A picture is worth a thousand words, but not all pictures are created equal. The pictures we usually feature on our site can be cute, beautiful, funny, or enchanting, but these pictures are powerful. They are gripping and unforgettable because of the volumes they speak about the human condition – about some of the best and worst moments of contemporary human existence. We should warn our readers that some of these pictures may upset them, while others may fill them with joy. But that’s precisely because these images reflect some of the best and worst parts of the human experience and world events. Our post of must-see photos from the past described our history while these photos, for the most part, describe our present – our suffering and our triumphs, our perseverance and our failures, our compassion and our hatred, our intelligence and our stupidity. | |
20 Heart surgeon after 23-hour-long (successful) heart transplant. His assistant is sleeping in the corner.
19 Starving boy and missionary
18 A Russian soldier playing an abandoned piano in Chechnya in 1994
17 Christians protect Muslims during prayer in the midst of the 2011 uprisings in Cairo, Egypt
16 Terri Gurrola is reunited with her daughter after serving in Iraq for 7 months
15 Zanjeer the dog saved thousands of lives during Mumbai serial blasts in March 1993 by detecting more than 3,329 kgs of the explosive RDX, 600 detonators, 249 hand grenades and 6406 rounds of live ammunition. He was buried with full honors in 2000
14 Alcoholic father with his son
13 Five-year-old gypsy boy on New Year’s Eve 2006 in the Hungarian gypsy community of St. Jacques, Perpignan, Southern France. It is quite common in St. Jacques for little boys to smoke
12 A dog named “Leao” sits for a second consecutive day at the grave of her owner, who died in the disastrous landslides near Rio de Janiero in 2011.
11 “Wait For Me Daddy,” by Claude P. Dettloff in New Westminster, Canada, October 1, 1940
10 An old WW2 Russian tank veteran finally found the old tank in which he passed through the entire war – standing in a small Russian town as a monument
9 The Graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, Holland, 1888
8 Demonstration of condom usage at a public market in Jayapura, capital of Papua, 2009
7 Russian soldiers preparing for the Battle of Kursk, July 1943
6 An Afghan man offers tea to soldiers
5 Some parents still looking for their missing child
4 Greg Cook hugs his dog Coco after finding her inside his destroyed home in Alabama following the Tornado in March, 2012
3 Flower power
2 Sunset on Mars
1 Man Falling from the World Trade Center on 9/11. “The Falling Man.”
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