Part of a “photo session” from a Iraq Prison controlled by US, this is a picture showing the abuse on the prisoners held and interrogated there. The man standing on a box with wires connected to his body is Satar Jabar.

Taguba Report a criminal investigation by the US Army Criminal Investigation Command had already been underway since 2003 where multiple recruits from the 320th MP Battalion had been charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with prisoner abuse. In 2004 articles of the abuse,included pictures showing military personnel in abusing prisoners, came to public attention, when a 60 Minutes II news report (April 28) and an article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine (posted online on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue) reported the story. Janis Karpinski, the commander of Abu Ghraib demoted for her lack of insight regarding the abuse, estimated later that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent.

One officer and some enlisted men ad women were convicted.

Photographer: unknown U.S. military or Department of Defense employee
Source: wikipedia.org

This is a rare image which was purportedly taken in 1911 offer postcard views of Niagara Falls completely frozen over. It circulated by email from aprox. 2003.

It is said to be fake, however…. The flow of water was stopped completely over both falls on March 29th 1848 due to an ice jam in the upper river for several hours. This is the only known time to have occurred. The Falls did not actually freeze over, but the flow was stopped to the point where people actually walked out and recovered artifacts from the riverbed!

Niagara had frozen again in 1936. (the last time for quite a while i might add…).

Photographer: unknown
Source: nfpl.library.on.ca

This is another iconic image of the 50’s segregation period. Elizabeth Eckford is one of the African American students known as the Little Rock Nine. On September 4, 1957, she and eight other African American students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School, which had previously only accepted white students. They were stopped at the door by Arkansas National Guard troops called up by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. They tried again without success to attend Central High on September 23, 1957. The next day, September 24, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to accompany the Little Rock Nine to school for protection.

The thing is… she is not the subject of the photograph. Will Counts, the photographer shot Hazel Massery, the white girl shouting in front of the man. 40 years later she apologized to Elisabeth.

Photographer: Will Counts
Source: wikipedia.org

The place is notable as the location where the United States first Transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the Golden Spike, joining the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. Promontory was the site of a temporary city during and shortly after the construction of the railroad, but this was then dismantled, and since then Promontory has had no permanent population. Since 1957 it has been preserved as part of the Golden Spike National Historic Site.

The work on the railway had been brutal. At one stage, efforts to tunnel through the marble spine of a Sierra Nevada mountain consumed an entire year, as only eight inches a day of progress was possible.

Photographer: Charles Phelps Cushing
Source: wikipedia

Today we break a little the site’s pattern showing you not a photo but an image captured from a film showing the Palestinian father, Jamil ad-Durra, trying to protect his son from israeli gunfire moments before the boy was shot dead, the father wounded and a Palestinian ambulance driver who came to rescue them, also killed.

Reporters watched helplessly as the boy and his father became trapped against a wall with nothing but a small concrete block for cover as bullets rained around them on a road near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. Mohammed crouched weeping behind his father, who tried in vain to shield him with his arms and body. At one point, the father raised his head and wagged his finger, as if to scold. Some time later, both were shot and Mohammed slumped into his father’s lap.
Mohammed died, while his father survived badly wounded. An ambulance driver, who braved the fierce shooting to try to rescue them, also killed.

Image from: BBC