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