- Joined
- May 19, 2018
The sheer glee of people playing in snow (especially if they're from an area that doesn't get snow often) is something that never fails to warm the cockles of my heart.
Historical images - Images that made history
- Thread starter Monika H.
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- Oct 13, 2020
The Maracanã Stadium was built in Rio de Janeiro just in time for the 1950 World Cup, but as luck would have it, it wasn't completed in time for the competition. The organizers said "screw it" and let people in despite the obvious state of incompletion of the venue.
Not that the public minded; sometimes they simply hung from the scaffolding that held the roofing structure.
Brazil played all but one match of that World Cup in Maracanã, and they trounced their opponents one by one - except Switzerland, with which they tied in the one match held away from Rio, more specifically in São Paulo - only to lose the final match of the final group, against Uruguay. It was held in the afternoon of Sunday, July 16th 1950.
The event was known as Maracanazo, and it cut deeply into the psyche of the average Brazilian. Almost all reports tell of people breaking into tears over the event, and there were even suicides happening over it. Not only hosting, but winning the World Cup was an absolute matter of pride for a country that was just starting rising up to be halfway decent to live.
Striker Alcides Ghiggia scored the decisive goal in the last moments of the match. Legend tells that the stadium literally fell silent almost immediatly and remained so for the rest of the event, but that wasn't the case, according to reports of the time. The relentless cheering and hollering of the immense crowd simply turned into weepy murmur.
FIFA President Jules Rimet, just like literally everybody else in the stadium, trusted that Brazil would win and had even prepared a special speech before handling them the trophy that bears his name. As a result, the coronation of the champions was a rushed and awkward affair that uruguayan captain Obdulio Varela felt was rather disrespectful to the enormous amounts of people who were suffering in the stands. But protocols are protocols, and he accepted the title nevertheless, the last world championship of the traditional South American side.
Almost none of the players that participated in the match were ever called again to play for the National Team. The shame was so big, the populace declared everyone under the sun to blame for their historical loss. Goalkeeper Barbosa would be incessantly massacred by the media and fans for failing to defend the goals that Uruguay scored, and he died in 2000 still not even allowed to even attend matches in Maracanã, such was the backwards superstition people held him on.
Not that the public minded; sometimes they simply hung from the scaffolding that held the roofing structure.
Brazil played all but one match of that World Cup in Maracanã, and they trounced their opponents one by one - except Switzerland, with which they tied in the one match held away from Rio, more specifically in São Paulo - only to lose the final match of the final group, against Uruguay. It was held in the afternoon of Sunday, July 16th 1950.
The event was known as Maracanazo, and it cut deeply into the psyche of the average Brazilian. Almost all reports tell of people breaking into tears over the event, and there were even suicides happening over it. Not only hosting, but winning the World Cup was an absolute matter of pride for a country that was just starting rising up to be halfway decent to live.
Striker Alcides Ghiggia scored the decisive goal in the last moments of the match. Legend tells that the stadium literally fell silent almost immediatly and remained so for the rest of the event, but that wasn't the case, according to reports of the time. The relentless cheering and hollering of the immense crowd simply turned into weepy murmur.
FIFA President Jules Rimet, just like literally everybody else in the stadium, trusted that Brazil would win and had even prepared a special speech before handling them the trophy that bears his name. As a result, the coronation of the champions was a rushed and awkward affair that uruguayan captain Obdulio Varela felt was rather disrespectful to the enormous amounts of people who were suffering in the stands. But protocols are protocols, and he accepted the title nevertheless, the last world championship of the traditional South American side.
Almost none of the players that participated in the match were ever called again to play for the National Team. The shame was so big, the populace declared everyone under the sun to blame for their historical loss. Goalkeeper Barbosa would be incessantly massacred by the media and fans for failing to defend the goals that Uruguay scored, and he died in 2000 still not even allowed to even attend matches in Maracanã, such was the backwards superstition people held him on.
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2017
I saw this picture recently in social media and wondered if it was a subtle photoshop or not. That seems like some weird footwear for the time.
- Joined
- May 27, 2015
Posted this before, but a lovely snap of NYC from 1943...In colour, it does not seem so long ago.
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2017
Me on the left
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2014
A colorized picture of Mata Hari.
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2013
The remnants of a Waffle House in Biloxi, Mississippi, after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005:
- Joined
- May 27, 2019
This is the glove worn by Günther Rall during his engagement with Zemke's Wolfpack on May 12th, 1944.
On May 12th, 1944 Günther Rall was CO of II./JG11 and was attacking a US Bomber formation while doing so he in turn was attacked by USAAF Fighter escort planes and one of the most thrilling dogfights during the war ensued.
Facing heavy German resistance, the U.S. lost 46 bombers and 12 fighters. On the German side, 28 pilots were killed and 26 wounded that day, among them was the entirety of Rall’s fighter group (11 planes).
The USAAF flight who attacked Günther Rall (275 kills) was led by famous American ace Col. Hub Zemke (17 kills) himself.
Zemke's Wolfpack the 56th Fighter Group was the most sucessful USAAF Unit in the European Theatre.
Günther Rall was able to shoot down one of the P-47's (which were his 275th kill and last kill of the war) and was wounded during that fight in which his thumb was shot by a .50 round passing thru his cockpit and had to be amputated later on.
He bailed out of the aircraft and was hospitalized for a few month because of a wound infection. The glove was later given by Rall to the National Air and Space Museum.
After the war he and Zemke became close friends.
Zemke retired as Colonel from the USAF in 1966 and passed away in 1994, Rall retired from the Luftwaffe as Lieutenant General in 1975 and passed away in 2009.
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2014
It's weird that the hurricane destroyed the building, or at least the part of the building that's visible in this photo, but left the sign mostly intact aside from that little bit at the side.
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2013
I doubt that was the original sign. I remember driving down I-45 in Houston after Hurricane Ike in 2008 and all the signs like that were still standing but completely missing their outside casings.
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2020
A news network didn’t think they would make history if you watched this clip in its entirety.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2019
>tfw no Waffle House where you live
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2021
Us forces during the Battle of Okinawa. Now with enemy forces on Japanese home soil, they really made our G.I.'s pay for each yard in blood. Read E.G. Sledges "With the Old Breed" if you wanna know what it was like for your average grunt. I sure as hell wouldnt want to be there.
Is that a Bazooka to the left hand side of that guy reloading his M1 Garand?
Here's some G.I.s taking cover outside of the Shuri Castle towards the end of the battle.
i have more photos I'll add to this post but here's some food for thought. According to War without Mercy (hell of a book about the war in the pacific/it's roots/ views from both sides/the hatred and propaganda yadda yadda)
80% of Japanese KIA on Okinawa where missing skulls. American G.I.'s would often take Japanese body parts as souvenirs. Ear necklaces, cutting out gold teeth out dead Japanese-some times not so dead too. One G.I. carved a letter opener for President FDR out of a Japanese leg bone (which he ended up sending back I believe), one mother wrote the city requesting permission to nail an enemy ear to her door from her son. Hell here's a photo from FUCKING TIME MAGIZINE (this was a huge publication in the 40s)
of a young woman writing a thank you letter to her boyfriend for this Jap skull he sent her.
When Charles Lindbergh traveled home from the pacific for what ever reason, I think he was reporting- he wrote in his diary the baggage woman asked if he had any human remains in his bags. Apparently some people didnt clean the bones properly and they'd turn green and start to smell (im not implying it was all hunky-dorey if you got caught with non-smelling human remains in your bags)...
He was also horrified by how Enemy POWs where treated. And not many where taken. Maybe only a hand full from each island. Often they where only taken if terribly injured or knocked unconscious by an explosion. There came a time when the Marine Corp was offering ice cream and a few days leave for each POW taken.
Now this is all horrible and inhuman but that was the nature of the Pacific theater. It made the European front seem almost gentlemanly in comparison. The Japanese acted almost like serial killers in a slasher film. Sneaking in at night- throwing grenades, slitting throats and vanishing into the night. They where suicidal, some times groups of them would rush American lines screaming "Banazi!!" bayonets fixed, swords waving. Mutilation was common on both sides, E. Sledge recalled seeing on Marine hacked apart at the joints and put in a pile, head on top with cut off penis in his mouth. Some wounded Japanese would wait for an American Medic/ corpsman to come help them only to pull out a grenade and blow the two up. The Pacific was inhuman. And as if living through a horror movie wasnt enough you had illness taking more men than the enemy. Plus you got limited supplies and intense tropical heat. So not only to you have suicidal serial killers lurking in the bush, your lugging 50 plus pounds on your back dehydraited in 100 plus degree F heat in your muddy shit caked clothes you havnt changed in a month. Bodies bloat and rot quickly in the heat, flies are fucking everywhere. You finally sit down for some shitty canned food and black coffee and a fly that was gorging it's self on some bloated corpse 20 feet away lands on the brim of your cup and it falls in.
The Pacific was a real horrors show, no wonder people got mean, real fucking mean. If any of us where in these guy's shoes we might just have lost a bit of our humanity, man how the fuck do you come home to work a 9-5 job and raise a family after this shit?
Here's a G.I. walking past a Japanese KIA.
Man you read about some of this shit and you really enjoy your hot showers and warm bed a whole lot more...I sure as hell wouldnt want to be on any of those islands.
Is that a Bazooka to the left hand side of that guy reloading his M1 Garand?
Here's some G.I.s taking cover outside of the Shuri Castle towards the end of the battle.
i have more photos I'll add to this post but here's some food for thought. According to War without Mercy (hell of a book about the war in the pacific/it's roots/ views from both sides/the hatred and propaganda yadda yadda)
80% of Japanese KIA on Okinawa where missing skulls. American G.I.'s would often take Japanese body parts as souvenirs. Ear necklaces, cutting out gold teeth out dead Japanese-some times not so dead too. One G.I. carved a letter opener for President FDR out of a Japanese leg bone (which he ended up sending back I believe), one mother wrote the city requesting permission to nail an enemy ear to her door from her son. Hell here's a photo from FUCKING TIME MAGIZINE (this was a huge publication in the 40s)
of a young woman writing a thank you letter to her boyfriend for this Jap skull he sent her.
When Charles Lindbergh traveled home from the pacific for what ever reason, I think he was reporting- he wrote in his diary the baggage woman asked if he had any human remains in his bags. Apparently some people didnt clean the bones properly and they'd turn green and start to smell (im not implying it was all hunky-dorey if you got caught with non-smelling human remains in your bags)...
He was also horrified by how Enemy POWs where treated. And not many where taken. Maybe only a hand full from each island. Often they where only taken if terribly injured or knocked unconscious by an explosion. There came a time when the Marine Corp was offering ice cream and a few days leave for each POW taken.
Now this is all horrible and inhuman but that was the nature of the Pacific theater. It made the European front seem almost gentlemanly in comparison. The Japanese acted almost like serial killers in a slasher film. Sneaking in at night- throwing grenades, slitting throats and vanishing into the night. They where suicidal, some times groups of them would rush American lines screaming "Banazi!!" bayonets fixed, swords waving. Mutilation was common on both sides, E. Sledge recalled seeing on Marine hacked apart at the joints and put in a pile, head on top with cut off penis in his mouth. Some wounded Japanese would wait for an American Medic/ corpsman to come help them only to pull out a grenade and blow the two up. The Pacific was inhuman. And as if living through a horror movie wasnt enough you had illness taking more men than the enemy. Plus you got limited supplies and intense tropical heat. So not only to you have suicidal serial killers lurking in the bush, your lugging 50 plus pounds on your back dehydraited in 100 plus degree F heat in your muddy shit caked clothes you havnt changed in a month. Bodies bloat and rot quickly in the heat, flies are fucking everywhere. You finally sit down for some shitty canned food and black coffee and a fly that was gorging it's self on some bloated corpse 20 feet away lands on the brim of your cup and it falls in.
The Pacific was a real horrors show, no wonder people got mean, real fucking mean. If any of us where in these guy's shoes we might just have lost a bit of our humanity, man how the fuck do you come home to work a 9-5 job and raise a family after this shit?
Here's a G.I. walking past a Japanese KIA.
Man you read about some of this shit and you really enjoy your hot showers and warm bed a whole lot more...I sure as hell wouldnt want to be on any of those islands.
- Joined
- May 27, 2015
Wilhelm II and Churchill during European wargames, pre-WW1. It's all a game of chess to these gents.
EDIT: A few posts earlier, there is an excellent colourized snap of Wilhelm from the same day.
EDIT: A few posts earlier, there is an excellent colourized snap of Wilhelm from the same day.
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2018
It probably is a Bazooka. It's too long to be a mortar and cannons, back then, were mounted on a carriage.
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2013
The cast of Star Trek minus William Shatner visiting the prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise, which was named after the USS Enterprise from the show, 1976.
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2018
DeForest Kelly and Walter Koenig (I'm assuming, he kinda looks like Sagan) really went ham on the leisure suits. Did they get dressed by the costume designer from Saturday Night Fever?
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2018
The Geneva Conventions only really work when both sides follow it [mostly]. (Western Allies vs Axis compared to USSR vs Axis where neither honored it and Pacific where Japan basically said "whats dat?".
Part of the reason why the US didn't capture many Japaneses POWs is more about Japanese (military) culture (death before dishonor type views) and the Japanese would do acts of perfidy such as false surrenders and boobytrap wounded Japanese troops to kill more Americans. Which caused the US forces to not trust the Japaneses (rightfully) and treat them as an active hostile force at all times.