Sometimes a single photograph can tell us much more than all the dry paragraphs of historical references. These images will tell you more than books and lectures about those remarkable people or events you would like to know more about. Frames once taken for the sole purpose of documenting the present now help us to witness the past.
Harold Whittles hears for the first time, 1974.
Dorothy Kants became one of the first African American students at a white school in 1957. The photo shows students at Charlotte’s Harry Harding High School teasing Dorothy.
The first morning in Sweden after the change from left-hand traffic to right-hand traffic, 1967.
West Berlin residents show their children to their grandparents who live on the east side, 1961.
Acrobats practising on the roof of the Empire State Building, 1934.
The graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, Holland, 1888.
An Austrian boy rejoices over a new pair of shoes, World War II.
A strip club dancer arrested in Florida shows the judge her underwear to prove that her panties sufficiently cover her private parts and that she was not completely naked.
The hand holding the ace of spades belongs to mafia boss Joe Masseria, who was killed in a Brooklyn restaurant in 1931.
Same-sex couple, Paris, 1932.
‘The most beautiful suicide’ — 23-year-old Evelyn McHale, after breaking up with her fiancé, jumped off the Empire State Building. The girl fell from a height of 344 metres onto the roof of a limousine parked at the side of the road. 1947.
Bolaji Badejo — a 2.18-metre-tall Nigerian student dressed as the Alien, 1978. For Bolaji, this role was his first and last.
The remains of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov after the crash of the first Soviet manned spacecraft’s descent module, 1967.
A German child meets his father, a World War II soldier whom he last saw when he was one year old, 1956.
Frida Kahlo in men’s clothing, 1924.
Orote Peninsula, 1944 — a wounded dog receives medical attention.
A woman shows a photograph of her son to returning prisoners of war, 1947.
A Scottish bagpiper in a kilt on the battlefield, World War I.
The Mona Lisa is returned to the Louvre after World War II.
Survivors of the Titanic disembark on board the Carpathia, 1912.
The first bananas in Norway, 1905.
Physicist Robert Williams Wood, founder of quantum physics Max Planck, and Albert Einstein sit in the front row at a meeting of the Berlin Physical Society, 1931.
A man carves out the eye of one of the sculptures, Mount Rushmore, 1930s.
Filming of the legendary scene from the film ‘The Seven Year Itch’ with Marilyn Monroe, 1954.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards at a party in honour of Mick Jagger’s 29th birthday, 1972.
The last public execution by guillotine, France, 1939.
Inscriptions by Soviet soldiers inside the Reichstag, 1945.
Nazis selecting Hungarian Jews for Auschwitz, 1944.
The last photograph of Vladimir Lenin — he had already suffered three strokes and was unable to speak, 1923.
Eduard Bloch — a Jew and personal physician to the Hitler family until 1907, was under his special protection. Hitler himself called Bloch a ‘noble Jew.’
Jenny McGregor arrested for distributing alcoholic beverages, Minneapolis, 1924.
The crew of the Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku salutes the lowering of the flag before the ship’s destruction, 1944.
An American man punches a Vietnamese man in the face during a fight for a seat on the last helicopter leaving the US embassy during the evacuation of Saigon, 1975.
A young Hitler welcomes the news of the outbreak of World War I, 1914.
