1) Burning Monk by Malcolm Browne,1963
As a protest to the
Diem slow and unreliable reforms in Vietnam, the Buddhist monks have resorted
to immolation, such as this Mahayana Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Ðuc. Ðuc burned
himself alive across the outskirts of Saigon, mainly because of the harshness
done by the South Vietnam government to his fellow Buddhist monks.
Ðuc was re-cremated after he burned himself; his heart meanwhile remained in
one piece, and because of this he was regarded as a Bodhisattva by the other
Buddhist monks and followers. His act of self-immolation increased the pressure
on the Diem administration to implement their reform laws in South Vietnam.More
monks followed Ðuc’s footsteps as well, and later on in November 1963, Di?m was
killed by an army coup. More 19 photos after the jump.
2) Napalm Girl by Nick/Ut Associated Press
Kim Phúc was a
resident in the village of Trang Bang, South Vietnam. On June 8, 1972, South
Vietnamese planes, in coordination with the American military, dropped a napalm
bomb on Trang Bang, which was under attack from and occupied by North
Vietnamese forces. She joined a group of civilians and South Vietnamese
soldiers fleeing from the Cao Dai Temple, located in the village along the
road, to safe South Vietnamese positions. A South Vietnamese pilot mistook the
group as a threat and diverted to attack it. Along with other villagers, two of
Kim Phúc’s cousins were killed.
Associated Press
photographer Nick Út earned a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph. It was also
the World Press Photo of the Year 1972. The image of her running naked amidst
the chaotic background became one of the most remembered images of the Vietnam
War. In an interview many years later, she remembers yelling “Nong qua, nong
qua” (”too hot, too hot”) in the picture.
3) Starving Cild Vulture by Kevin Carte, 1994
One photograph that
has helped awaken the world about the effects of poverty in Africa is the one
above showing a Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture nearby. It is quite
obvious that the child was starving to death, while the vulture was patiently
waiting for the toddler to die so he can have a good meal.
Nobody knows what happened to the child, who crawled his way to a United
Nations food camp. Photographer Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for this
shocking picture, but he eventually committed suicide three months after he
took the shot.
4) The Baby Hand by Michael Clancy, 1999
Some of us may be
familiar with a picture called “The Baby Hand,” taken on Aug. 19, 1999, by
photojournalist Michael Clancy for USA Today, which first published the
picture. Clancy was assigned to document a spina bifida operation performed in
utero on a 21-week unborn baby named Samuel Armas by Dr. Joseph Bruner, a
surgeon at Nashville’s Vanderbuilt University Medical Center.
The picture and its story have been circulated on the internet so often that some
question whether they are authentic. They are.Samuel was born on Dec. 2, 1999,
weighing 5 pounds 11 ounces–four weeks premature. By all indications, he
appeared healthy. Today, he’s a “chattering, brown-eyed 3½-year-old.”
Photo Suggested By Holly Steel
5) 5 Year Old Mother, 1939
One of the
photographs meanwhile that changed medical history is that of Lina Medina, the
youngest mother who gave birth at the age of five. Born in Peru in 1933, Lina
was brought to the local hospital by her parents because of an increasingly
enlarged belly, which they first thought of a tumor. After a series of tests
however, the doctors confirmed that she was seven months pregnant. A month
later Lina gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Gerardo, after her doctor.
Lina Medina is the first known case of precocious pregnancy, and based on
studies it was shown that she had an advanced menarche development resulting to
menstruation at the age of 8 months, prominent breasts upon turning four, and
bone maturation at age 5.
Her son Gerardo was first raised knowing that Lina was his sister, but
eventually he found out that she was his mother at the age of 10. In 1972, Lina
married and gave birth to her second son, 33 years after Gerardo was born.
Gerardo soon died seven years later at the age of 40, due to a bone marrow
disease. Lina, who is now aged 74, continues to live with her husband in
Chicago, Chico, in Lima, Peru.
6) Tsuname Floating Bodies, 2004
The Boxing Day
Tsunami that struck Thailand in 2004 caused approximately 350,000 deaths and many
more injuries.
7) The Falling Man, 2001
8) Man Walks On Moon by NASA, 1969
In one of the most
famous photographs of the 20th Century, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks
on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11
Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera.
Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours
while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
As the world remembers the thrilling Apollo 11 mission 35 years later, NASA’s
newVision calls for a return to the moon, followed by journeys of discovery to
Mars and beyond.
9) Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud, 1945
This is the picture
of the “mushroom cloud” showing the enormous quantity of energy. The first
atomic bomb was released on August 6 in Hiroshima (Japan) and killed about
80,000 people. On August 9 another bomb was released above Nagasaki. The
effects of the second bomb were even more devastating - 150,000 people were
killed or injured. But the powerful wind, the extremely high temperature and
radiation caused enormous long term damage.
10) Execution of Viet Cong by Eddie Adams, 1968
This picture was
shot by Eddie Adams who won the Pulitzer prize with it. The picture shows
Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam’s national police chief executing a prisoner
who was said to be a Viet Cong captain. Once again the public opinion was
turned against the war.
11) First Black Student by Douglas Martin, 1958
World Press Photo
of the Year: 1957 Douglas Martin, USA, The Associated Press. Charlotte, North
Carolina, USA, 4 September 1957. Dorothy Counts, one of the first black
students to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School. About the
image Reporters and photographers bore witness and recorded the violence that
erupted when Dorothy Counts showed up for her first day at an all-white school.
People threw rocks and screamed “Go back where you came from”. They got their
way - after a string of abuses, Dorothy’s family withdrew her from the school
after only four days.
12) Loch Ness Monster by Ian Wetherell, 1934
13) Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper by Charles C.
Ebbets, 1932
Rare image by the
same photographer showing the workers sleeping on the crossbeam.
14) Earthrise by William Anders, 1968
The late adventure
photographer Galen Rowell called it “the most influential environmental
photograph ever taken.” Captured on Christmas Eve, 1968, near the end of one of
the most tumultuous years the U.S. had ever known, the Earthrise photograph
inspired contemplation of our fragile existence and our place in the cosmos.
For years, Frank Borman and Bill Anders of the Apollo 8 mission each thought
that he was the one who took the picture. An investigation of two rolls of film
seemed to prove Borman had taken an earlier, black-and-white frame, and the
iconic color photograph, which later graced a U.S. postage stamp and several
book covers, was by Anders.
15) The First Photograph by Joseph Nicephore
Niepce, 1826
Known as the
World’s First Photograph but actually this is the earliest surviving
photograph, c. 1826. It required an eight-hour exposure, which resulted in
sunlight on both sides of the buildings.
It represents the view of the courtyard of Niépce’s house at Gras, France,
taken from the window of his workroom. On the left side of the image is the
pigeon-house (an upper loft in the Niépce family house), to the right of it is
a pear-tree with a patch of sky showing through an opening in the branches. In
the center of the image is the slanting roof of the barn; the long building
behind it is the bake house, with chimney. On the right side of the image is
another wing of the house.
16) 9/11 Attacks
In the morning
September 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers of
the World Trade Center in New York City. This was no accident, but rather a
series of attacks done by suicide bombers engaged with the Al-Qaeda terrorist
group.
The attacks killed all the passengers on board the hijacked planes, and took
away 2,974 innocent lives at the World Trade Center. More than 90 countries
lost citizens in the attack, and the stock market was closed for a week. In
response to the attacks, the United States government declared a War on Terror,
while many other nations strengthened their law enforcement powers to fight
terrorism. However, the suicide attacks done by the Al Qaeda terrorists have
forever marked a sense of fear not just in America, but in the whole world.
17) Flag Raising at Ground Zero, 2001
18) Saddam Hussein Execution, 2007
19) First Pic on the Internet, 1992
Back in 1992, after
their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked
me for a few scanned photos of “the CERN girls” to publish them on some sort of
information system he had just invented, called the “World Wide Web”. I had
only a vague idea of what that was, but I scanned some photos on my Mac and
FTPed them to Tim’s now famous “info.cern.ch”. How was I to know that I was
passing an historical milestone, as the one above was the first picture ever to
be clicked on in a web browser!”
Silvano de Gennaro
20) Starving Boy and Missionary by Mike Wells, 1980
World Press Photo
of the Year: 1980 Mike Wells, United Kingdom. Karamoja district, Uganda, April
1980. Starving boy and a missionary. About the image Wells felt indignant that
the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing
it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed
to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning
prizes with pictures of people starving to death.
All information in above article can be found at: http://www.funlobby.com/200902281123/20-Photos-That-Changed-The-World.html
