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Exploring the backstories and nuances of famous historical photos that will change the way you think about the past—and the future.

Photographs provide provocative glimpses into people&#39;s lives. Stories behind photos - for individuals on both sides of the camera - may reveal much more than a <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/vulture-and-little-girl-photo-story/stephanroget" target="_blank">single image can encapsulate</a>. Pulitzer Prize-winning photos receive international attention for their ability to evoke visceral reactions, highlight key <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/list/most-important-historical-events-of-the-20th-century/mwahahahaha?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">events in history</a>, and open eyes to unrealized truths.

Each year, <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2020" target="_blank">Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs</a> are honored for their intensity, insight into society, and raw emotion. The stories behind Pulitzer Prize-winning photos over the years add layers of insight into the moments that inspired each image. A cross section of Pulitzer Prize winners can transport you along an emotional spectrum&nbsp;from jubilation&nbsp;to grief.

Photography

Death

Since the completion of the <a href="http://www.codex99.com/photography/43.html" target="_blank">Empire State Building</a> in 1931, at least 36 people have sought out the top floors of the building to commit&nbsp;suicide &ndash;&nbsp;with Evelyn McHale&#39;s&nbsp;jump being perhaps the most infamous. On the morning of May 1, 1947,&nbsp;just before 11 am, a traffic director who was&nbsp;working at the intersection of&nbsp;34th Street and Fifth Avenue happened to look up and notice a white scarf drifting down from the side of the Empire State Building when, suddenly, he heard a large crash, and chaos ensued within the streets. He then followed a crowd of passerbys to a limousine&nbsp;parked along the curb &ndash;&nbsp;upon which the body of Evelyn McHale&nbsp;was found, having completed the &quot;Most Beautiful Suicide.&quot;

Despite the eerily uncertain circumstances surrounding her suicide, it is not her death that has gained her such notable infamy, but, instead, the way she was found: softly enveloped within the wreckage of the car, ankles crossed effortlessly, and face serenely&nbsp;calm as she clutched her necklace in one white-gloved hand. The morbidity&nbsp;of the scene was forever encapsulated in&nbsp;<a href="http://time.com/3456028/the-most-beautiful-suicide-a-violent-death-an-immortal-photo/" target="_blank">one photograph</a>, depicting the delicate tranquility with which this woman met her end.

However, the question remains: Why did Evelyn &ndash;&nbsp;a young woman who was newly engaged&nbsp;and who had a loving family &ndash;&nbsp;choose to end her life on that Thursday&nbsp;morning?

Explainer

America in the 1940s was a tumultuous place to live. <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/world-war-2-pictures/mike-rothschild" target="_blank">World War II</a> raged through the first half of the decade, finally ending in 1945 and leaving its mark on the country for decades. During the war, food and&nbsp;supplies&nbsp;were rationed, and, though the end of the war marked an economic boom in America, not everyone felt its effects.&nbsp;Recovery, in some instances, took years, and the&nbsp;Cold War turned international relations frosty when the&nbsp;Soviet Union asserted itself.A <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/pictures-that-will-make-you-do-a-double-take/nathandavidson" target="_blank">photo</a> of children for sale, taken&nbsp;in August of 1948, perfectly encapsulates the experience of those still down on their luck years after the war. The idea of any mother selling her children, let alone selling them with a sign posted in her front yard, feels preposterous by today's standards. But this 1948 image of children for sale&nbsp;is no joke, and the kids pictured did, in fact, find themselves sold off to strangers at the behest of their own parents.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/things-that-look-sad/whitneysmoore" target="_blank">Sadder</a> still, the&nbsp;children for sale in the&nbsp;Chicago area went on to experience further&nbsp;hardship in their new homes. This 1948 image is truly one of those examples of film capturing an incredibly low moment&nbsp;that history won't let us forget.&nbsp;

Old Stuff

On November 13, 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz — a highly active volcano in Colombia — erupted, melting glaciers and sending torrents of mud and detritus into the villages at its base. Thirteen-year-old Omayra S&aacute;nchez, along with her family, was trembling in her home as one of these torrents, called a lahar, literally wiped their town of Armero from the map. Buried beneath the roof of her home, S&aacute;nchez yelled for aid workers to free her from the muck. And they tried. But, unbeknownst to workers, S&aacute;nchez’s legs were pinned beneath a brick door and being clutched tightly by one of her fallen family members. There was no way to save S&aacute;nchez’s life in the aftermath of the 1985 Nevado del Ruiz eruption.Lucid for nearly 60 hours after the quake, S&aacute;nchez&nbsp;chatted&nbsp;and joked with workers as they tried to save her life. As the exposure began to overtake the young girl, and the reality she wasn't going to survive soon&nbsp;set&nbsp;in, S&aacute;nchez told her mother goodbye and asked workers to let her rest. Frank Fournier, a French photographer, captured Omayra S&aacute;nchez’s&nbsp;last moments in a haunting photograph. Her eyes red, her hands white, in the photo, S&aacute;nchez issues a haunting call to the world for a help that would never come. Fournier won the 1986 World Press Photo of the Year for the image.

History

In 1963, a Vietnamese monk committed self-immolation&nbsp;in front of hundreds of people. While his primary motivation was protest, the full reasoning&nbsp;behind his final act shed unexpected light on a deeply conflicted nation.

In the midst of the Vietnam War, South Vietnam was&nbsp;corrupted by religious intolerance. Although Buddhists comprised about 80% of the population, Ngo Dinh Diem,&nbsp;the newly-declared President of South Vietnam, was a Catholic who&nbsp;had decisively stripped the religious freedoms of Buddhists.&nbsp;This group was&nbsp;not allowed to fly their religious flags and were openly discriminated against by Catholics. Even though there were far fewer Catholics, they often held higher positions of power.&nbsp;

The spring of 1963&nbsp;saw numerous Buddhist protests, many of which were met&nbsp;with fierce resistance from the police and government. These clashes led to many fatalities &ndash; including those of children.&nbsp;

This&nbsp;tension peaked on June 11, 1963, when an older monk named&nbsp;Thich Quang Duc performed a <a href="http://www.ap.org/explore/the-burning-monk/" target="_blank">ritualistic ending</a> to&nbsp;his own life in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection. He sat in the traditional lotus position as other monks poured gasoline over his head. After Duc uttered&nbsp;a Buddhist prayer, one of his colleagues lit a match and dropped it into his lap, <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/what-it-feels-like-to-burn-to-death/katherine-ripley?var=3&amp;utm_expid=16418821-311.DBTMgHSWSdSoUL1ev5KuOg.2" target="_blank">engulfing him in flames</a>.

The crowd that gathered was stunned by his act of martyrdom, and it was even captured by several Western journalists and photographers. The photos&nbsp;of the <a href="https://historydaily.org/the-story-behind-the-burning-monk-1963" target="_blank">burning&nbsp;monk</a> became an indelible image of the 1960s, and his final act of protest&nbsp;was a tipping point for the fight for religious tolerance in Vietnam.

Vietnam War

On <a href="http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/burst-joy/" target="_blank">March 13, 1973</a>, photographer Slava&nbsp;'Sal' Veder captured the moment that Vietnam war veteran and POW&nbsp;Lt. Col. Robert Stirm was reunited with his family. Stirm had been held&nbsp;in Vietnam for nearly six years, and this photograph came to represent not only his personal victory in returning home, but also the <a href="http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/burst-joy/" target="_blank">path to healing</a> the United States needed to embark on after the Vietnam War. Yet the real story behind this photograph, titled &quot;Burst of Joy,&quot;&nbsp;is far from the happy, joyful depiction&nbsp;Veder&nbsp;captured.In reality, Robert Stirm's wife had written him a letter only days before his return home, telling him she was planning on divorcing him. For Stirm, this reunion was bittersweet – he was reunited with his family&nbsp;but returning to a wife who no longer wanted to be with him. Stirm endured all the hardships of being a POW&nbsp;in Vietnam only to be greeted by a wife who had admittedly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burst_of_Joy" target="_blank">cheated on him</a> during his time in Vietnamese lockdown&nbsp;and written him a letter stating her intent to divorce him –&nbsp;but showed up to his homecoming despite it all. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Tragedy often strikes when least expected, and sometimes only pictures can capture the startling horror. Unlike the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/murder-victim-photos/christopher-shultz" target="_blank">morbid photos taken of victims</a>, the vast majority of pre-tragedy photos&nbsp;never hint at&nbsp;carnage and confusion. Instead, these images possess an eerie otherness, as if they are&nbsp;tensed&nbsp;in preparation for&nbsp;the disasters to come.&nbsp;Some pictures taken before such events may even seem&nbsp;pleasant or harmless&nbsp;in appearance, like normal-looking <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/scary-historical-photos/loganrapp" target="_blank">photos with terrifying backstories</a>.

The more haunting pictures immortalize&nbsp;some unlucky subjects right before their passings - like daredevil&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/niagara-falls-jump-of-robert-overacker/kellie-kreiss" target="_blank">Robert Overacker</a>, who went over Niagra Falls in a stunt that took his life. Although not all who perished on this list were daredevils. Many were regular, everyday people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Many people are familiar with this picture from the South Sudan famine, but few know&nbsp;that the tragedy reaches far beyond the picture itself &ndash; it extends to&nbsp;the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-famous-photojournalists/reference?var=3&amp;utm_expid=16418821-311.AAszGoDYQ7WZsue0Bhz6ww.2&amp;utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F" target="_blank">photographer</a>, Kevin Carter. The photo&nbsp;of a starving Sudanese boy struggling to reach a food center, watched patiently by a hungry vulture,&nbsp;conveys a heartbreaking subtext; however, the details of the events leading up to the image, as well as the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/last-words-written-by-famous-people-in-their-suicide-notes/notable-quotables?var=3&amp;utm_expid=16418821-311.AAszGoDYQ7WZsue0Bhz6ww.2&amp;utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F" target="_blank">photographer&#39;s life</a> following its capture,&nbsp;make it one of the most striking and complex stories of human suffering in the modern era.&nbsp;

In 1993,&nbsp;<a href="http://all-that-is-interesting.com/kevin-carter" target="_blank">Kevin Carter</a> snapped the now famous&nbsp;photo in South Sudan while covering the famine plaguing the country, as well as&nbsp;the international relief efforts in response. When the picture first appeared in The New York Times, it ignited a firestorm that included both condemnations and congratulations for Carter. Most notably, the photo won him the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. Not long after, Carter <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5241442?storyId=5241442" target="_blank">took his own life</a>,&nbsp;unable to process the horrors he had witnessed in South&nbsp;Sudan.&nbsp;His end adds&nbsp;yet another layer of tragedy&nbsp;to&nbsp;this somber&nbsp;tale.

World History

The history of the Congo Free State is one of devastating&nbsp;genocide, ruthless colonialism, and massive greed, all on the part of one man. Leopold II served as King of Belgium from 1865 to 1909, during which time he managed to <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/feb5/belgian-king-establishes-congo-free-state/" target="_blank">create a colony</a> in the Congo over 70 times the size of his Belgian kingdom. Leopold&#39;s hunger for power <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/congo-free-state-belgian-atrocities/hugh-landman" target="_blank">led to devastation</a> in the Congo, a humanitarian disaster&nbsp;that included mutilation, psychological torture, and murder.&nbsp;

Leopold created the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Congo-Free-State" target="_blank">Belgian Congo slave trade</a> in order to collect rubber, ivory, and palm oil, and it was quotas of these items that led to brutal treatment of the Congolese slaves forced to fulfill them. This particular photo depicts a Congolese slave staring dejectedly at the severed hands and feet of his five-year-old daughter, <a href="http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1904/" target="_blank">his punishment</a> for failing to fulfill a rubber quota. But the dark&nbsp;truth behind this photo is much more gruesome than you would ever imagine. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

1910s

On June 4, 1913, Emily Davison stepped onto the track at Epsom Downs Racecourse as a horse came barreling around the&nbsp;bend. The horse and jockey crashed into Davison, and all three tumbled to the ground. It was a shocking moment in one of the most anticipated sporting events of the year. In the aftermath of the crash, it became clear that Emily Davison's act had been purposeful:&nbsp;she had done it to bring attention to the issue of women’s suffrage. Her actions would pave the way for other <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-famous-women_s-rights-activists/reference" target="_blank">famous women's rights activists</a> for years to come.&nbsp;Born in 1872 to a middle-class British family, Emily Davison was a&nbsp;St. Hugh’s College graduate and a&nbsp;militant member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).&nbsp;The WSPU had been founded in 1903 for the sole purpose of getting British women the right to vote.&nbsp;Though more and more British&nbsp;men of different classes were gaining the vote in&nbsp;the 19th century, British women were still denied this civic right. So, &quot;suffragettes,&quot; or militant members in women's rights organizations,&nbsp;like Emily Davison took it upon themselves to protest the disenfranchisement of women in increasingly public and dramatic ways.Emily Davison's act at the Epsom Derby was actually <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/list/horrific-explosions-caught-on-tape/jacob-shelton?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">caught on film</a>, and the Emily Davison video is a chilling glimpse of a tragic event. The picture of her bold stand is one of the most <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/powerful-photos-of-women/amber-hubert" target="_blank">powerful photos of women</a>, and her death&nbsp;was easily one of the most dramatic moments in the campaign for women’s suffrage. Davison ultimately died of her injuries, but the British suffrage movement would never be the same.&nbsp;

Historical Photos

Just because Photoshop as we know it hadn't been invented yet, that doesn't mean that Old Hollywood starlets didn't get some work done on their images after the fact. Photo &quot;retouching,&quot; as it was called, was used early on in the film promotion industry&nbsp;to amend pictures of some of the most glamorous stars of the era. Fine lines and wrinkles? Not for these Old Hollywood glamazons.However, retouching meant just that – manually adjusting images using techniques with names like <a href="https://www.popsugar.com/tech/1930s-Photo-Editing-Techniques-35943053" target="_blank">&quot;dodging&quot; and &quot;burning&quot;</a> and using tools like grease pencils. In the darkroom, &quot;dodging&quot; involved casting a shadow on a negative as it developed, so that less light could get projected on it. This would lighten the end-result photograph. &quot;Burning,&quot; on the other hand, meant blocking light from all but a very small portion of the photograph during its devlepmont, thus creating a dark spot in the otherwise lightened photograph.Audrey Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis – some of the most respected beauty icons of an era underwent photo retouching in their promotional images. <a href="http://graduatesinwonderland.com/maybe-shes-born-with-it-nope/#sthash.b8Ifc8kP.dpbs" target="_blank">For someone like Bette Davis</a>, a woman who gained a reputation as a &quot;smart&quot; – and therefore &quot;snobby&quot; – actress, image retouching helped soften her &quot;sneer,&quot; making her more approachable and likeable. For Joan Crawford, a <a href="https://petapixel.com/2014/10/17/beauty-retouching-early-1900s-portrait-actress-joan-crawford-thats-photoshopped/" target="_blank">&quot;retoucher machine&quot;</a> enabled a man name James Sharp to vibrate the image while he removed any skin inconsistencies with a pencil. And Audrey Hepburn? For some of her <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Breakfast-at-Tiffanys-Audrey-Hepburn/dp/6305537321?&amp;tag=rankercom-20" target="_blank">Breakfast at Tiffany's</a> promotional materials, a retoucher&nbsp;used a grease pencil to remove fine lines and wrinkles from the beauty's face.

US History

The&nbsp;famous&nbsp;Dorothea Lange depression-era photograph of a woman and her children&nbsp;portrays a seldom visible side of the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/great-depression-myths/christopher-myers?var=3&amp;utm_expid=16418821-311.AAszGoDYQ7WZsue0Bhz6ww.2&amp;utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F" target="_blank">Great Depression</a>. Entitled Migrant Mother, the picture was taken in 1936,&nbsp;a time when most depictions of the depression were of the urban poor. Little attention was paid to those who were forced to take on low paying farm work in order to <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/food-during-the-great-depression/kellen-perry?var=3&amp;utm_expid=16418821-311.AAszGoDYQ7WZsue0Bhz6ww.2&amp;utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F" target="_blank">feed</a> their children.&nbsp;

Not until the &#39;70s was the Great Depression-era woman in the picture identified as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/migrant-madonna-60096830/" target="_blank">Florence Owens Thompson</a>. Thompson&nbsp;was born in what was then known as Indian Territory,&nbsp;now part of Oklahoma,&nbsp;in 1903. By the time Dorothea Lange took her&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/rare-historical-photos/larry-taylor?var=3&amp;utm_expid=16418821-311.AAszGoDYQ7WZsue0Bhz6ww.2&amp;utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F" target="_blank">picture</a>, Thompson had seven children.&nbsp;Six of them were with her first husband, Cleo Owens, who died of tuberculosis before their last child was born.&nbsp;

Thompson&#39;s expression of worried uncertainty as her children cling to her for comfort came to exemplify this difficult time period in American history. Here&#39;s what we know about the woman behind this distinctive&nbsp;picture.&nbsp;

Felice Beato was an Italian-British photographer who began his career taking the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=A02ygdzHegoC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Felice+Beato&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjm3oHsnIrWAhUF-lQKHWHuAaoQ6wEIKTAA#v=onepage&amp;q=hand%20coloring&amp;f=false" target="_blank">first-ever photographs</a> of battle during the Crimean War. Beato is renowned not only for venturing into a new genre of photography so soon after the art's inception, but also for pioneering various new techniques and for photographing places, events, and people that were previously inaccessible to a wide audience. Beato brought the East to the West, giving British citizens insight into the cultures of and wars going on in countries like China, India, Japan, and Burma. He ventured into photographing corpses on the battlefield, a first in war photography history, and took his skills and creativity all around the world.&nbsp;Beato's innovation and mastery of a blossoming genre have secured him in the history books as one of the most prominent war photographers of all time. He was, after all, the man who captured one of the most haunting photographs of the 19th century, that of the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/history-of-japanese-crucifixion/melissa-sartore" target="_blank">crucified Japanese servant</a>.

The 1980s AIDS&nbsp;crisis wasn't initially met with compassion. It was swept under the rug, regarded as a gay issue that didn't affect most people. The Reagan Administration's views on AIDS were equal parts ignorant and ambivalent. It was clear they didn't understand the disease when in 1982,&nbsp;Press Secretary Larry Speakes actually joked with a reporter about the epidemic, alluding to the fact that anyone who knows about the issue must be gay themselves. Thousands of people thought you could contract AIDS&nbsp;simply from touching an infected person, and thousands more were unknowingly carrying around the virus thinking they were untouchable. The disease was harshly dubbed the &quot;gay plague,&quot; and it took a few shocking celebrity tell-alls and one haunting photograph of an AIDS&nbsp;patient to change public opinion.The early 1990s were a turning point for activists lobbying for government intervention and awareness. AIDS&nbsp;patient David Kirby unwittingly became the face of AIDS&nbsp;when the powerful image of him moments before his death was used in a 1992 ad campaign by clothing retailers Benetton. Just a year prior, famed basketball player Magic Johnson told a packed room of sports reporters he was HIV-positive. These two events greatly helped Americans realize the virus could affect whole communities&nbsp;and, by 1993, President Bill Clinton created the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.But none of this may have happened if Therese Frare wasn't invited into that haunting hospital room. Here is the story of the single photograph that changed the way people viewed AIDS.

This&nbsp;photograph of a little boy at a cremation pyre following the U.S.&#39;s attack on Nagasaki etches itself into the consciousness&nbsp;of any viewer. In an instant, the photo captures the&nbsp;tragic distinctions between those who did and did not&nbsp;survive&nbsp;the nuclear attacks&nbsp;in Japan.&nbsp;The Japanese boy in the photo, shown carrying his deceased brother to the&nbsp;pyre &ndash; is particularly captivating;&nbsp;he demonstrates the often-dismissed courage and resilience&nbsp;of youth, even in the face of unfathomable heartbreak.

While this young man&#39;s life was permanently changed, so was that of the photographer, Joe O&#39;Donnell, who was tasked with documenting the aftermath at Nagasaki. He was forced to pay witness to the horrifying effects of nuclear radiation &ndash;&nbsp;only to <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-08-15-0708140773-story.html" target="_blank">suffer</a> some of those same effects&nbsp;in his later years.

The Japanese pyre of WWII was just one of many disturbing episodes O&#39;Donnell encountered while walking among the wreckage caused by the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/aftermath-of-atomic-bombs-japan/christopher-myers" target="_blank">Nagasaki attacks</a>. He was so deeply affected by what he saw, he couldn&#39;t bring himself to look at the images he shot until decades after the conflict ended.

Military

Few 20th-century photos are as famous&nbsp;as that of the the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day in August, 1945. You only have to Google &#39;<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wiki+sailor+kissing+nruse+photo&amp;oq=wiki+sailor+kissing+nruse+photo&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.9439j0j7&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8#q=sailor+kissing+nurse" target="_blank">sailor kissing nurse</a>,&#39; and&nbsp;your screen will be littered with this renowned image.

The photo has been replicated as a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/94104890/navy-sailor-and-bride-custom-wedding?ref=sr_gallery_21&amp;ga_includes%5B%5D=tags&amp;ga_search_query=sailor+kiss&amp;ga_search_type=all&amp;ga_view_type=gallery" target="_blank">wedding cake topper</a>&nbsp;and was even&nbsp;referenced in the opening credits of Zach Synder&#39;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h24D87SqaLQ" target="_blank">Watchmen adaptation</a>; the image&nbsp;has been debated, discussed, and dissected in numerous articles debating its origins and just how romantic or exuberant that kiss really was.&nbsp;So what&#39;s the true story of the sailor-nurse kiss? Unfortunately, it&#39;s not as romantic as you might have thought.

The major issue with the most memorable&nbsp;V-J Day image is that it might have just documented a nonconsensual kiss. Because of the photo&#39;s legendary status, people became pretty interested in tracking down the featured couple, and they found them: Greta Zimmer Friedman and&nbsp;George Mendonsa. Those hoping to learn of the couple&#39;s many children and long-term love affair, however, were&nbsp;sorely disappointed. In 2005, Friedman <a href="http://time.com/4486812/wwii-kiss-photo-vj-day/" target="_blank">came forward</a> as the woman in the photograph, and she explained exactly what happened on that exciting day. Friedman remembered that spirits were high, the alcohol was flowing, and &quot;[it] wasn&#39;t that much of a kiss&quot; &ndash; in fact, the two didn&#39;t even know each other. Can you look at this photo the same way after learning its&nbsp;real story?

On August 13, 1961, the Berlin Wall was officially constructed, separating communist East Germany from capitalist West Germany. It was another ratcheting up of the tensions of the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/a-list-of-all-cold-war-battles/reference" target="_blank">Cold War</a>. That same day, a photographer snapped an image of an unknown East German soldier helping a little boy through the Berlin Wall. Though we don't know that soldier's name or his ultimate fate, we do know that – despite his orders – he decided to aid a helpless child the day the Berlin Wall was built.From 1949 to 1961, more than 2.5 million people fled East Germany for opportunities in the West. That all stopped the day the Wall was built.&nbsp;The separation lasted until 1989, when <a href="https://ricochet.com/437031/30-years-ago-today-tear-wall/" target="_blank">Mr. Gorbachev tore down that Wall.</a>&nbsp;During its nearly three decades in existence, almost 200 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall. Thankfully, the little boy in this photo wasn't one of them.

For a photo so well-known and easily recognizable, almost three decades later&nbsp;the world still wonders about the man who blocked the tanks at Tiananmen Square. Who was he, and what happened to him? The &quot;Tank Man&quot;&nbsp;<a href="/list/tiananmen-square-photos/chwang" target="_blank">photo</a> is one of history&#39;s most famous, yet mystery shrouds&nbsp;the unknown rebel at Tiananmen Square,&nbsp;especially regarding his motivations and his ultimate fate. The mysteriousness has only added to the legend.

The fact that so little is known about what happened to Tank Man should not be surprising. China has a history of <a href="/list/american-movies-banned-in-china/anncasano?ref=search" target="_blank">extreme censorship</a>, and the actions of the government in crushing protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989 are among the most carefully concealed. Despite its worldwide notoriety, many people in China have never seen the Tank Man picture.&nbsp;To this day, photos of Tank Man and anything referring to the bloody massacre&nbsp;are&nbsp;banned in China. With all this secrecy, the mystery over the Tiananmen Square Tank Man picture may never have exact answers, but there are enough clues for us to conjecture who Tank Man was&nbsp;in addition to&nbsp;being one of history&#39;s great anonymous heroes.

In 1910, the Seine River, which runs directly through Paris, France, ran over its banks – to the tune of a little over 26 feet beyond its normal level. The result of excessive winter flooding, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1910_Great_Flood_of_Paris" target="_blank">Great Flood of Paris</a>, which took place in January of that year, brought Parisian life to a screeching halt, as flood waters filled the city's streets – for a moment at least. The resourceful and inventive Parisians of the day didn't let the legendary floodwaters stop them from moving about their city. They just got inventive, and photos of the 1910 Paris flood attest to this inventiveness.From walkways built of chairs to gondola-like flatboats that could be poled around the city, images from the flood showcase the lengths that a community will go to in order to be able to navigate its surroundings. But the photos of the flood don't just showcase ingenuity; they're also hauntingly beautiful, like a city frozen in time, blanketed by&nbsp;snow – only wetter.The flooding itself <a href="http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/paris-flood-1910/" target="_blank">lasted for 35 days</a> and cost the French government an estimated $1.5 billion in evacuations, damage, and rebuilding. Reaching its highest point at day 10, the water eventually receded in February 1910.

Photographic Memories

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Unsettling Images

From notorious murderers sitting courtside at an NBA game to a photograph takes just seconds before mortal peril, these images might look innocent, but they each have a truly unsettling backstory.&nbsp;Here is a look at a few normal pictures with <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/pictures-taken-before-tragedy-struck/mick-jacobs" target="_blank">terrible backstories</a>. Vote up the images that cause&nbsp;the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up.&nbsp;

Seemingly Normal Pictures With Unsettling Backstories

General

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Best Rankings of Random Cool Facts + Stuff

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Erin Maxwell

Region

American

Final Footprints

The Red Car

Survivor

Mark Jackson's Basketball Card

From notorious murderers sitting courtside at an NBA game to a photograph takes just seconds before mortal peril, these images might look innocent, but they ...