There are some old pictures that are a lot harder to look at once you know what happened just before or just after, sometimes even what happened right outside the frame.
Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo
Visitors to the Bronx Zoo in September 1906 saw more than simply animals inside the Monkey House. They also saw a young man from the Congo named Ota Benga. Because, apparently, he was just like an animal, simply because he was from a different country.
He was often placed near an orangutan while crowds watched. This wasn’t the first time it’d happened to him, either, as Benga had already appeared at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Benga later tried to move back home to the Congo but died before that happened. Truly awful stuff.
The last Jew in Vinnitsa
It’s not difficult to see why this picture is so disturbing, as it shows a man kneeling by a pit while another man points a pistol at him. But the backstory only makes it worse. The man with a gun to his head is an unknown Jewish man, and the man with a gun is a German officer.
The picture was found in a German soldier’s album with the words ‘The Last Jew in Vinnitsa’ written on it. Some researchers think it may have actually been taken in Berdychiv, Ukraine, but either way, it’s horrifying. It was part of the mass murder of Jewish civilians across Europe during the 1940s.
The human shadow at Hiroshima
You might think this is just a picture of a dark patch on a set of stone steps. It was actually a person. Yes, this was a picture taken on the steps outside the Sumitomo Bank in Hiroshima. The location was around 850 feet from where the atomic bomb exploded on August 6, 1945.
Someone had been sitting on these steps, and when the bomb went off, their body blocked part of the intense heat and made the stone around them darker. Despite what social media said, the person didn’t turn into nothing. Their body was removed later.
The Apollo 1 crew portrait
It’s easy to think this picture is just of some astronauts heading to space. That’s exactly what it was when it was taken, just a nice picture of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in their blue spacesuits. But their flight into space was nowhere near as cheerful.
The three astronauts entered the Apollo command module at Cape Kennedy on January 27, 1967, for a routine ground test. A fire then broke out inside the pure-oxygen cabin, and it didn’t take long to spread. The three men were on fire in their spacesuits and were conscious for at least 15 to 20 seconds before passing away.
Robert Landsburg’s Mount St. Helens photograph
The scariest part about this picture isn’t necessarily the photo itself. It’s what happened at the time it was taken. The photographer, Robert Landsburg, was snapping photos near Mount St. Helens when the volcano erupted on May 18, 1980.
It didn’t matter that he was miles away because the huge cloud of ash and debris was moving way too quickly. Landsburg soon realized that he wouldn’t be able to escape. So, he rewound the film and put the camera into his backpack before lying on top of it. Searchers found his body, along with the camera, seventeen days later.
Franz Ferdinand and Sophie in Sarajevo
This picture from Sarajevo looks like an ordinary photo of two royals, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie. Yes, that Franz Ferdinand. They were going about an official visit on June 28, 1914, and earlier that day, someone had already thrown a bomb at their car. It failed.
The royals didn’t let it stop them, and they continued on their ride. Another assassin, Gavrilo Princip, would later kill them on the same day during that official visit. Their deaths triggered the start of World War I, leading to the rise of the Nazi Party and World War II. All that history was waiting after this picture was taken.
The destroyed bridge at Tangiwai
The story behind this ruined bridge at Tangiwai, New Zealand, is worse than it seems. It was Christmas Eve 1953. A fast-moving flow of mud and water came down from Mount Ruapehu and damaged the railway bridge over the Whangaehu River.
The Wellington-to-Auckland express train was heading towards the bridge at that exact moment. The driver hit the brakes, but sadly, there wasn’t enough distance, and the train went off the tracks. 151 people died on Christmas Eve, of all nights.
The Franklin Expedition officers’ daguerreotypes
Several officers from the Franklin Expedition posed for formal portraits at a London studio in May 1845. It would be some of their last pictures. The 129 men sailed aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror shortly after. They were hoping to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic.
What actually happened was that the ships became trapped in ice near King William Island. Franklin himself died, and the remaining crew had to abandon the vessels. They were forced to eat their dead crewmates to survive.
The Dyatlov group’s abandoned tent
The thing with the Dyatlov Pass group is that we don’t know what happened. Something made these nine experienced hikers leave their tent in a hurry, without stopping to put on proper clothes. Searchers found the site on February 26, 1959, and the hikers’ belongings inside.
But that’s not all. They discovered that, for some reason, the hikers had cut open their tent from the inside out. They found the hikers’ bodies later on near some trees and inside a ravine. There have been theories about what happened, sure, but we just don’t know.
Four children sitting beneath a “For Sale” sign
It looks fake. A sign that says ‘4 Children For Sale – Inquire Within,’ and four children sitting beneath it, it’s got to be fake. It’s not. The four children belonged to Lucille Chalifoux, the woman hiding her face at the back of the picture.
The family was at risk of eviction when Chicago newspapers published the image in August 1948. The family had no money at all. The children were later sent to separate homes and eventually did reconnect as adults. But not until after suffering serious mistreatment.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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