Historical images - Images that made history
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- Jun 8, 2015
Forgive my gun/history sperging, but, that tiny gun down to the lower left of the sheet metal 1911 is the famous (infamous?) FP-45 Liberator, the cheap one-shot Kill-a-Nazi-and-take-his-gun .45 pistol intended for use by resistance fighters and made by General Motors out of stamped steel and pot-metal castings. It's really an interesting story about how it was conceptualized, developed and then abandoned before it could really be used. Ian at Forgotten Weapons has a nice video on it that does it's story more justice than I could cram in here, worth a look.
https://sneed.hdnux.com/photos/20/45/31/4347502/5/920x920.jpg
Reporters aboard a boat watch smoke rise from Alcatraz prison during the 1946 "Battle of Alcatraz" , an attempted mass-breakout that lasted 3 days and ended with 5 fatalities (2 guards and 3 inmates)
The incident was masterminded by Bernard Coy, an inmate serving a lengthy sentence who'd been observing the movement of the guards thoroughly until he found weaknesses in their daily routine he could exploit. Specifically, he noted that the gun gallery, an enclosed walkway around the upper interior of the cell house where an armed guard patrolled, had only one officer in it at certain times and his patterns of movement became predictable. Furthermore, the bars protecting this walkway, while narrow, could just barely be squeezed between if they were widened just a bit. Accordingly, Coy starved himself down 20 pounds and secretly built a small bar-spreader tool out of a nut and piece of pipe secreted from the prison workshop.
On May 2nd, 1946, with only one guard on duty in the block, and the gallery guard having finished his usual patrol, Coy and 3 other accomplices lept into action.
They overpowered the sole guard on duty while Coy spread the gallery bars and slipped inside. When the gallery guard returned, Coy surprised and overpowered him as well, stealing his weapons that included a Springfield rifle, .45 pistol, and tear gas grenades.
Armed with these, the gang of 4 was able to subdue additional guards that were sent to check on the situation one-by-one without raising alarm. They also attempted to free other inmates, but, surprisingly, only 2 others were willing to join in the violence.
The group of now six then moved into the main cell block, there was now only one door between them and the outside courtyard from where they hoped to run down to the prison dock and use the hostages as leverage to steal the facility's motor launch and ride it to shore. But this was as far as they'd go. Said door had a failsafe lock. If any key aside from the right one was tried, it would intentionally jam up, to prevent just this scenario of an escapee trying them all until he got lucky. With Coy and company unsure which key was the correct one, they used an incorrect key and, ironically, locked themselves in.
Realizing the jig was up, and with the general alarm raised, the hostage officers were herded into a cell. In an attempt to eliminate witnesses, all were shot at close range with the stolen .45. Amazingly, despite five of them being grievously wounded, only one would die. The lone fatality was guard William Miller, who had been the first to be taken hostage. The others would play dead with one using his own blood to discreetly write the names of the prisoners involved on the nearby wall in case the convicts returned to finish them off.
At this point, 3 of the revolting prisoners lost their nerve and returned to their cells, but Coy along with two others, Marvin Hubbard and Joe Cretzer, decided to make a stand, with Coy telling his conspirators "We're going out the hard way"
Several attempts to retake the block then commenced, with guards and the prisoners exchanging fire several times well into the night. But the convicts couldn't be budged as their position on top of the cellblock gave them the defensive advantage as anyone attempting to approach would have to expose themselves to the long reach of their own stolen rifles. Coy shot at anyone he could get a bead on, and wounded several.
During one of these fusillades, another guard, Harold Stites, was struck and killed by gunfire.
At that point, power to the prison was cut and the Warden himself called upon the US Marines, still battle-hardened from brutal WW2 fighting in the Pacific, to control the situation.
On the second day, two platoons of Marines assaulted the prison with machineguns and mortars blazing. The volume of fire forced the 3 remaining armed convicts back into successively smaller areas of the cell house. By drilling holes in the roof and dropping in grenades, they were pushed even further back until they were cornered in a cramped utility corridor. When one last demand for surrender was met with continued gunfire, the corridor was sprayed with bullets and more explosives were tossed in.
On the dawn of the 3rd day, May 4th, with no activity having been detected since the night before, guards cautiously entered the corridor and predictably found the bodies of the 3 now-dead men.
The battle was over.
Ironically, one of the dead, Marvin Hubbard, was due in court the week after he died in the shootout. He had filed an appeal for his conviction to be overturned as his confession had been beaten out of him and a Federal Judge had agreed to hear his case. Upon reviewing the evidence, which included hospital records attesting to his injuries, more than a few people felt that Hubbard "had a good chance" of walking free on those grounds......
Ultimately, the other 3 prisoners who had tried to back out of the ordeal were identified as Miran Thompson, Sam Shockely and Clarence Carnes. Convicted of murder of the two deceased guards, Thompson and Shockely were executed in 1948 while Carnes received a life sentence. He'd ultimately pass away in prison in 1988.
The Battle of Alcatraz would remain the most famous attempt until eclipsed by the possibly-successful breakout of the Morris/Anglin gang in 1962.
Those visiting the prison today in it's tourist form can still see multiple scars on the buildings from gun and mortar fire that struck it during those 3 violent days in 1946.
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- Aug 23, 2018
Trench warfare was brutal, in many instances you had soldiers literally beating each other to death with their bare hands and clubs and whatever they could get their hands on, it was one of things that made that war so traumatic on veterans that made it out alive. It's a bit different to shoot a man at a distance and watch him go down compared to seeing him die right in front of you after you've battered his skull in or stabbed him directly in his heart. Plus the trenches themselves were another level of misery, if some poor fuck got killed nearby you were stuck there, smelling decay claim his corpse or if he wasn't killed in the first go you got to sit there and hear him scream and moan as he died a slow and painful death.
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- Mar 23, 2016
That's fucking hardcore.
Wouldn't surprise me if they killed the guys without offering them surrender and then just later claimed they did to look less dickish.
WW1 was all around a massively fucked up war, only overshadowed by the crimes against humanity of WW2, still it is a war that didn't get nearly enough attention in the post-WW2 era.
Supply lines were so fucked, people had to drink the water from bomb craters, despite it reeking of death and decay.
In that one famous siege in France, French soldiers were forced to drink their own urine or lick moisture from the walls for days, after their cistern was destroyed.
Trench warfare was always absolutely horrifying. You'd have to get in close and then fight tooth and nail to kill the other guy - if he didn't just blow you up with a grenade. And then there's the threat of poison gas, flamethrowers, machineguns and mortar fire.
I'm always fascinated by photos of that war, since they look so surreal, especially in black and white. There's just no plant to be seen, maybe a tree stump, but nothing more. It's just miles and miles of craters, trenches, barbed wire, it's so surreal.
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- Jun 6, 2018
Osaka in the 1980s
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- Dec 7, 2018
How did Japan get so swag? Just to add to the point
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- Apr 10, 2013
I've seen this image before, who is she?
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- Jul 13, 2018
Mariya Takeuchi, her song Plastic Love got a lot more popular recently so she's shown up a bunch lately.
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- Dec 7, 2018
Mariya takeuchi. You would have seen her image everywhere soon after YouTube got those global recommendations alongside Taeko Ohnuki. Their two songs (Plastic love and 4 AM, respectively) sparked a renewed interest in City Pop and basically jumpstarted the futurefunk subgenres of vaporwave. Here's Taeko's pic right here for 4 AMs album Mignonne.
Edit: ninja'd on that first point but the rest still stands.
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The_wandering_nibler
kiwifarms.net
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- May 28, 2019
The end of Ceauşescu was one of the most brutal, symbolic, and in a way, karmic, chapters in the annals of the sudden fall of Eastern European communism. When the Soviet Satellites unexpectedly collapsed by mass popular revolt in 1989, his was the only one that imploded with violence, such was the degree to which the populace hated him and every facet of the communist state and ideology he represented. It's like the sum-total of forty years of an entire nation's pent-up rage were unleashed in just 72 hours on one man. Seriously, he was giving a speech from a balcony in Bucharest on the 21st of December in which he declared Romanian communism would continue and the massive political changes all around him were the work of "subversives" out to destroy the glorious socialist system.... the crowd went ape shit against him. Just one day later, he was reducing to hitchhiking roadside, all of his power gone to the point he only got a ride when his last loyal bodyguard pulled out a gun and carjacked someone. He was arrested and condemned to death for Christmas, and perforated by an AK-47 on the 25th.
This is both he and his wife Elana being drug off to be summarily shot against the wall outside after a trial so brief and preordained of sentence that even Romanians admit it wasn't fair..... " shameful, but necessary " was how the provisional government put it.
They lied. A real trial would've exposed a lot of those that would take power later, whether as oligarch or faux social democrats/liberals. Although often used as a blood libel in East European countries, the case of Romania is unique in the amount of ex-communist apparatchniks of the old guard taking up positions of power all over Romanias new capitalist system. The dictator had done one thing right, and it cost Romanians half a generation: He had payed off the entire IMF debt just before the revolts started through austerity and industry. The new rulers would inflate the national debt while enriching themselves from the sale of state enterprises, becoming a new corrupt elite for decades to come.
Had the trial been legitimate, a lot more people would be sentenced and a new, young generation could've taken power.
I found this comment on a youtube video and it seems to make sense: "
1:23 is the key moment, when several firecrackers exploded near The Hilton Hotel (located to Ceausescu's right). Those who fired them were deceivingly shouting "Trag in noi!" ("THEY'RE SHOOTING AT US"!). The shout spread into the crowd and grew in intensity while panic installed (the crescendo of the screams is easily noticeable between 1:25-1:37). Shortly after, other firecrackers exploded even louder (when somebody was heard saying "Someone is shooting"). At 1:41 the subtitles are misplaced, the security agent actually says: "Vino-n sediu!" ("COME INSIDE!") than turns away, opens the door behind Ceausescu and waits for him to react. Ceausescu immediately lowers his right hand (making a decision) than raises his hand after deciding to stay put, he realized nobody was shooting. Meanwhile, the security agent looks back at Ceausescu and understands he's ignoring the call... Outside, the crowd believed someone was shooting at them from the back so they either left the square or pushed forward toward the balcony. They were mere workers from the nearby factories and had no idea of what was really going on. Those who set up The Coup had at first agitated the people so they can convince Ceausescu to flee ("Come inside!"), than urged the crowd against him for shooting at them and than fleeing. The Coup was set up by a group of influential Romanian communists who received Soviet approval and were promoting Ion Iliescu to replace Ceausescu. Ironically, "I wish to thank the initiators and organizers" was The Signal. 1:09. Four days later, Ceausescu was executed. All the above facts were testified 15 years later by some of the accomplices.
"
This guy Ion would later lead the post-communist social democratic "national salvation front" that won elections both in 1990, 1992 and 1996 (as the SDP).
It was full of Ceausescu crooks but it seems Romanians in general weren't ready to abandon socialism. Sadly for them socialism had long since abandoned them and what was left was utter, extreme corruption under two monikers that came to dominate Romanian politics. The other being the National Liberal Party, also full of the same old guard communists and various proto-capitalist sycophants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRWiz1PhKU
In this video under the moniker "SSAnwalt" you can read a lot of Romanians whining about how they fucked up their revolution.
More Romanians whining about the same thing.
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- Jun 8, 2015
USGS volcanologist David Johnson at an observation site designated "Coldwater II" , May 17th, 1980
Less than a day later, he was dead.
Coldwater II was only six miles from the north face of Mt. St. Helens. When it erupted in a massive pyroclastic flow the next morning at 8:32, Johnson had only a minute between observing the initial explosion and the supersonic blast of ash and steam engulfing his position.
He grabbed his radio and called his operations base, saying "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"
Highway workers found the remains of his truck and trailer in 1993, but Johnson's body remains unaccounted for to this day.
Less than a day later, he was dead.
Coldwater II was only six miles from the north face of Mt. St. Helens. When it erupted in a massive pyroclastic flow the next morning at 8:32, Johnson had only a minute between observing the initial explosion and the supersonic blast of ash and steam engulfing his position.
He grabbed his radio and called his operations base, saying "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"
Highway workers found the remains of his truck and trailer in 1993, but Johnson's body remains unaccounted for to this day.
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- Sep 12, 2017
I don't know the actual story of this picture. From what I am guessing its a woman who escaped to West Berlin as various security forces argue. If that is so then this is most likely pre 1961. Maybe @RomanesEuntDomus might be able to help more.
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- Jun 17, 2019
There are many photos of WWI in France, but few of life in Paris. Just something like 50miles from the front lines where men were slaughtered wholesale, Paris night life didn't skip a beat. Lots of parties, people dressing up, just like the war didn't even existed. In fact quiet a lot of people got rich from military contracts and splurged wealth while suckers were rotting alive not to far away. Paris circa 1917.
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- Jun 17, 2019
photo was taken in 1955. Wall came up in 1961.
before you could visit relatives in the West Germany provided that you had papieren.
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- Jun 6, 2018
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- Aug 23, 2018
The hand of Anna Bertha Ludwig, wife of Wilhelm Röntgen. It's the first photographed x-ray ever recorded, it happened on November 8th 1895. Wilhelm had been experimenting with radiation and created the image using his wife's hand, I'm not certain but I believe the lump on her finger there is her wedding ring. Upon seeing the bones of her hand in the image she proclaimed "I have seen my death!" out of fear of it but his discovery would go on to insanely beneficial for humanity and Wilhelm would be considered the father of modern diagnostic radiology in the medical world, finally allowing doctors to peer inside the human body without having to cut open a patient. And for those of us who are familiar with Chernobyl either historically or through the HBO show they measured the radiation levels in roentgens, this unit of measurement was named after Wilhem too.
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- Mar 23, 2016
I'm told the photo is the equivalent of 3.6 Röntgen.
The hand of Anna Bertha Ludwig, wife of Wilhelm Röntgen. It's the first photographed x-ray ever recorded, it happened on November 8th 1895. Wilhelm had been experimenting with radiation and created the image using his wife's hand, I'm not certain but I believe the lump on her finger there is her wedding ring. Upon seeing the bones of her hand in the image she proclaimed "I have seen my death!" out of fear of it but his discovery would go on to insanely beneficial for humanity and Wilhelm would be considered the father of modern diagnostic radiology in the medical world, finally allowing doctors to peer inside the human body without having to cut open a patient. And for those of us who are familiar with Chernobyl either historically or through the HBO show they measured the radiation levels in roentgens, this unit of measurement was named after Wilhem too.
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- Jul 13, 2018
Not great, not terrible.
And to actually contribute here is Viktor Brioukhanov(left), Anatoly Dyatlov(Center), and Nikolai Fomin (right) standing trial for their roles in the Chernobyl Disaster.
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- Mar 23, 2016
It's amazing how close they got with the actors, Brioukhanov is perfect, Dyatlov is pretty damn close. Fomin is not as close, but still a good match.Not great, not terrible.
And to actually contribute here is Viktor Brioukhanov(left), Anatoly Dyatlov(Center), and Nikolai Fomin (right) standing trial for their roles in the Chernobyl Disaster.
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- Jul 13, 2018
It really is, in term of dramatic portrayals of historic things this is one of the closest I think I've seen to actors looking like their real world counterparts, mainly Brioukhanov like you said.
And for a real contribution again here is the original sarcophagus and the new dome that was recently moved to cover.
