Australian soldiers after their release from Japanese captivity in Singapore, 1945
Five Australian former prisoners of war catch up on news from home
after their release from Japanese captivity in Singapore, September
1945. The brutal treatment inflicted upon these men by their Japanese
captors is clearly illustrated
by their poor physical condition. These prisoners were held on the
Changi POW camp. Often thought to be synonymous with horror it was in
fact a relatively comfortable camp,…
A girl who grew up in a concentration camp draws a picture of “home” while living in a residence for disturbed children, 1948
A girl who grew up in a concentration camp was asked to draw “home”
and what she drew was scribbles. It shows how the horrors of the
concentration camp warped her mind. It’s a mystery what the lines truly
mean to her, probably the chaos or the barbed wire. This photograph was
taken by Chim (David Seymour) in a home for emotionally disturbed
children located… Read More »
John F. Kennedy campaigns in rural West Virginia, precariously perched on a high-chair to deliver his speech, 1960
While part of every candidate’s retinue, security
was simply not the pressing, public concern in 1960 that it would
suddenly and necessarily become within a few short years. Here,
seemingly alone in a crowd in Logan County, West Virginia, JFK
speechifies from a kitchen chair as, mere feet away, a young boy
absently plays with a jarringly realistic-looking toy gun. JFK went on
to win… Read More »
The Solvay Conference, probably the most intelligent picture ever taken, 1927
The Solvay Conference, founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest
Solvay in 1912, was considered a turning point in the world of physics.
Located in Brussels, the conferences were devoted to outstanding
preeminent open problems in both physics and chemistry. The most famous
conference was the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on
Electrons and Photons, where the world’s most notable physicists met to
discuss the… Read More »
Rudolf Hoess the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, is hanged next to the crematorium at the camp, 1947
Rudolf Hoess (Rudolf Höss) was the architect and commandant of the
largest killing center ever created, the death camp Auschwitz, whose
name has come to symbolize humanity’s ultimate descent into evil. On 1
May 1940, Hoess was appointed commandant of a prison camp in western
Poland. The camp was built around an old Austro-Hungarian (and later
Polish) army barracks near the town of Oswiecim; its… Read More »
Highway of Death, The result of American forces bombing retreating Iraqi forces, Kuwait, 1991
On Sunday 24 February 1991, allied forces launched a combined
ground, air and sea assault which overwhelmed the Iraqi army within 100
hours. By 26 February, Iraq had announced it was withdrawing its forces
from Kuwait, but still refused to accept all the UN resolutions passed
against it. Iraqi tanks, armored vehicles, trucks and troops fleeing the allied onslaught formed huge queues on the main… Read More »
Italian Cavalry School, 1906
In the first decades of the 20th century the Italian Cavalry
School at Tor di Quinto near Rome was – along with the French Cavalry
School at Saumur – the leading institution for horsemanship in the
world. Tor di Quinto was probably the foremost academy for advanced
cross country riding. The Italian Cavalry School was absolutely cutting
edge, their style revolutionized military cavalry riding around… Read More »
Muslim members of the Waffen-SS 13th division at prayer during their training in Germany, 1943
The photo is taken during the division training
at Neuhammer. The romantic notions that Himmler had about the Bosnian
Muslims were probably significant in the division’s genesis. He was
personally fascinated by the Islamic faith and believed that Islam
created fearless soldiers. He envisioned the creation of a Bosnian SS
division constituted solely of Bosnian Muslims in a manner similar to
the Bosnian divisions of… Read More »
An American soldier wears a hand lettered “War Is Hell” slogan on his helmet, Vietnam, 1965
AP photojournalist Horst Faas took this iconic
photo on June 18, 1965, during the Vietnam War with the 173rd Airborne
Brigade Battalion on defense duty at Phouc Vinh airstrip in South
Vietnam. The headband message “War is Hell” typified an acerbic attitude
of many young American soldiers who were likely drafted and sent to the
remote southeastern Asia jungles to engage in deadly and terrifying… Read More »
The shells from an allied creeping bombardment on German lines, 1916
Lone soldier surrounded by a mountain of empty shell cases,
France. This lone British soldier up to his knees in spent shell cases,
offers a striking impression of the destruction that took place on the Western Front. However, this picture only tells half the story, with the other part of the story being the damage that the shells from these cases inflicted upon the enemy.… Read More »
A mother and her daughter falling from a fire escape, 1975
On July 22, 1975 in Boston, a 19-year-old and her 2-year-old
goddaughter were trapped in a burning building. A firefighter shielded
them from the flames as a fire ladder inched closer. Then the fire
escape collapsed. The woman died from her injuries, but her two-year-old
goddaughter survived because she landed on the woman’s body. It’s
tragic, going from the hope of immediate rescue to a… Read More »
Elephant-mounted machine-gun, 1914
An American corporal aims a Colt M1895 atop a Sri Lankan elephant.
The reason why the corporal is atop the elephant is a mystery but
elephants were never a weapons platform adopted by the US Army. It’s
probably a publicity picture, not something the army would actually try
to employ. The elephant would not respond well to the sound of that
machine gun a few… Read More »
Actress Marlene Dietrich kisses a soldier returning home from war, 1945
This photo shows Marlene Dietrich passionately kissing a GI as he
arrives home from World War II. It seems that the guy on the left
holding her up is enjoying the view. It was first published in Life
Magazine with the caption: “While soldiers hold her up by her famous
legs, Marlene Dietrich is kissed by a home-coming GI”. Photo taken by
Irving Haberman. The… Read More »
Testing football helmets, 1912
In professional football, the only line of defense against head
injury is the helmet. But the earliest football helmet looked more like a
padded aviator cap than the high-tech crash-tested helmet used by
today’s players. It is not certain who invented the football helmet. In
1896 Lafayette College halfback George “Rose” Barclay began to use
straps and earpieces to protect his ears. His headgear soon… Read More »
The five races of Mankind, 1911
The picture/poster shows five men representing five different
cultural spheres: an American Indian, an Australian Aborigine, an
African, an Asian and an European. The European, standing in the center,
dominates the scene and thus shows the Eurocentric world view of the
time (early 20th century). This poster was printed as an illustration on
a Dresden-based German magazine. It’s widely accepted that race
originated in Europe… Read More »
Color photos from pre-war Nazi Germany
Nazi Party was not just a political organization, it was a
psychological propaganda machine. The Nazis had an incredible sense of
aesthetics and fully understood the power of iconography and branding.
Enter inside the Nazi world through these amazing color photos
and be thrilled. The symbols and colors of Nazism were all carefully
orchestrated to have maximum psychological effect. There was nothing
accidental about the… Read More »
The Falling Soldier, 1936
The Falling Soldier became famous for the way it seems to capture,
with terrifying immediacy, the moment when a bullet fatally strikes a
Spanish Loyalist militiaman; later, it became famous for allegations
that the photograph was “faked,” or at least (though this was common
practice at the time) staged. The photo was taken by Jewish Hungarian
photographer Robert Capa. From 1936 to 1939, Capa worked… Read More »
Lesbian couple at Le Monocle, Paris, 1932
During the 1920’s Paris had gained a reputation for the variety of
its nighttime pleasures and for its free and easy attitude toward life
in general. Within this climate of relative tolerance many gay and
lesbian nightclubs opened and flourished. Among these was Le Monocle,
which is credited with being one of the first, and certainly the most
famous of lesbian nightclubs. It was opened… Read More »
The remains of the astronaut Vladimir Komarov, a man who fell from space, 1967
Mankind’s road to the stars had its unsung heroes. One of them was
the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. His spaceflight on Soyuz 1 made
him the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly into outer space more than once,
and he became the first human to die on a space mission—he was killed
when the Soyuz 1 space capsule crashed after re-entry on April 24, 1967
due… Read More »
Simone Segouin, the 18 year old French Résistance fighter, 1944
Members of the French Resistance are photographed in the midst of
battle against German troops. We see a man in makeshift army fatigues to
the left and a young man on the right. Then, most strikingly, we see a
woman in shorts, a patterned top, and a military hat in the center. The
photograph of this young female fighter would become a symbol of
women’s… Read More »
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