1. Photos That Changed The World
By Robert J. Courtemanche, CJE
rcourtemanche@galenaparkisd.com Galena Park HS,
Texas
Permission for use granted for any classroom teacher in a public
or not-for profit / non-profit school system.

2. 1827 First Photo
By Josef Niepce
• This most famous reproduction of the First
Photograph by the Research Laboratory of
the Eastman Kodak Company in Harrow. The
pointillistic effect is due to the reproduction
process and is not present in the original
heliograph.
• The view, made from an upper, rear window
of the Niépce family home in Burgundy. The
subject matter includes [from left to right]:
the upper loft (or, so-called "pigeon-house")
of the family home; a pear tree with a patch
of sky showing through an opening in the
branches; the slanting roof of the barn, with
the long roof and low chimney of the bake
house behind it; and, on the right, another
wing of the family house. Details in the
original image are very faint, due not to
fading -- the heliographic process is a

3. 1927 Lindbergh Lands
in Paris
By Unknown
• Lindbergh gained sudden fame as the first
pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
He flew from Roosevelt Airfield in Garden
City, New York, to Paris (Le Bourget Airport)
on 20 May - 21 May 1927 in 33.5 hours. His
plane was the single-engine aircraft, The
Spirit of St. Louis.
• Aviator Elinor Smith Sullivan, described the
impact Lindbergh had on aviation. Before his
flight, she remembers, "But after Charles
Lindbergh's flight, we could do no wrong.
It's hard to describe the impact Lindbergh
had on people. The twenties was such an
innocent time, and people were still so
religious– I think they felt like this man was
sent by God to do this. And it changed
aviation forever because all of a sudden the
Wall Street was banging on doors looking

4. 1928 Ruth Snyder
Dead!
• By Thomas Howard
• Photographers are not permitted into executions
in the United States, so the New York Daily
News, determined to secure a photograph,
resorted to a ruse. They brought in Howard, who
was not known to the prison guards or journalists
in the New York area. He arrived early and,
passing himself off by posing as a writer, he took
up a vantage position so as to be able to take
pictures with the help of a miniature camera that
he had strapped to his left ankle. The camera
had a single photographic plate which was linked
by cable to the shutter release concealed within
his jacket. When Snyder’s body shook from the
jolt, Howard depressed the shutter release,
exposing the plate. The final image captures a
sense of movement.
• The photograph was published the next day on
the front page of the paper under the banner
headline "DEAD!" and Howard gained overnight
popularity. He received a princely sum for this

5. 1930 Lynching
• By Unknown
• A mob of 10,000 whites took
sledgehammers to the county jailhouse
doors to get at these two young blacks
accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s
uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming
the man’s innocence. Although this was
Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000
lynchings documented between
Reconstruction and the late 1960s were
perpetrated in the South. (Hangings,
beatings and mutilations were called the
sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching
photos were made into postcards designed
to boost white supremacy, but the tortured
bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended
up revolting as many as they scared. Today
the images remind us that we have not
come as far from barbarity as we’d like to
think.

6. 1936 Migrant Mother
By Dorothea Lange
• For many, Florence Owens Thompson is the
face of the Great Depression, thanks to
Dorothea Lange. Lange captured the image
while visiting a dusty California pea-pickers’
camp in February 1936, and in doing so,
captured the resilience of a proud nation
facing desperate times. Unbelievably,
Thompson’s story is as compelling as her
portrait. Just 32 years old when Lange
approached her ("as if drawn by a magnet,"
Lange said). Thompson was a mother of
seven who’d lost her husband to
tuberculosis. Stranded at a migratory labor
farm in Nipomo, Calif., her family sustained
themselves on birds killed by her kids and
vegetables taken from a nearby field. The
photo’s impact was staggering. Reproduced
in newspapers everywhere, Thompson’s

7. 1936 Spanish Civil War
By Robert Capa
In 1936, Capa became known across the
globe for a photo he took on the Cordoba
Front in the Spanish Civil War of a Loyalist
Militiaman who had just been shot and was
in the act of falling to his death. Because of
his proximity to the victim and the timing of
the capture, there was a long controversy
about the authenticity of this photograph.
Historians eventually succeeded in
identifying the dead soldier as Federico
Borrell García, from Alcoi (Valencia) and
proved it authentic. This is the best-known
picture of the Spanish civil war.

8. 1937 Hindenburg
Disaster
By Murray Becker
• In the grand scheme of things, the
Hindenburg wasn’t all that disastrous. Of
the 97 people aboard, a surprising 62
survived. But when calculating the epic
status of a catastrophe, terrifying
photographs and quotable quotes ("Oh, the
humanity!") far outweigh body counts.
• Assembled as part of a massive PR
campaign by the Hindenburg’s parent
company in Germany, no fewer than 22
photographers, reporters, and newsreel
cameramen were on the scene in Lakehurst,
N.J. when the airship went down. Worldwide
publicity of the well-documented disaster
shattered the public’s faith in Zeppelins,
which were, at the time, considered the
safest mode of air travel available.
• The incident effectively killed the use of
dirigibles as a commercially viable mode of

9. 1941 USS Arizona
By US Navy Photographer
• After the devastating Dec. 7, 1941 attack on
Pearl Harbor by the Japanese - this photo
and several others like it were run in
newspapers throughout the US. The photos
created a resolve in the US to avenge the
attack and declare war on Germany and
Japan.

10. 1944 Omaha Beach
By Robert Capa
• "If your pictures aren’t good enough," war photographer Robert
Capa used to say, "you aren’t close enough." Words to die by.
• Caught under heavy fire, Capa dove for what little cover he could
find, then shot all the film in his camera, and got out - just barely.
He escaped with his life, but not much else. Of the four rolls of film
Capa took of the horrific D-Day battle, all but 11 exposures were
ruined by an overeager lab assistant, who melted the film in his
rush to develop it. (He was trying to meet the deadline for the next
issue of Life magazine.)
• In an ironic twist, however, that same mistake gave the few
surviving exposures their famously surreal look ("slightly out of
focus," Life incorrectly explained upon printing them).

11. 1945 Raising The Flag At Iwo Jima
By Joel Rosenthal
• The photo depicts five United States Marines and
a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag of the
United States atop Mount Suribachi during the
Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. There was
some confusion as to whether or not it was
staged, after it was published due to an error in
the notes of the photographer.
• The photograph was extremely popular, being
reprinted in thousands of publications. Later, it
became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer
Prize for Photography in the same year as its
publication.
• Of the six men depicted in the picture, three
(Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Michael
Strank) did not survive the battle; the three
survivors (John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira

12. 1945 Soviet Flag Over Reichstag
By Yevgeny Khaldei
• Soldiers are shown in this photo raising the
flag of Soviet Union on the roof of Reichstag
building in Berlin, Germany in May, 1945.
flag was made from red tablecloth
with the hammer and sickle themselves
stamped on. This is the original version of
the famous picture seen on the right where
a second wristwatch or a wrist compass is
missing from the other Soviet soldier
(possibly retouched on purpose because it
was a stolen watch).

13. 1945 Germans At Buchenwald
By Margaret Bourke-White
• Bourke-White was the first woman allowed to be a
war correspondent for the US Army and the first
woman to cross the German border with Patton.
Because she was with Patton's third army when
they reached Buchenwald, she became one of the
first photographers to enter the death camps in
Germany.
• Patton was so outraged he made the local civilians
come over and look at what their leaders had
done. They are walking around in suits, clearly not
looking at a pile of dead, emaciated bodies heaped
on top of each other. One woman in the photo is
shielding her eyes from the horror around her. The
other people in the photo are U.S. soldiers walking
around in disbelief.
• Bourke-White said of this experience, "I saw and
photographed the piles of naked, lifeless bodies,

14. 1945 V-J Day Kiss
By Alfred Eisenstaedt
• On August 14, 1945, the news of Japan’s surrender
was announced in the United States. Riotous
celebrations erupted in the streets, but perhaps
none were more relieved than those in uniform.
Although many of them had recently returned from
victory in Europe, they faced the prospect of having
to ship out yet again, this time to the bloody Pacific.
• Among the overjoyed masses gathered in Times
Square that day was one of the most talented
photojournalists of the 20th century, a German
immigrant named Alfred Eisenstaedt. While snapping
pictures of the celebration, he spotted a sailor
"running along the street grabbing any and every girl
in sight." He later explained that, "whether she was a
grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make any
difference."
• Of course, a photo of the sailor planting a wet one
on a senior citizen wouldn’t have made the cover of
Life, but when he locked lips with an attractive

15. 1948 Dewey Defeats
Truman
By St. Louis Globe Photographer
• DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN was a famously
wrong banner headline on the front page of
the early edition of the Chicago Tribune on
November 3, 1948. President Harry S.
Truman, who had been expected to lose to
Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey in
the 1948 presidential race, won the election.
A photograph of a delighted Truman,
holding a copy of his premature political
obituary, is one of the more famous images
from the 20th Century. The headline itself is
a cautionary tale for journalists, about the
dangers of being first to break a story
without being certain of its accuracy.

16. 1951 Einstein Sticks Out Tongue
By Arthur Sasse
• You may appreciate this memorable portrait as
much as the next fellow, but it’s still fair to wonder:
"Did it really change history?" While Einstein
certainly changed history with his contributions to
nuclear physics and quantum mechanics, this photo
changed the way history looked at Einstein. By
humanizing a man known chiefly for his brilliance,
this image is the reason Einstein’s name has
become synonymous not only with "genius," but
also with "wacky genius."
• So why the history-making tongue? It seems
Professor Einstein, hoping to enjoy his 72nd
birthday in peace, was stuck on the Princeton
campus enduring incessant hounding by the press.
Upon being prodded to smile for the camera for
what seemed like the millionth time, he gave
photographer Arthur Sasse a good look at his uvula
instead. This being no ordinary tongue, the
resulting photo became an instant classic, thus
ensuring that the distinguished Novel Prize-winner
would be remembered as much for his personality
as for his brain.

17. 1952 Little Rock Nine
• By Will Counts
• The focal point of the Little Rock Integration
Crisis of 1957. Nine black students, known as
the Little Rock Nine, were denied entrance to the
school in defiance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme
Court ruling ordering integration of public
schools. This provoked a showdown between the
Governor Orval Faubus and President Dwight D.
Eisenhower that gained international attention.
• On the morning of September 23, 1957, the
nine black high school students faced an angry
mob of over 1,000 whites protesting integration
in front of Central High School in Little Rock,
Arkansas. As the students were escorted inside
by the Little Rock police, violence escalated and
they were removed from the school. The next
day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the
1,200-man 327th Airborne Battle Group of the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division from Fort
Campbell to escort the nine students into the
school.

18. 1954 Marilyn Monroe
• By Bill Kobrin
• On September 14, 1954, she filmed the
now-iconic skirt-blowing scene for The
Seven Year Itch in front of New York's
Trans-Lux Theater. Marilyn showed up at
52nd Street, in the dark, in her white halter
top dress, ready to pose for the soon to
become famous "blowing skirt" photo shoot
20th Century Fox had scheduled. Bill Kobrin,
then Fox's east coast correspondent, told
the June 26, 2006 Palm Springs Desert Sun
that it was Billy Wilder's idea to turn it into a
media circus: "... every time her dress came
up and the crowd started to get excited.”
• Subway trains could not be depended on to
run when Fox wanted Marilyn's skirt to
billow up, so some very lucky electrician was

19. 1961 First Man In Space
• By Unknown Russian photographer
• On 12 April 1961, Russian Yuri Gagarin
became the first human to travel into space
aboard Vostok 1. His call sign in this flight
was Kedr (Cedar) During his flight, Gagarin
famously whistled the tune "The Motherland
Hears, The Motherland Knows.”
• This launch along with the 1957 Sputnik 1
embarrassed the United States and
prompted president John F. Kennedy to
announce in his famous speech that the US
would reach the moon before 1970 and
before the Russians.

20. 1963 I Have A Dream
• National Archieves
• "I Have a Dream" is the popular name given
to the historic public speech by Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., when he spoke of his desire
for a future where blacks and whites would
coexist harmoniously as equals. King's
delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963
from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
during the March on Washington for Jobs
and Freedom was a defining moment of the
American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered
to over 200,000 civil rights supporters, the
speech is often considered to be one of the
greatest and most notable speeches in
history.

21. 1963 JFK Assassination
• By Abraham Zapruder
• The Abraham Zapruder home movie of the Kennedy
assassination is the only known film of the entire
assassination. It is a silent, 8mm color record of
the Kennedy motorcade just before, during, and
immediately after the shooting.
• Zapruder filmed the scene with a Model 414 PD Bell
& Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera that
operated via a spring-wound mechanism. The FBI
later tested Zapruder's camera and found that it
filmed an average of 18.3 frames per second. The
entire film sequence depicting events in Dealey
Plaza consists of 486 frames, or 26.6 seconds. The
presidential limousine can be seen in 343 of the
frames, or 18.7 seconds.
• The two major investigations into the assassination,

22. 1965 How Life Begins
• By Lennart Nilsson
• In 1957 Nilsson began taking pictures with
an endoscope, an instrument that can see
inside a body cavity, but when he presented
the rewards of his work to LIFE's editors
several years later, they demanded that
witnesses confirm that they were seeing
what they thought they were seeing. Finally
convinced, they published a cover story in
1965 that went on for 16 pages, and it
created a sensation. Then, and over the
intervening years, Nilsson's painstakingly
made pictures informed how humanity feels
about . . . well, humanity. They also were
appropriated for purposes that Nilsson
never intended. Nearly as soon as the 1965
portfolio appeared in LIFE, images from it
were enlarged by right-to-life activists and
pasted to placards.

23. 1965 Ali vs. Liston
• Photo by Neil Leifer
• Ali stood over his fallen opponent Sonny
Liston, gesturing and yelling at him to get
up. The moment was captured by ringside
photographer Neil Leifer, and has become
one of the iconic images of sport. Ali then
posed over him, with his fists in the air
celebrating the knockdown.

24. 1968 Murder of
By Eddie Adams
• "Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in
the world," AP photojournalist Eddie Adams once
wrote. A fitting quote for Adams, because his 1968
photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed
prisoner in the head at point-blank range not only
earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, but also went a
long way toward souring Americans’ attitudes about
the Vietnam War.
• For all the image’s political impact, though, the
situation wasn’t as black-and-white as it’s rendered.
What Adams’ photograph doesn’t reveal is that the
man being shot was the captain of a Vietcong "revenge
squad" that had executed dozens of unarmed civilians
earlier the same day. Regardless, it instantly became
an icon of the war’s savagery and made the official
pulling the trigger - General Nguyen Ngoc Loan - its
iconic villain.

25. 1968 Earthrise
By Astronaut William Anders
• 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.

26. 1968 Black
By Dean Lucas
• The Black Power Salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics
in Mexico City is a noted civil rights protest. Tommie
Smith (center) and John Carlos (right) showing the
Black Power salute in addition to the salute Smith and
Carlos each wore a black glove on opposite hands.
Along with the gloves, the men wore black socks with
no shoes to protest black poverty. Smith wore a black
scarf that stood for black pride.
• After completing their 200 meter race on the evening
of October 17 American athlete Smith, who won the
race in a then world record time of 19.83 seconds,
with Australia's Peter Norman second with a time of
20.06 seconds and American Carlos in third place
with a time of 20.10 seconds, went to collect their
medals at the podium. As they left the podium they
were booed by the crowd. Smith later said "If I win, I
am American, not a black American. But if I did
something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We
are black and we are proud of being black. Black

27. 1969 Man on the Moon
By Astronaut Neil Armstrong
• The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned
mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth
human spaceflight of the Apollo programs,
and the third human voyage to the moon.
Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried
Commander Neil Armstrong, Command
Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar
Module Pilot Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin. On July 20,
Armstrong and Aldrin became the first
humans to land on the Moon, while Collins
orbited above.
• The mission fulfilled President John F.
Kennedy's goal of "landing a man on the
moon and returning him safely to the Earth
by the time this decade is out," in other
words by the end of the 1960s. Many
consider the landing one of the defining
moments of human history.

28. 1970 Kent State
Massacre
Photo by John Filo
Mary Ann Vecchio gestures and screams as
she kneels by the body of a student,
Jeffrey Miller, lying face down on the
campus of Kent State University, in Kent,
Ohio, on May 4, 1970. Original
photograph by Filo of the Valley Daily
News and Daily Dispatch of Tarentum and
New Kensington, Pennsylvania; on
publication, the image was retouched to
remove the fencepost above Vecchio's
head.
The image convinced many that the US
Government’s involvement in Vietnam
was wrong and the National Guard’s
actions were seen as excessive.

29. 1972 Napalm Girl
• By Huynh Cong Ut (also known as Nick Ut).
• Kim Phuc Phan Thi, center, running down a
road near Trang Bang, Vietnam, after a
napalm bomb was dropped on the village of
Trang Bang by a plane of the Vietnam Air
Force. The village was suspected by US Army
forces of being a Viet Cong stronghold. Kim
Phuc survived by tearing off her burning
clothes.
• The photographer himself saved the girl’s
life by rushing her to a nearby hospital.

30. 1985 Omayra Sanchez
• By Frank Fournier
• Fournier captured the tragic image of 13-
year-old Omayra Sanchez trapped in debris
caused by a mudslide following the eruption
of a volcano in Colombia in 1985.
• Red Cross rescue workers had apparently
repeatedly appealed to the government for a
pump to lower the water level and for other
help to free the girl. She died of exposure
after about 60 hours.
• The picture had tremendous impact when it
was published. Television cameras had already
relayed Omayra's agony into homes around
the world.
• When the photo was published, many were

31. 1985 Afghan Girl
• By Steve McCurry
• Sharbat Gula is an Afghan woman of
Pashtun ethnicity. Her face became famous
when it was featured on the June 1985 cover
of National Geographic Magazine. Gula was
known throughout the world simply as the
Afghan Girl until she was formally identified
in 2002 after her country was liberated from
the Taliban terrorists.

32. 1986 Challenger
Explosion
• By NASA photographer
• On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle
Challenger and her seven-member crew were
lost when a ruptured O-ring in the right Solid
Rocket Booster caused an explosion soon after
launch. This photograph, taken a few seconds
after the accident, shows the Space Shuttle Main
Engines and Solid Rocket Booster exhaust
plumes entwined around a ball of gas from the
External Tank. Because shuttle launches had
become almost routine after twenty-four
successful missions, those watching the shuttle
launch in person and on television found the
sight of the explosion especially shocking and
difficult to believe until NASA confirmed the
accident.
• New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAullife
was among the seven killed.

33. 1989 Fall of Berlin Wall
• By Andres Ramos
• During the Cold War, the Berlin wall divided
East and West Berlin for 28 years, from the
day construction began on August 13, 1961
until it was dismantled in 1989.
• Hundreds were shot trying to escape from
East Berlin before and after the construction
of the wall.
• When the East German government
announced on November 9, 1989, after
several weeks of civil unrest, that entering
West Berlin would be permitted, crowds of
East Germans climbed onto and crossed the
wall, joined by West Germans on the other
side in a celebratory atmosphere.

34. 1989 Tiananmen
Square
• By Jeff Widener
• This is the picture of an unknown student/
man going to work who has just had enough
of what he has saw the days before of killing
of protesters done by their own government.
He tries to stop the tanks in Tiananmen
Square by standing in front of them and
climbed on top of the tank and began
hitting the hatch and yelling (presumably for
the drivers to come out), the tank driver
didn't crush the man with the bags as a
group of people came and dragged him
away, we still don't know if the men is alive
or dead as the Chinese government
executed many of the protesters involved.

35. 1993 Vulture Watches
• By Kevin Carter
• The prize-winning image: A vulture watches
a starving child in southern Sudan, March 1,
1993.
• Carter's winning photo shows a heart-
breaking scene of a starving child collapsed
on the ground, struggling to get to a food
center during a famine in the Sudan in 1993.
In the background, a vulture stalks the
emaciated child.
• Carter was part of a group of four fearless
photojournalists known as the "Bang Bang
Club" who traveled throughout South Africa
capturing the atrocities committed during
apartheid.

36. 1995 Oklahoma City
Bombing • By Charles Porter
• The Oklahoma City bombing, was one of the
biggest acts of domestic terrorism in the
U.S.
• Like all disasters, certain images stick in our
minds as illustrations of their magnitude.
And in Oklahoma City, a photograph of a
fireman holding a child became one of those
iconic images.
• The photographer, Charles Porter, won a
Pulitzer Prize for the photo, and the instant,
caught in time, has changed the lives of
both the firefighter (Chris Fields) and the
baby's mother, Aren Almon-Kok.
• It was 1-year old Baylee Almon who died in
the blast, and she became a symbol for the
American innocence lost in that act of
domestic terrorism.

37. 2000 The World At Night
• This is what the Earth looks like at night. Surprisingly, city lights make this task quite possible. Human-made
lights highlight particularly developed or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including the seaboards of
Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they
can exchange goods cheaply by boat. Particularly dark areas include the central parts of South America, Africa,
Asia, and Australia. The image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP
satellites.

38. 2001 The Falling Man
• Richard Drew
• The powerful and controversial photograph
provoked feelings of anger, particularly in the
United States, in the immediate aftermath of the
September 11 attacks. The photo ran only once in
many American newspapers because they received
critical and angry letters from readers who felt the
photo was exploitative and disrespectful of the
dead. This led to the media's self-censorship of
the photograph, preferring instead to print photos
of acts of heroism and sacrifice.
• Drew commented about the varying reactions,
saying, "This is how it affected people's lives at
that time, and I think that is why it's an important
picture. I didn't capture this person's death. I
captured part of his life. This is what he decided to
do, and I think I preserved that."9/11: The Falling
Man ends suggesting that this picture was not a
matter of the identity behind the man, but how he
symbolized the events of 9/11.

39. 2001 Raising The Flag: Ground Zero
• By Thomas E. Franklin
• Taken on September 11, 2001. The
picture shows three firefighters raising
the American flag at ground zero of the
World Trade Center following the 9/11
attacks. The official name for the
photograph used by the Bergen Record is
Ground Zero Spirit. The photo appeared
on the Record front page on September
12, 2001. The paper also put it on the
Associated Press wire and it appeared on
the covers of several newspapers around
the world. It has often been compared to
the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal during
World War II and has since appeared on a
US Postage Stamp.