20 Fascinating And Rare Photos Of The Past
Twenty historical photos that will make you wonder about our past.
Published 8 years ago in Wow
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An Armenian mother sits besides the bodies of her 6 children in 1915. They had been separated from their mom and starved to death during the Armenian Genocide. The fate of the mother is unknown. The father may have already been killed. The Ottoman Turks are believed to have killed 1.5 million Armenians in an ethnic cleansing of the area. They executed many, but preferred to starve the Armenians, often separating families and sometimes using the adults into forced labor while the old, sick, and children starved. Eventually they would kill everyone who were no longer useful. Many fled to Syria and would die on the harsh roads. Turkey to this day does not acknowledge the genocide.
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Australian troops move a fake tank during WWI in 1917. Fake weapons is an old trick. For example, there were some fake canons surrounding Washington DC in the civil war to deceive the Army of Virginia's scouts into thinking it was impenetrable when they invaded the North. As aerial photography began, fake weapons and vehicles were heavily used in WWI and WWII. In fact, troops trained to knock out certain bunkers and artillery pieces in the Invasion of Normandy would get there only to find it was fake. This also happened often in the Pacific with Japanese using fake artillery pieces to give off stronger defenses on certain islands.
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Children take cover in a makeshift bomb shelter during a German air raid over London, England in 1941. The Blitz as it was known lasted a year, and at times the Germans bombed London almost every day and night for months at a time. Around 43,000 civilians died during the bombings, with another 135,000 wounded.
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Russian soldiers harass a German girl in Berlin, Germany in 1946. For almost 3 years after the war, it was estimated up to 2 million German women were raped by Russian soldiers. A number of women and children were also killed for no reason during the final stages of the war and even afterwards. The occupying Russian Army had almost a blank check to do what they wanted to the German people once they occupied East Germany. Finally, the Russian higher ups took control of the situation, and even severely punished rapist by 1950.
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4 Year old bartender Sloppy Joe Jr. poses for customers at the famous Sloppy Joes Bar in Havana, Cuba, in 1931. After the Cuban Revolution ended in 1959 and Castro took power, Sloppy Joes was abandoned. Pretty much all places frequented by the rich and famous in Cuba were shut down or abandoned in 1959-1960.
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A soldier stabs a suspected Pakistani spy to make sure he is dead during a public execution in 1971. This was after the Bangladesh Liberation War had just ended. The war lasted less than a year, and around 40,000 military deaths happened during the fighting. The Bangladeshi and Indian forces prevailed, and started to slaughter Pakistani civilians or Pakistani sympathizers in certain areas in reprisal. The Pakistani army was worse. What they did many consider a genocide. It is estimated they slaughtered between 300,000 all the way up to 3 million people during the war.
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Russian troops firing on demonstrators with machine guns in Petrograd, Russia in 1917. This was during the "July Days", when around 500,000 unarmed workers along with around 5,000 Red Army soldiers demonstrated against the Russian Provisional Government. The Russian Provisional Government soldiers were ridiculously outnumbered, and when clashes began, they opened fire on everyone. They killed around 160 and wounded another 700. They also arrested around 100 people. Some 24 Russian Provisional Government soldiers were also killed.
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Felice Schragenheim and Lilly Wust pose for a few pictures somewhere in Germany in 1944. The pair were lovers, and Schragenheim was actually Jewish, fighting with the Jewish Resistance in Germany. She was unfortunately caught later that year and died during the death march from KZ Auschwitz Birkenau to KZ Bergen-Belsen. Wust was actually the wife of a German officer. She survived the war and would stay married and have 4 children. Their story became both a book and a movie by the same name, Aimée & Jaguar.
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