History is more than just innovations and triumphs. In truth, much of it involves numerous instances of brutality, warfare, and other unsettling, regrettable realities.
Take a look below at some of the most haunting moments from history.
Joseph Goebbels glares at Jewish photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1933.
Anne Frank’s father Otto, revists the attic where he and his family hid.
Che Guevara’s last moments. Bolivia, 9 October 1967.
Replica dog tags of every soldier who never made it back from Vietnam.
People on display at the Coney Island Human Zoo in 1904.
Subscribe to the History Defined newsletter!
Get updates on the latest posts and more from History Defined straight to your inbox.
The survivors the 1972 Andes plane crash.
The last photo ever of Nikola Tesla, 1943
Segregationists harass 6 year old Ruby Bridges with a doll in a coffin.
Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the WTC North Center, 1976.
Shells from an Allied bombardment all fired in a single day on German lines in 1916
Women and girls using Radium paint, not knowing the health issues that would soon follow. 1922.
The Gadget, the first atomic bomb, 1945
Temporary NYPD headquarters at a Burger King, September 11, 2001.
Leftist woman handing out anti-shah manifesto. Tehran, Iran, 1979.
Pyramid of WWI German helmets in New York, 1919.
Austro-Hungarian trench raiders near Caporetto, 1917.
A young shrimp picker named Manuel, 1912. Photo by Lewis Hines
Kids work in a factory. Photo by Lewis Hines.
The Imprint of a Mitsubishi kamikaze Zero along the side of H.M.S Sussex. 1945.
Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic from Nirvana at Kurt Cobain’s funeral. Seattle, Washington (1994)
The temporary grave of Theodore Roosevelt Jr. in Normandy, July 1944.
Coal miner waiting to get into the communal shower at the end of his shift, taken in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 1958. by photographer Max Scheler.
Russian inmate identifies a cruel camp guard at Buchenwald.
JFK’s funeral at the capitol. November 1963.
“The Thousand Yard Stare”—USMC Private Theodore J. Miller is helped aboard a ship after intense combat on Eniwetok Atoll. Miller was KIA a month later, 1944.
British infantryman in 1941 with a long WWI-style bayonet affixed to his rifle
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family, 1913
Anne Frank, with her sister Margot at Zandvoort Beach, 1940.
Earliest known photo of Chernobyl disaster, taken by powerplant’s photographer, dawn of April 26th, 1986
