Few figures of the twentieth century have left behind a presence as unmistakable as Ernesto “Che” Guevara. His image, reproduced on posters, album covers, and banners around the world, became an emblem of rebellion long after the man himself was gone. Yet behind the familiar icon stood a far more complex individual: a trained physician, a revolutionary strategist, a political leader, and a restless traveler who believed that history could be reshaped through radical action....

Lewis Hine, a photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, captured photos of some of the children who made up the US labor force between 1908 and 1924. Hine traveled throughout the US, documenting children working in factories, fields, and at home in support of the NCLC’s mission to promote the “rights, awareness, dignity, well-being and education of children and youth as they relate to work and working”. The photos in this article, compiled by the Library of Congress, are the result of Hine and the NCLC’s work....

Erwin Rommel and his staff, Western Desert, 1942. Love him or hate him, Edwin Rommel screams class in every photo. Rommel was a gallant enemy. He didn’t order his men to execute troops. He didn’t set out to oppress Jewish populations. In fact, he is said to have ripped up an order from Hitler that ordered him to execute prisoners and then announced to those around him that the order wasn’t clear....

Force confrontation: German soldiers react to footage of concentration camps, 1945. The image shows the faces of German prisoners of war, captured by Americans, watching a film about a concentration camp. This forced confrontation brought Germans face-to-face with the worst works of the Third Reich. It must be really hard to go through what they did and look back knowing that everything that happened to them, all of their friends who were killed or maimed was in the name of something horrific, something totally repugnant to their own values....

During the Second World War, Londoners of all classes flocked to Underground platforms to keep themselves safe from the destruction that was being wrought above the ground by the German bombers. The Blitz refers to the strategic bombing campaign conducted by the Germans against London and other cities in England from September of 1940 through May of 1941, targeting populated areas, factories, and dockyards. More than 40,000 civilians were killed by Luftwaffe bombing during the war, almost half of them in the capital, where more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged....

7’3” Jakob Nacken (221 cm), the tallest German soldier of WW2, chatting with 5’7” (170 cm) Eddie Worth, AP photographer with the wartime still picture pool, after his surrender. On one side towered a 7ft 3in (2.21m) German man-mountain who quit his job with an American freak show to join the Wehrmacht. On the other stood a 5ft 7in (170 cm) AP photographer Eddie Worth. Jakob Nacken stood quietly while the British troops frisked him and this David vs Goliath match-up provided a rare moment of amusement during the fighting....

<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hg8awG57GRc/Uw50_I6uVMI/AAAAAAAAIuo/l3Cnj7vtusk/s1600/The+Most+Beautiful+Suicide+-+Evelyn+McHale+leapt+to+her+death+from+the+Empire+State+Building,+1947.jpg" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=““The most beautiful suicide” - Evelyn McHale, 1947. - 1”> “The most beautiful suicide” – Evelyn McHale, 1947. This powerful photo taken by Robert C. Wiles was published as a full-page image in the 12 May 1947 issue of Life Magazine. It ran with the caption: “ At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car “....

The Nine Sovereigns at Windsor for the funeral of King Edward VII, photographed on 20 May 1910. In May 1910, European royalty gathered in London for the funeral of King Edward VII. Among the mourners were nine reigning kings, who were photographed together in what very well may be the only photograph of nine reigning kings ever taken. Of the nine sovereigns pictured, four would be deposed and one assassinated....

It’s 1997, and Garry Kasparov is hunched over a chessboard, visibly frustrated. He’s fidgeting in between turns and shaking his head in disbelief as he waits for his opponent to put the final touches on an inevitable victory. Finally, Kasparov makes his move, stands up, and races away from the board. He raises his arms, astounded that he was beaten by a machine. His opponent was the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, a machine that was capable of imagining an average of 200,000,000 positions per second....

From January 1918 to December 1920, a deadly influenza outbreak infected 500 million people across the world. Estimates suggest between 50 and 100 million people died from the virus, in other words, up to 5% of the planet’s population. It killed more people than any other illness in recorded history, more even than the total number of deaths in WWI. The Spanish flu strain killed its victims with a swiftness never seen before....

In the heart of the western Balkans, an ancient tattooing tradition quietly endured for centuries, passed down through generations by the steady hands of mothers. Known as sicanje , this ritual was far more than decorative—it was a sacred practice rooted in protection, identity, and belonging. While most widely associated with Catholic Croats in central Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of the Dalmatian region of Croatia, it was also practiced among Albanians and Vlach women, suggesting a deep, pre-Christian origin that predates even the arrival of the Slavs to the Balkans....

During the early twentieth century, Howard Carter, a British Egyptologist, excavated for many years in the Valley of the Kings—a royal burial ground located on the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes, Egypt. When Carter arrived in Egypt in 1891, he became convinced there was at least one undiscovered tomb–that of the little-known Tutankhamun, or King Tut, who lived around 1400 B.C. and died when he was still a teenager....

The Eiffel Tower during the Nazi occupation, 1940 Translation: “ Germany is victorious on all fronts ”. The V stands for Victory. The Allied V-for-Victory cliché became so popular as a morale raiser that the enemy had to adopt to it, an easier task for the Italians, whose Vs displayed in public could be held to stand for Vinceremos , or We Will Win, than for the Germans, embarrassed by the fact that properly their V for Victory should be S for Sieg ....

The Honeywell Kitchen Computer, famously advertised with the quip, “If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute,” was a bold but impractical attempt to bring computing power into the home in 1969. Long before personal computers became a staple of modern life, the idea of owning a computer seemed baffling to most people. The proposed answer to this question was surprisingly simple: to store recipes. Marketed by Neiman Marcus as part of its annual collection of extravagant gift ideas, the Honeywell Kitchen Computer—formally known as the H316 Pedestal model—carried an astronomical price tag of $10,600, equivalent to about $85,000 in 2024 and weighed over 100 pounds (over 45 kg)....

The last known photo of the Titanic afloat. Photo taken on April 12, 1912. This photograph is the last known picture of RMS Titanic on the surface of the ocean. It was taken during her maiden voyage at Crosshaven, Ireland, just after the vessel departed Queenstown where it had stopped before heading westwards towards New York. Three days after this photo was taken 1,514 people would be dead and the Titanic would be on the bottom of the North Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history....

Illegal picture taken inside the US Supreme Court in 1932. Dr. Erich Salomon faked a broken arm so he could hide a camera in his cast. There are only two known photos in existence taken inside the US Supreme Court while in session. The Supreme Court of the United States does not allow cameras in the courtroom when the court is in session, a policy which is the subject of much debate....

Jamie Swan jumps off a short stone wall at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. 1886. These stunning photographs show how New York City looked like in the 1880s and 1890s. The images depict the streets of the city that never sleeps, the hustling crowds of Manhattan, swimmers at Coney Island, and people’s everyday life. The photographs, taken by Wallace G. Levison, was a chemist, inventor, and lecturer who founded the Departments of Mineralogy and Astronomy at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in the latter half of the 19th century....

On March 3, 1913, over 5,000 women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. for universal women’s suffrage. The event was scheduled on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded,” as the official program stated. The march and the attention that it attracted were monumental in advancing women’s suffrage in the United States....

Vice President Nelson Rockefeller flips off a crowd of young hecklers, Binghamton, NY, September 16, 1976. Rockefeller, then vice-president of the United States, was on a campaign swing through upstate New York on Sept. 16, 1976, with Sen. Bob Dole, who had been selected to be President Gerald Ford’s running mate for the 1976 election. When someone in a group of heckling leftie SUNY Binghamton students gave Rockefeller the finger, Rockefeller gave it right back, much to the delight of Dole in the background....

This is disturbing on so many levels. From the shiny fabric to the colors and then how tight it is… Every decade has a reputation and leaves a legacy for future generations. The 1950s were cool because of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, classy cars, and the economic boom. The 1960s had counter-cultural stuff with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and, obviously, a lot of drugs. But the 1970s? That decade still had the music, the sex, and the drugs, but those came with ugly hair, bell bottoms, weird color combinations, big collars, strange fashion senses....