper plane because he raised his fist, a sign that all was okay.The final picture of Buffalo Bill Cody, a few days before he passed away on January 10, 1917.A chimney sweep and his assistant, London c.1877.Rural homestead life in 1927. When a woman wasn’t able to breastfeed or passed during childbirth, when a wet nurse was not available, a goat nursemaid was brought in to save the infant’s life.Women marching against the mandatory hijab law imposed by the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran, 1979A boy holding a stuffed animal amid ruins following German aerial bombing of London, 1945. He lost both his parents in the raid.The two siblings shown here are experiencing the thrill of an electrical storm at Sequoia National Park in California around 1975. Shortly after this picture was taken, they were struck by lightning. Both survived.Joseph Goebbels glares at Jewish photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1933.Children going to a 12-hour night shift in the United States, 1908Anne Frank’s father Otto, revists the attic where he and his family hid.Richard Nixon at his wife’s funeral, June 26, 1993Che Guevara’s last moments. Bolivia, 9 October 1967. “They shall not grow old”: two South Vietnamese child soldiers sharing a smoke as they wait for a coming North Vietnamese attack, Vietnam war, 1965-1975Replica dog tags of every soldier who never made it back from Vietnam.People on display at the Coney Island Human Zoo in 1904.A father looks for his two missing sons during the Kosovo war in 1999. He would later find them.The survivors the 1972 Andes plane crash.Two homeless men squat in the shadow of the recently completed World Trade Center in 1975.The last photo ever of Nikola Tesla, 1943Segregationists harass 6 year old Ruby Bridges with a doll in a coffin.Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the WTC North Center, 1976.Shells from an Allied bombardment all fired in a single day on German lines in 1916The first day of class after federal courts mandated busing to end de facto segregation in Boston’s public school system, September 1974. Valerie Banks was the only student to show up for her geography class.Women and girls using Radium paint, not knowing the health issues that would soon follow. 1922. Russian conscript with his family before being deployed to the front, Karachev, Bryansk, Russia, 1943.The Gadget, the first atomic bomb, 1945Temporary NYPD headquarters at a Burger King, September 11, 2001.Leftist woman handing out anti-shah manifesto. Tehran, Iran, 1979.Pyramid of WWI German helmets in New York, 1919.Austro-Hungarian trench raiders near Caporetto, 1917.A young shrimp picker named Manuel, 1912. Photo by Lewis Hines Kids work in a factory. Photo by Lewis Hines.The Imprint of a Mitsubishi kamikaze Zero along the side of H.M.S Sussex. 1945.Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic from Nirvana at Kurt Cobain’s funeral. Seattle, Washington (1994) The temporary grave of Theodore Roosevelt Jr. in Normandy, July 1944.Coal miner waiting to get into the communal shower at the end of his shift, taken in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 1958. by photographer Max Scheler.Russian inmate identifies a cruel camp guard at Buchenwald. JFK’s funeral at the capitol. November 1963.“The Thousand Yard Stare”—USMC Private Theodore J. Miller is helped aboard a ship after intense combat on Eniwetok Atoll. Miller was KIA a month later, 1944.British infantryman in 1941 with a long WWI-style bayonet affixed to his rifle Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family, 1913Anne Frank, with her sister Margot at Zandvoort Beach, 1940. Earliest known photo of Chernobyl disaster, taken by powerplant’s photographer, dawn of April 26th, 1986Indian Soldiers arriving in France, World War I, 1914A young private waits on the beach during the Marine landing at Da Nang, 1965.Little John F. Kennedy Jr. waiting for his Dad, President John F. Kennedy to land at Camp David, Maryland in October 1963. A firefighter looks towards the heavily damaged Belgrade’s tallest building, NATO bombing, April 1999Boy standing in front of fallen statue of Lenin, Ethiopia, 1991The lost girl, 1874 Blanche Monnier was a Parisian socialite, known for her beauty. In France, she is referred to as “La Séquestrée de Poitiers” which means “The Confined Woman of Poitiers”.John List takes a family portrait.This is a photo of a British veteran of the Napoleonic wars posing with his wife. He can be seen wearing a campaign medal, commemorating the fact that he served in Spain.Freddie Mercury said to Mary Austin in his will: “If things had been different you would have been my wife, and this would have been yours anyway.” (1984) The last photo of The Dyatlov Pass VictimsA newly liberated women from the Bergen-Belsen camp is dusted with DDT powder to treat lice which spreads typhus in 1945. Photograph by Sgt. Hewitt, No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit.Throughout the USS Triton’s secret mission to circumnavigate the world submerged, the only unauthorized individual to spot the submarine during those sixty days was a Filipino man on his canoe, who noticed its periscope. April 1, 1960.Kurt Cobain cries after an emotional set. A photo of Joe Arridy giving his toy train to another inmate before he’s taken to the gas chamber for a crime he never committed.Taken at the Michigan Carbon Works factory in Rougeville, the pile of bison skulls in this photo was slated to be processed and used in making products like bone glue, fertilizer, bone ash, bone char, and bone charcoal.This photo of Heath Ledger is from his last film ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,’ a few days before his passing. The elephant’s foot of ChernobylThe five Sullivan brothers, George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert aboard the Atlanta-class light cruiser USS Juneau (CL-52). Tragically, all five brothers were KIA when their ship was hit by torpedoes and sank on November 13, 19434 Children for SaleIn 1925, a man flying from Casablanca to Dakar photographed a Barbary Lion in the Atlas Mountains. This photo is special because it’s the last known picture of a wild Barbary Lion before they went extinct.Captured 16-year-old German anti-aircraft soldier during WW2, 1945 1929 – Boarding of British Airship R101 – This would likely be the Airships last voyage as it crashed shortly after in France. WW1 photo of German friends in a trench bunker. Photos on the wall and one being a photo of a woman.An American serviceman shares his rations with two Japanese children on the island of Okinawa, 1945Men waiting in line for the possibility of a job during the Great Depression6-year old Jewel Walker picks 20 to 25 pounds of cotton a day (1916)Christmas dinner, 1936. Dinner consisted of potatoes, cabbage, and pie.General Sherman overlooking Atlanta, 1864.Lady and her horse on a snowy day in 1899.Mother and daughter watch a tall ship navigate the Thames in London, 1880.Old woman smoking a pipe on her porch, Appalachia Mountains, 1917.Three young girls working as oyster shuckers. Port Royal, South Carolina, USA. 1909. Photograph by Lewis Hine.A ghostly yet mesmerizing image from 1900.Rainy nights in London, 1899.Frozen Niagara Falls, 1911.5-year-old Harold Walker picks 20 to 25 pounds of cotton a day, Oklahoma, 1916. Part of the infamous crime-ridden slum in New York City known as the Five Points. Photo by Jacob Riis, 1872.One of the oldest people to have been photographed in 1840-1850.A cult-like, early meeting of the Mickey Mouse ClubPeople fighting to get on a plane in Nha Trang, April 1, 1975, during the US withdrawal from South Vietnam. A tent belonging to the missing campers of the Dyatlov pass A boy is treated for a bite from a Russell’s viper as his father watches onTerrifying Santa Claus.Gas Masks for babies.Babies who lost their parents during the Vietnam War being airlifted back to the United States for adoption, 1975.Inside a train in the 1800s. A sharecropper and his wife in Missisipspi, 1937. Josephine Smith digging a grave at the Drouin Cemetery during World War IIA photo of the bomb over Nagasaki mid-explosion
Family in front of their log house 1880’s. 28 students of a one-room school, Missouri, 1939.A coal miner and his family, West Virginia, 1938.Welsh woman washing her mine-working husband, 1931.Photo from the Attica Prison riot in New York, 1971Two Boys in London, 1902. Poor mother and children, Finland 1917.Deadwood, South Dakota, circa. 1877.The Endurance ship being stuck in the Antarctic ice (forever), 1915.Two brothers from West Virginia who fought on opposite sides of the American Civil War in 1910Photo of a Soviet war veteran near the Eternal Flame on the anniversary of Victory Day, 1966.Zen monks at Asakusa Temple, in Tokyo, perform air raid drills with gas masks in 1936Last known photo of Heath Ledger, 2008.Sharon Tate showing off the baby clothing she had bought in London, UK in 1969.One of only 2 photographs ever taken of US president Andrew Jackson. 1845A wedding during the Lebanese Civil War, Beirut, Lebanon, 1986.German war criminals laugh at a translation mistake during the Nuremberg Trials, 1945.A female Afghan communist revolutionary during the Saur Revolution, 1978Departure of a Red Cross train going to Switzerland, Budapest, Hungary, 1947Billboard swearing Manhattan Project workers to secrecy, 1945.The first wave of Marine landing craft head towards the beaches of Iwo Jima. 08:59, 19 February 1945.Two German Soldiers in 1916Massive column of thousands of German prisoners of war marching down the Autobahn Shoe shine boys talking to a Civil War Veteran, 1920s.Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese soldier who hid in the jungle in Guam for 27 years to avoid capture, weeps upon his return to Japan in February 1972.A Zulu tribesman pulls a tourist in a pedicab in Durban, Union of South Africa. Photo by Melville Chater, 1930’sNorthern Ireland, The Bogside, Londonderry 1971. Photo by Don McCullinFrench civilians erected this memorial to an American soldier in Carentan, France, in 1944. Barricade constructed by revolutionaries of the Paris commune, 1871.Gavrilo Princip’s parents in front of their house, Bosnia, 1910s/1920sA Free French soldier aids a civilian after hidden German snipers fire on crowds welcoming Allied forces rather than follow orders to surrender Paris, 1944A Spanish police officer guards the wreckage after two Boeing 747 airliners collidedBurial at sea on the USS Intrepid, November 1944. One the warehouses filled with victims’ shoes up to the ceiling. Auschwitz, Occupied Poland 1944.Christmas packages destined for soldiers who have KIA or reported missing in action await “return to sender” stamps. New York City, 1944. Memorial Day 1945: French teen Helene Chapelle and her mother kneel at the grave of James Simonian, who lost his life during the Normandy invasion. She is reading a letter from Simonian’s mother who asked that it be read at her son’s grave. La Cambe Cemetery, France.Over 100,000 German Prisoners in a Makeshift POW Camp on the Western Front, LIFE Magazine May 1945Aerial view of residential district in Tokyo after firebombing, 10 September 1945Airlifting of CIA contacts off the CIA HQ in Saigon 22 Gia Long Street (now Ly Tu Trong Street), Tuesday, April 29, 1975.Mohawk warrior attacks Canadian soldiers during Oka crisis July-Sep 1990 which began when the Canadian government approved the seizure of Mohawk land for a private golf course.May 24, 1991: The World Record for the Most Passengers on a Commercial Airplane is achieved when 1,122 refugees are lifted from Ethiopia on an El Al Boeing 747. Five babies were born aloft during several flights.Jewish tomes hidden in the attic of Riga’s last synagogue; Latvia, 1991Firefighters in Kuwait in 1991, sealing an oil well, during the Kuwaiti oil fires. Firefighting teams, working amidst unexploded mines and the roar of burning jets of oil, on soil so hot it blistered their knees as they knelt down.Soviet store. 1991. Moscow.U.S. Marines at Burgan burning oil fields, Kuwait. 1991. Bosnian snipers, including Nadia Jeriagic (at left) with an SVD Dragunov, set up on a couch – from a position on the 20th floor of an apartment building – during the Siege of Sarajevo, c. 1992 – 1995. A Los Angeles County firefighter stands guard at an improvised barricade on April 29, 1992, during the 1992 Los Angeles riotsA Bosnian girl waits for a funeral service at Sarajevo’s Lion’s cemetery on Monday, Sept. 14, 1992.Sarajevo burns, 1993In 1993, this ocean liner was being towed when the line snapped during a storm. The crew were unable to reattach the line and had to be rescued. It was adrift in the ocean and eventually beached itself in the Canary Islands.Russia’s parliament burns after being attacked by Boris Yeltsin in 1993Russian president Boris Yeltsin kisses the ribbon of wreath he laid at a Katyn monument in Warsaw, dedicated to Polish officers massacred by Soviet authorities during WW2 (August 1993)994: Graves of Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs at Zetra Stadium at Sarajevo during the siege of Sarajevo in the civil war. An old woman leaving her home with just a portrait of her husband and rugs. Russian soldiers gave her just 5 minutes to pack her bags and leave before they destroyed her home and everything in it. May 1995, Grozny .Two boys running for their lives across infamous Sniper Alley while carrying their dog. Sarajevo 1995.The Reichstag building in Berlin just before the first restoration began, 1958.Blimp crashes due to nuclear test in Nevada, 1957.Two black students are harassed by classmates on their way to school – Little Rock, Arkansas (1957).A German child meets his father, a World War II vet, for the first time 1956.Soviet boys. USSR, 1956 – By Peter Bock-Schroeder.Hungarian freedom fighter during the revolution, 1956A German Soldier from the “Homecoming of the ten thousand” unites with his Mother, 1955.Korean mother embraces her son, a prisoner of war who escaped his North Korean POW camp shortly after the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, which ended the widespread fighting of the Korean War, 1953.More than 100,000 Iranian women take to the streets to protest against the newly formed Islamic government’s compulsory hijab ruling, 8 March 1979.Mount Fuji photographed through the periscope of the submarine USS Trigger (SS237) during a war patrol. 22 April 1943.Sanatorium for lung diseases in Wieliczka Salt Mine, Poland, 1970s. Photo by Chris Niedenthal.Feb 2, 1959, Buddy Holly performed his last ever concert, at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. The 11th of 24 shows on the Winter Dance party tour. This is said to be the last photo of him taken. It also shows Waylon Jennings on bass.Captain Francesco Schettino caused the Costa Concordia disaster, leading to 32 fatalities, because he was distracted trying to impress a woman. Even after the crash, he didn’t tell anyone for over an hour about the massive hole in the ship and was more worried about coming up with an excuse.Meal time at an orphanage in Osaka. Japan, 1951Christa McAuliffe, who was the teacher who perished on the Space Shuttle Challenger, was 1 of 11,000 applicants in NASA’s search to find an “ordinary person” to put their first civilian in space. She later remarked, “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.”Stolen cars dumped under the “FDR” in the 1970s New York. The last professional photograph that would ever be taken of Marilyn Monroe, Santa Monica Beach, July 13th, 1962 Photo/George BarrisAn aerial view of Utah Beach on June 6th, 1944. One day in 1839, Robert Cornelius sat for 15 minutes in front of a hand-built camera made of opera glass and sheets of copper. His picture became the first “selfie” ever taken. In June 2010, North Korean journalist Kim Dong-Cheul smuggled rare footage of rural life in the country to the Japanese media. In it, Cheul interviews a filthy young woman, homeless and reduced to eating grass. Vietnamese farmer with the wreckage of a B-52 Stratofortress in the background, ca 1980. Harvey’s Resort Hotel bombing in Stateline, Nevada on August 26th, 1980.88-year-old Otto Frank (1889-1980) inaugurating the Statue of Anne Frank, Amsterdam 1977.Joseph Ambrose, an 86-year-old World War I veteran, attends a parade at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, wearing his original doughboy uniform that he used during the war. He is holding an American flag. It covered the casket of his son, Clement, who was KIA in the Korean War, 1982.Anne Frank’s father Otto earned 2 Iron Crosses fighting at the Somme and Cambrai in WW1 before surviving AuschwitzA herd of African Elephants in Tsavo, Kenya 1950s
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