R/HistoryPorn is a great subreddit. A group where users all contribute to compile rare photos of moments that made history, big or small. There is nothing more unbearable than people who tell the small and the big story, right?
1. Stalin in the bad
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This photo was taken on June 22, 1941 when Stalin learned that Germany had begun to invade the Soviet Union. The photographer, Komsomolskaya Pravda, had been ordered to destroy this photo which he had no right to take, but he preferred to save it.
2. Father and son at the front
A Serbian soldier sleeping with his father who came to visit him on the front line near Belgrade. It’s super moving.
3. Auschwitz prisoners liberated by the Red Army in 1945
The joy that can be read on their faces is infectious.
4. Gangsters hide their faces at Al Capone’s trial in 1931
Well, there’s one who missed it, but we don’t know if it harmed him. By the way, did you know that Al Capone had been a nightclub bouncer?
5. Ann Frank’s father who returns to the attic where his family hid from the Nazis
The photo is all the more shocking because Otto Frank was the only survivor of his family. Note that you can also visit Ann Frank’s house in Amsterdam if you want.
6. German soldiers resting
In the photo, taken in 1945 after liberation, SS soldiers, exhausted from their hard labor cleaning up the Bergen-Belsen death camp, are allowed by British soldiers to rest, but only rest on the ground in a pit empty town. A humiliation, yes, but when you consider how the SS were the worst Nazis, it’s hard to blame the British soldiers.
7. The only time the kings of Europe were all together
It was May 20, 1910, on the occasion of the funeral of King Edward VII in London.
8. Cetshwayo kaMpande, the Zulu king who defeated the British at the Battle of Isandhlwana in 1878
When a people stands up to imperialism.
9. Princess Diana shakes hands with an AIDS patient without gloves in 1991
It should be known that at the time the prejudices on AIDS were even stronger than today. Most people avoided AIDS patients as if they were plague victims, but not Diana.
10. The imprint of a Japanese kamikaze plane on the hull of a Royal Navy cruiser
You can literally see the shape of the plane and imagine the violence of the impact. It’s impressive.
11. The survivors of Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya Flight 571 in 1972
Their plane crashed in the Andes and the survivors had to practice cannibalism to survive 72 days in the cold. For the full story, it’s happening in the top people who survived a plane crash.
12. A student gives the victory sign to Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square on June 1, 1989.
Demonstrations in Tian’anmen Square were severely suppressed, killing nearly 10,000 people. Finally, according to official Chinese sources, there were “only” 286 dead, but no one believes it.
13. Soldiers returning home from World War II in 1945
There was no need to be afraid of promiscuity, that’s for sure.
14. Jews freed from a death train in 1945
They narrowly escaped hell.
15. A Russian prisoner stands up to a Nazi guard who was particularly cruel to prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
If courage had to be summed up in a photo, this one would be particularly telling.
16. The determined smile of John Lewis
John Lewis, an anti-segregation activist, was arrested for using a “whites” bathroom in Mississippi in 1961. In the photo of his arrest, you can see the smile of a man disillusioned with society and, above all, , determined to make things happen.
17. Eyes of Hatred
In the center of the photo taken in 1933, Goebbels can be seen just after learning that the photographer was Jewish. Goebbels was one of the most powerful men in the Nazi regime and the propaganda chief of Hitler’s regime.
18. Apollo 8 astronaut wives when they heard their husband’s voice from orbit in 1968
The relief of the one on the right is almost palpable.
19. George HW Bush sledding with Arnold Schwarzenegger at Camp David in 1991
Because there are also things a little lighter in History.
20. The McDonald brothers in front of the first McDonald’s not yet opened, in 1948 in California
The worst part is that they really marked history, in a way.