The Toppling of the Saddam Statue (Iraq)

The Statue of Saddam Hussein was a symbol of his presidency and rule over Iraq. It was built in April of 2002 for his 65th birthday.

On 9 April 2003, representing probably the greatest symbol of the fall of Saddam's regime, a group of Iraqi’s and US Marines gathered and brought the statue down. They hung a pre-1991 Gulf War Iraqi flag and danced in central Badghad’s Firdos Square.

Mumbai Attacker (India)

The November 2008 Mumbai attacks were a series of coordinated terrorist attacks across Mumbai, India's financial capital and the largest city. The attacks began on 26 November 2008 and ended on 29 November 2008 when Indian security forces regained control of all attack sites. At least 188 people were killed and at least 293 were injured in the attacks.

Eight of the attacks took place at sites in South Mumbai proper: the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, The Oberoi Trident, The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Leopold Cafe, Carna Hospital, the Orthodox Jewish-owned Nariman House, the Metro Cinema and a lane behind the Times of India building behind St. Xavier's College.There was also an explosion at the Mazagon docks in Mumbai's port area. A possible tenth incident involved a taxi blast at Vile Parle near the airport, but it is uncertain whether this was connected to the other nine attacks.

Initially, a previously unknown organization called the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility. Later Azam Amir Kasav, the single terrorist who was captured alive, disclosed that the attackers were members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamic terrorist group.

The attacks drew widespread condemnation across the world.

The Mumbai attacks highlighted the increasing importance of social media and citizen journalism in the way events are reported. Many people covered the unfolding event on websites like Twitter and Flickr, which are largely clustered under search tags such as "mumbai" and "attack".

The day after the attacks, the Indian government asked Mumbai citizens to cease updating Twitter with live coverage of police activity. The New York Times and BBC offered live textual coverage online, as did many Indian bloggers; A map of the attacks was set up using Google Maps. The attacks have been dubbed by some journalists as "India's 9/11", a reference to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States of America.

Source wikipedia

V-J Day in Times Square (USA)

V–J day in Times Square, perhaps the most famous photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, is of an American sailor kissing a young woman on V-J Day in Times Square on 14 August 1945, that was originally published in Life magazine.

Because Eisenstaedt was photographing rapidly changing events during the V-J celebrations he didn't get a chance to get names and details. The photograph does not clearly show the faces of either kisser and several people have laid claim to being the subjects. The photo was shot just south of 45th Street looking north from a location where Broadway and Seventh Avenue converge. (Today, the spot where the kiss took place is on the small island separating Broadway and Seventh Avenue between the Toys R Us and MTV studios in Times Square.)

The nurse in the photo is Edith Shain and the sailor has been identified as Glenn McDuffie.

Freedom for Nelson Mandela (South Africa)

Leading anti-apartheid campaigner, Nelson Mandela, was freed from a South African prison, on 11 February 1990, after 27 years. His release follows the relaxation of apartheid laws... including lifting the ban on leading black rights party the African National Congress (ANC) by South African President FW de Klerk.

Mandela appeared at the gates of Victor-Verster Prison in Paarl at 16:14 local time - an hour late - with his then wife, Winnie. Holding her hand and dressed in a light brown suit and tie he smiled at the ecstatic crowds and punched the air in a victory salute before taking a silver BMW sedan to Cape Town, 40 miles away.

People danced in the streets and thousands clamored to see him at a rally in Cape Town.

Patty Hearst and SLA Bank Robbery (USA)

The granddaughter of publishing magnate WIlliam Randolph Hearst, Patricia Hearst was a college student in Berkeley, California when she was kidnapped in February of 1974 by a neo-revolutionary group calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). For the next two months, by her account, Hearst was kept in a closet and "brainwashed" by the small group of radicals who targeted wealthy capitalists as the ultimate enemy. The Hearst family agreed to the initial demands but negotiations reached a stalemate.

Then the SLA publicized a photo of Patty, machine gun in hand, apparently a willing convert to revolution. She took the name "Tania" (tribute to the wife of Che Guevara) and participated in the robbery of a San Francisco bank. Instead of a victim, Hearst became a member of the F.B.I.'s Ten Most Wanted List.

She is pictured here holding an M1 Carbine while robbing a Hibernia bank in San Francisco on 15 April 1974.

Hearst was arrested in 1975 and was convicted of bank robbery, but in 1979 her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.

Out of the limelight, she became a wife, mother, author and sometime actress. In 2001, President Bill Clinton granted her a pardon.

5 Year Old Mother (Peru)

Lina Medina is the world's youngest confirmed mother in medical history.

Born in Peru on 27 September 1933, Lina was brought to a hospital by her parents at the age of 5 because of an increasing abdominal size. Originally thought to have tumor, her doctors determined that she was in fact seven months pregnant.

Dr. Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima, Peru, prior to the surgery to have other specialists confirm that Lina was in fact pregnant. A month and a half later, on 14 May 1939, she gave birth to a boy by caesarean section.

Her son weighed 2.7 kg at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. Gerardo was raised believing that Lina was his sister, but found out at the age of ten that she was his mother. He grew up healthy but died in 1979 at the age of 40 of a disease of the bone marrow.

There was never evidence that Lina Medina's pregnancy occurred in any but the usual way, but she never revealed the father of the child, nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Dr. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Lina "couldn't give precise responses". Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of rape and incest, but was later released due to lack of evidence.

Untitled (South Africa)

Police is seen here shooting tear-gas at inhabitants of a squatter camp in Modderdam, outside of Cape Town (South Africa) during a protest against the demolition of their homes in August 1977.

Leslie Hammond had only moments to take a few pictures during the sudden charge by police.

Hammond received the World Press Photo in 1977 .

Beauty out of Damage (USA)

In 1991 the artist and model Matuschka was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. Following her surgery, which she discovered had not been necessary, Matuschka became an activist on breast cancer issues. Hoping to increase awareness of the prevalence of breast cancer, she continued producing artistic portraits of herself, many of them revealing the results of her mastectomy.

Her career took a very public turn with the appearance of her photographic self-portrait on the cover of the New York Times Magazine on 15 August 1993. Subsequently The New York Times received an unusually high amount of letters to the editor, ranking it as one of the most controversial covers in its history. 

"So I lost a breast and the world gained an activist", Matuschka pluckily sums up her new life. And her activism has been unusually effective. According to the president of the Canadian group Breast Cancer Action, Matuschka’s NY Times cover "did more for breast cancer than anyone else in the last twenty-five years."

The photograph has received numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination. The artist herself has received  numerous humanitarian awards, including Humanitarian of the Year.

Born Twice (USA)

An experimental – and controversial – procedure for treating a crippling birth defect in the womb offered Trish and Mike Switzer the only chance that their daughter would walk like other children. But the fetal surgery posed a fatal dilemma: Their baby could die before she was born.

Photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg said about this photo: “During a spina bifida corrective procedure at twenty-one weeks in utero, Samuel thrusts his tiny hand out of the surgical opening of his mother’s uterus. As the doctor lifts his hand, Samuel reacts to the touch and squeezes the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shakes the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. At that moment, I took this “Fetal Hand Grasp” photo.

http://forerunner.com/fyi/news/lm1299.htm

Omaha Beach-Normandy (France)

"If your pictures aren’t good enough," war photographer Robert Capa used to say, "you aren’t close enough." Words to die by, yes, but the man knew of what he spoke. 

On the morning of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when he landed alongside the first waves of infantry at Omaha Beach and caught under heavy fire, Capa dove for what little cover he could find, then shot all the film in his camera, and got out - barely. He escaped with his life, but not much else.

Tourist Guy

The tourist guy, also known as the tourist of death, is an internet phenomenon consisting of a photograph of a tourist that has appeared in many photoshopped pictures after the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Soon after 9/11, an image showing a tourist while an airliner was about to hit the building beneath him circulated on the internet. It was claimed that the picture came from a camera that was found in the debris at Ground Zero.

A 25 year old Hungarian man named Péter Guzli came forward as the real tourist. Guzli took the photo on 28 November 1997, and was also responsible for the initial edit. He edited the image for a few friends, not realizing it would spread so quickly across the Internet. He first provided the original photo and several other photos from the same series as proof to a Hungarian newspaper.

The Power of One (West Bank)

This picture won the Pulitzer Breaking News Photography 2007 award.

A lone Jewish settler challenges Israeli security officers during clashes that erupted as Israeli authorities cleared the West Bank settlement of Amona, east of Ramallah.

Thousands of troops in riot gear and on horseback clashed with hundreds of stone-throwing Jewish settlers holed up in this illegal West Bank outpost after Israel's Supreme Court cleared the way of demolition of nine homes at the site.

Martin Luther King Jr. Death's Shot (USA)

While standing on the balcony, on 4 April 1968, he joked with friends and collegues while he waited for his jacket. At 6:01 a shot rang out, hitting King in the side of the face. Friends rushed to side and desperatly tried to stop the bleeding. Police soon appeared on the scene guns drawn asking where the shot came from. Those on the balcony pointed in the direction of an old run down hotel across the street. That moment was captured by photographer, James Louw, and now lives infamy as King's death shot.

The Body of Che Guevara (Bolivia)

After capturing and killing Guevara (Marxist revolutionary),before bury him in a secret tomb, the Bolivian army showed this photograph to prove that he was dead. His death dealt a death blow to the socialist revolutionary movement in Latin America and the Third World.
The picture actually made him a legend, his admirers said he had a forgiving look on his face and compared him with Jesus.

Soviet Flag raised above the Reichstag (Germany)

In the closing days of World War II the Communist Russian Red Army smashed it’s way into Berlin. In the Nazi capital, the German army was overwhelmed into pockets of resistance that either surrendered or fought fanatically to the last man. On the front lines with the Red Army was Yevgeny Khaldei, Soviet war photographer. In the future, he would say that he spent every 1,481 days of the Russian-German war covering the Soviet battle for the motherland, but in Nazi Berlin he was looking for one thing, his Iwo Jima shot. Khaldei had seen the pictures of American GI’s raising the flag over the Japanese volcano and before the war ended he wanted to snap a similar scene in Berlin.

Soviet Union soldiers Raqymzhan Qoshqarbaev, and Georgij Bulatov raising the flag on the roof of Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany in May, 1945.

Antisemitism almost buried Khaldei into oblivion as his photos including his shot of the Soviet Flag over the bombed out ruins of Berlin were published without credit. It was only till after the cold war and the collapse of communism that professors Alexander and Alice Nakhimovsky came across his name in the Russian archives and created a book showcasing his work

Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire (USA)

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company always kept its doors locked to ensure that the young immigrant women stayed stooped over their machines and didn’t steal anything. When a fire broke out on Saturday, March 25, 1911, on the eighth floor of the New York City factory, the locks sealed the workers’ fate. In just 30 minutes, 146 were killed. Witnesses thought the owners were tossing their best fabric out the windows to save it, then realized workers were jumping, sometimes after sharing a kiss (the scene can be viewed now as an eerie precursor to the World Trade Center events of September, 11, 2001, only a mile and a half south). The Triangle disaster spurred a national crusade for workplace safety.

source: Life 100 photos that changed the world

Lynching of Young Blacks (USA)

This is a famous picture, taken in Marion (Indiana) on 7 August 1930 by Lawrence Beitler, showing two young black men accused of raping a white girl, hanged by a mob of 10,000 white men. The mob took them, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, by force from the county jailhouse. Another black man, James Cameron, was saved from lynching by the girl’s uncle who said he was innocent. Even if lynching photos were designed to boost white supremacy, the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting many.
The incident is notable as the last confirmed black lynching in the Northern United States.

Johnson Is Sworn (USA)

Lyndon Baines Johnson takes the presidential oath of office on 22 November 1963 as Air Force One carries his wife, Lady Bird, Jacqueline Kennedy -her stocking still stained with her husband's blood - and several White House aides back to Washington from Dallas.
Earlier, President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, and the speed with which this ceremony was arranged—and the photo released—was purposeful. Johnson and his advisers wanted to assure a shocked nation that the government was stable, the situation under control. Images from the Zapruder film of the shooting, which would raise so many questions, would not be made public for days.

Last Jew of Vinnitsa (Ukraine)

Picture from an Einsatzgruppen D soldier’s personal album, labelled on the back as “Last Jew of Vinnitsa, it shows a member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in September of 1941, the Jewish New Year. All 28,000 Jews from Vinnitsa and its surrounding areas were massacred at the time.
The Jewish population dated back to the 16th century and had made up 40 percent of the town's inhabitants.

Lunch atop a Skyscraper (USA)

Lunch atop a Skyscraper is a famous photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets during construction of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932.

The photograph depicts 11 men eating lunch, seated on a girder with their feet dangling hundreds of feet above the New York City streets. Ebbets took the photo on 29 September 1932, and it appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in its Sunday photo supplement on 2 October. Taken on the 69th floor of the GE Building during the last several months of construction, the photo Resting on a Girder shows the same workers napping on the beam.

The copyright owner of the photograph, the Bettman Archive, did not recognize Charles C. Ebbets as the photographer until October 2003 (reportedly after months of investigation by a private investigation firm). Many posters and prints of the photograph continue to list the artist as ‘unknown.’

The Fall of the Berlin Wall (Germany)

In one of the most powerful photos taken from that day, a young man bridges the wall between East and West Berlin on November 11th 1989.

Earth at Night

This is what the Earth looks like at night.
Surprisingly, city lights makes the task finding a particular city or country quite possible. Human-made lights highlights particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States and Japan.
Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods cheaply by boat.
Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. The above images is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites.

The Nameless Hurricane (South Atlantic Ocean)

This is not hurricane Katrina, but rather Cyclone Catarina, one of the informal names of a South Atlantic tropical cyclone that hit southeastern Brazil in late March 2004. Although not the first southern Atlantic tropical cyclone, it was the first positively identified cyclone-strength system in the basin. The storm killed at least three people and caused an estimated $350 million in damages.

Brazilian meteorologists named the storm Catarina for its proximity to (and eventual landfall near) the state of Santa Catarina, although government forecasters initially denied that the storm, which clearly had an open eye and various other tropical morphologies, was a hurricane at all. More than a year after the storm made landfall, Brazilian meteorologists finally classified the storm as a tropical cyclone.

Like normal tropical cyclones, Catarina brought heavy flooding with it. Because Brazilian government meteorologists refused to acknowledge the tropical characteristics and potency of Catarina, many people did not take shelter, increasing the threat for damage. In the end, the storm damaged around 40,000 homes and destroyed 1500; 85% of the banana crop and 40% of the rice crop were also lost. Total damages were estimated at $350 million. It also killed at least three and injured at least 75.

The First Photograph (France)

Joseph Niépce was born on 7 March 1765 in Chalon-sur-Suane, France. He created the first permanent photograph, of the exterior of his home, around 1826. The photograph was made using a camera obscura and a sheet of pewter coated with bitumen of Judea, an asphalt that when exposed to light, hardened permanently. This first photograph was captured during an eight hour exposure, taking so much time that the sun passed overhead and thus illuminating both sides of the courtyard.

Nagasaki (Japan)

Nothing like the mushroom cloud had ever been seen, not by the general public. It was a suitably awesome image for the power unleashed below. On 6 August 1945 the first atomic bomb killed an estimated 80,000 people in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
There was no quick surrender, and three days later a second bomb exploded 500 meters above the ground in Nagasaki. The blast wind, heat rays reaching several thousand degrees and radiation destroyed anything even remotely nearby, killing or injuring as many as 150,000 at the time, and more later.

As opposed to the very personal images of war that had brought the pain home, the ones from Japan that were most shocking were those from a longer perspective, showing the enormity of what had occurred.

Muhammad al-Durrah (Palestine)

Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah (1988 - 2000), was a Palestinian boy who became an icon of the Second Intifada when he was filmed crouched behind his father during a violent clash between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip on 30 September 2000.
The two were sheltering during a crossfire between troops at an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) outpost and Palestinian police and gunmen shooting from a number of locations.
After a burst of gunfire, the two slumped into prone positions.
Al-Durrah was reported to have been killed and his father severely injured by Israeli gunfire.

The footage, which was filmed by Talal Abu Rahma for French television station France 2, was re-broadcast around the world and produced international outrage against the Israeli army and the government.
Images from the footage became an iconic symbol of the Palestinian cause and al-Durrah himself was portrayed as an emblem of martyrdom; the footage was shown repeatedly on Arabic television channels and al-Durrah was publicly commemorated in a number of Arab countries.

The Unknown Rebel (China)

This is the picture of a student, The Unknown Rebel, who tries to stop the tanks in Tiananmen Square by standing in front of them.
The tank driver didn’t crush the man with the bags but shortly after, the square filled with blood.

The ananymous man stood alone in the middle of the road as the tanks approached. He held two bags, one in each hand. As the tanks came to a stop, he appeared to be trying to wave them away. In response, the front tank attempted to drive around the man, but the man repeatedly stepped into the path of the tank in a show of nonviolent action.
After blocking the tanks, the man climbed up onto the top of the lead tank and had a conversation with the driver. Reports of what he said to the driver vary, including "Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you"; "Go back, turn around, and stop killing my people"; and "Go away."
Video footage shows that anxious onlookers then pulled the man away and absorbed him into the crowd and the tanks continued on their way.

This image was photographed during the Tiananmen Square Protests on 5 June 1989 by Stuart Franklin and shows the Chinese that there is hope, and even though China is still controlled by a communist regime, there are many people who are fighting for their culture and human rights.

Migrant Mother (USA)

The image of a worn, weather-beaten woman, a look of desperation on her face, two children leaning on her shoulders, an infant in her lap; has become a photographic icon of the Great Depression in America. The photo was taken in March 1936 at a camp for seasonal agricultural workers 175 miles north of Los Angeles by Dorothea Lange. Lange was working for the Farm Security Administration as part of a team of photographers documenting the impact of federal programs in improving rural conditions.

In 1936, while driving down US Highway 101, the car's timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a camp. Florence set up a camp there, and Jim Hill, a man who was living with Florence, went to get help for their car with two of her sons. As Florence waited for Hill and her boys to come back, Dorothea Lange drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family. Over 10 minutes she took 6 images.

Lange wrote of the meeting: "I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food."

Madeline McCann (Portugal)

This is one of the few global campaigns launched to find a missing child. Her image has come to represent the many abducted children, who has yet to be found.
If the face of Helen of Troy launch a thousand ships, then Madeline McCann's image has launched a thousand campaigns to find abducted children.



Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007, in the resort of Praia de Luz in thegarve, Portugal, just days short of her fourth birthday. The British girl was on holiday with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, and siblings when she disappeared from an apartment in the central area of the resort. Madeleine's parents have said that they left her unsupervised in a ground floor bedroom with her two-year-old twin siblings while they ate at a restaurant about 120 metres away.

Her disappearance captured the attention for much of 2007, leading to pleas from well known figures, large aid donations and many accusations and sightings.



The initial investigation by the Policia Judiciaria (Portuguese criminal investigation police) concluded that she had been abducted. After further investigation, they subsequently stated that there was a strong hypothesis that she might have died in her room. During the investigation there were a number of unconfirmed claimed sightings of Madeleine in Portugal and elsewhere and additional scientific evidence was obtained.



Kate was interviewed on 7 September and was formally declared a suspect by the Portuguese police. After questioning, Kate was released from the police station just before 16:00 without being charged. Gerry was interviewed at the same police station during the afternoon and evening of 7 September and afterwards Pinto de Abreu announced that Gerry had also been named as a formal suspect. Before she became a suspect Kate said "The police don't want a murder in Portugal and all the publicity about them not having paedophile laws here, so they're blaming us," and Gerry said "We are being absolutely stitched up." Pinto de Abreu said that claims by relatives that police had offered Kate a plea bargain if she admitted to accidentally killing her child were wrong and the result of "a misunderstanding".

In early February 2008, Alípio Ribeiro, the national director of the PJ, said that there "perhaps should have been another assessment" before the McCanns were declared suspects.

Visit this site for more information: findmadeline.com

Burning Monk - The Self-Immolation (Vietnam)

11 June 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon to bring attention to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time. Buddhist monks asked the regime to lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag, to grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism, to stop detaining Buddhists and to give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion.

While burning Thich Quang Duc never moved a muscle.

Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime.
After his death, his body was re-cremated, but his heart remained intact. This was interpreted as a symbol of compassion and led Buddhists to revere him as a bodhisattva, heightening the impact of his death on the public psyche.

Ellis Park Soccer Disaster (South Africa)

Photo: Reuters

The Ellis Park Stadium disaster was the worst sporting accident in South African history. On 11 April 2001, spectators poured into the Ellis Park Stadium the city of Johannesburg for the local derby soccer match between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates. There was already a 68,000 capacity crowd in the stadium, but reports suggest a further 30,000 fans were still trying to gain entry to the stadium.
Reports also suggest that 120,000 fans were admitted into the stadium. An Orlando Pirates equaliser sparked a further surge by the fans trying to gain entry as they scrambled to see what had happened.

Television capture

As the crowd surged to gain seats and see the pitch, they overspilled into press boxes. As the stampede pressed forward, 43 people were crushed to death. Apparently untrained security guards firing tear gas at the stampeding fans exacerbated the situation further, and may have been the cause of the deaths. The South African Police Department denies these claims.

Photo: Kim Ludbrook

When it became apparent what had happened the match was halted and the crowd was dispersed. The bodies were laid out on the pitch for identification and medical attention, but none was revived.

Kosovo Refugee Crisis (Kosovo)

This photo is part of The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning entry, taken by Carol Guzy in 1999, showing how a Kosovar refugee Agim Shala, 2, is passed through a barbed wire fence into the hands of her grandparents at a camp run by United Arab Emirates in Kukes, Albania.
The members of the Shala family were reunited here after fleeing the conflict in Kosovo.

Iraqi Man Comforts his Son (Iraq)

Award winning photo showing an Iraqi man comforting his son at a holding center for prisoners of war in An Najaf, Iraq, 31 March 2003. AP photographer Jean-Marc Bouju has won the 2003 World Press Photo of the Year competition. Jean-Marc won also the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography.

With barbed-wire in the foreground, the picture shows a father who has been detained by the Army’s 101st Airborne division. The man wears a bag over his head, and he clutches his four year old son in his lap. The man was seized in An Najaf with his son and the U.S. military did not want to separate father and son.

Burial of an Unkown Child (India)

The Bhopal disaster was an industrial disaster that occurred in Bhopal, India, resulting in the death of about 3,000 people according to the Indian Supreme Court. However, testimonies from doctors who provided medical assistance during the tragedy claim over 15,000 were dead in the first month alone.

The incident took place in the early hours of the morning of 3 December 1984, in the heart of the city of Bhopal in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, killing approximately 3,800 people. Bhopal is frequently cited as one of the world's worst industrial disasters.

This unknown child has become the icon of the world's worst industrial disaster, caused by the US multinational chemical company, Union Carbide.

Loch Ness Monster (Scotland)

Stories about a monster in Loch Ness have been around since 565, but only when this picture was taken and showed to the world in 1934, “Nessie” began to be the object of contradiction, research and truism.

The interest for the creature ended in 1994 when Christian Spurling, admitted it was a fake made by his father, Marmaduke Wetherell. They made a wooden monster, Ian took the picture and they convinced Robert Kenneth Wilson (the village doctor), to tell the world he shot the picture.

The last reported sighting occurred on 26 May 2007 by Gordon Holmes, a 55-year-old lab technician, who captured video of what he said was "this jet black thing, about 45 feet (14 m) long, moving fairly fast in the water."
Adrian Shine, a marine biologist at the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, has watched the video and plans to analyze it. Shine also described the footage as among "the best footage [he has] ever seen". BBC Scotland broadcasted the video on 29 May 2007.

Source - wikipedia

Little Rock Desegregation (USA)

Elizabeth Eckford is one of the African American students known as the Little Rock Nine. On September 4, 1957, she and eight other African American students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School, which had previously only accepted white students. They were stopped at the door by Arkansas National Guard troops called up by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. They tried again without success to attend Central High on September 23, 1957. The next day, September 24, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to accompany the Little Rock Nine to school for protection.

The thing is… she is not the subject of the photograph. Will Counts, the photographer, shot Hazel Massery, the white girl shouting in front of the man. 40 years later she apologized to Elizabeth.

Tuvalu: Climate Refugees (Tuvalu)

Tuvalu is one of the smallest and most remote countries on earth. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it can barely be seen on most maps. The country is in danger of disappearing beneath the waves. Not an Atlantis myth but the reality of this century.
Plans for evacuation are being made right now.
Tuvalu is destined to become one of earth’s first nations to be washed away due to the effect of global warming, making the Tuvaluans the first complete nation of climate refugees, banned from their home-islands, their culture and identity taken away.



Tuvalu's nine islands are little more than thin ribbon-like atolls scattered in the immensity of the Pacific Ocean.
At their highest point, they stand no more than four metres (13 feet) above sea level and if predictions of rising sea levels caused by global warming are correct, they could be wiped out within 50 years.

"We keep thinking that the time will never come. The alternative is to turn ourselves into fish and live under water," Tuvalu Deputy Prime Tavau Teii told Reuters in the South Korean capital where he was attending a conference on the environment.

"All countries must make an effort to reduce their emissions before it is too late for countries like Tuvalu," he said, calling the country one of the most vulnerable in the world to man-made climate change.

This could also be the fate of other Pacific Islanders as well. Besides Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands are considered at risk, though true disaster is still at least decades away.

The sea is increasingly invading underground fresh water supplies, creating problems for farmers, while drought constantly threatened to limit drinking water.
Annual spring tides appear to be getting higher each year, eroding the coastline. As the coral reefs die, that protection goes and the risk only increases.
And the mounting ferocity of cyclones from a warmer ocean also brought greater risks, he said, noting another island state in the area had been buffeted by waves three years ago that crashed over its 30 meter cliffs.

Teii said his government had received indications from New Zealand it was prepared to take in people from the islands. About 2,000 of its population already live there.
"Australia was very reluctant to make a commitment even though they have been approached in a diplomatic way."

Visit alofatuvalu.tv
worldviewofglobalwarming.org

First Man on the Moon (Moon)

At 2:56 UTC on 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong made his descent to the Moon's surface and spoke his famous line "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind" exactly six and a half hours after landing. Buzz Aldrin joined him, saying, "Beautiful. Beautiful. Magnificent desolation". Then for two-and-a-half hours, they took notes, photographed what they saw, and drilled core samples.
An estimated 500 million people worldwide watched this event live, the largest television audience for a single broadcast ever to date.

Nguyễn Văn Lém (Vietnam)

Nguyễn Văn Lém (referred to as Captain Bay Lop) (died 1 February 1968) was a member of the Viet Cong who was executed in Saigon during the Tet Offensive.
The execution was captured on film by photojournalist Eddie Adams, and the momentous image became a symbol of the hostility of war.
The execution was explained at the time as being the consequence of Lém's suspected guerilla activity and war crimes, and otherwise due to a general "wartime mentality."

On the second day of Tet, amid fierce street fighting, Lém was captured and brought to Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngoc Loan, then Chief of the Republic of Viet Nam National Police. Using his personal sidearm, General Loan summarily executed Lém in front of AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. The photograph and footage were broadcast worldwide, galvanizing the anti-war movement; Adams won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his photograph.

Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster (USA)

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred in the United States, off the coast of central Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC) on 28 January 1986. The Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its flight after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff.

The shuttle was destroyed and all seven crew members were killed. The crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation.

This photograph, taken a few seconds after the accident, shows the Space Shuttle Main Engines and Solid Rocket Booster exhaust plumes entwined around a ball of gas from the External Tank. Because shuttle launches had become almost routine after twenty-four successful missions, those watching the shuttle launch in person and on television found the sight of the explosion especially shocking and difficult to believe until NASA confirmed the accident.

Many viewed the launch live due to the presence on the crew of Christa McAuliffe, the first member of the Teacher in Space Project. Media coverage of the accident was extensive: one study reported that 85 percent of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident.



The crew: Front row, from left to right: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, and Ronald McNair. Back row, from left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.

Tenzing on Summit (Nepal)

Edmund Hillary took this photograph of Tenzing Norgay as they became the first human beings to set foot on the summit of Mt. Everest, the highest point on earth.

In 1953, a British expedition travelled to Nepal. John Hunt (who led the expedition) selected two climbing pairs to attempt to reach the summit. The first pair (Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans) came within 300 feet of the summit on 26 May, but turned back after becoming exhausted. Two days later, the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with its second climbing pair. The summit was eventually reached at 11:30 a.m. local time on 29 May 1953 by the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay from Nepal climbing the South Col Route.
At the time, both acknowledged it as a team effort by the whole expedition, but Tenzing revealed a few years later that Hillary had put his foot on the summit first. They paused at the summit to take photographs and buried a few sweets and a small cross in the snow before descending.

Upon returning to Kathmandu a few days later, Hillary and Hunt discovered that they had been promptly knighted in the Order of the British Empire for their efforts. Hillary became a founding member of the Order of New Zealand. Tenzing was granted the George Medal for his efforts.


On 11 January 2008, Sir Edmund Hillary died of heart failure at the Auckland City Hospital, New Zealand, at around 9 am NZDT at the age of 88.


Tenzing died of a bronchial condition in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India on 9 May 1986, aged 71.