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[Lamel]

Picture from the 1927 Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics.
a lot of historical brain power gathered in one place




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference

Love this one. Seriously a lot of brainpower; every physics student's dream (or nightmare since these guys can be credited for so many formulas we are tested on).

 

[Moff]

"Franz, are we the baddies!?"

 

[lastplayed]

Maori hunting a giant moa.

Spoiler

Fake unfortunately

.

 

[jediyoshi]

WW1 German Calvary

 

[Engell]

Here is a more recent one

 

[Terra Firma]

Picture from the 1927 Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics.
a lot of historical brain power gathered in one place




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference

This is truly amazing. A huge chunk of modern physics and chemistry can be attributed to these great minds and even more amazing is that they all were contemporaries of each other. What a generation.

 

[Bad_Boy]

if weed is ever legalized country wide on a federal level, i imagine it going down something like this.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Damn, nazis were some scary motherfuckers

 

[Stiflers Mom]

I live quite near that place.

I remember sitting there next to one of the lions with a girl at night, having a romantic time, kissing, watching the rain falling on Ludwigstraße.

I knew of the historical background of Feldherrenhalle, but seeing this photo makes the place a lot more scary somehow..

 

[Engell]

I live quite near that place.

I remember sitting there next to one of the lions with a girl at night, having a romantic time, kissing, watching the rain falling on Ludwigstraße.

I knew of the historical background of Feldherrenhalle, but seeing this photo makes the place a lot more scary somehow..

It was not build by the Nazis or for the Nazis, they just misused it like a lot of other things.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Ghandi’s letter to Hitler, 1939

That letter is insane. It sounds like Gandhi was utterly terrified of Hitler.

 

[munchie64]

What's that Ghandi letter to Hitler say? I can't read the picture, is too small.

http://www.mkgandhi.org/letters/hitler_ltr1.htm

As at Wardha,
December 24, 1940
DEAR FRIEND,
That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed.
I hope you will have the time and desire to know how a good portion of humanity who have view living under the influence of that doctrine of universal friendship view your action. We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents. But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in universal friendliness. Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity. Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your arms.

But ours is a unique position. We resist British Imperialism no less than Nazism. If there is a difference, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scrutiny. Our resistance to it does not mean harm to the British people. We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field. Ours is an unarmed revolt against the British rule. But whether we convert them or not, we are determined to make their rule impossible by non-violent non-co-operation. It is a method in its nature indefensible. It is based on the knowledge that no spoliator can compass his end without a certain degree of co-operation, willing or compulsory, of the victim. Our rulers may have our land and bodies but not our souls. They can have the former only by complete destruction of every Indian—man, woman and child. That all may not rise to that degree of heroism and that a fair amount of frightfulness can bend the back of revolt is true but the argument would be beside the point. For, if a fair number of men and women be found in India who would be prepared without any ill will against the spoliators to lay down their lives rather than bend the knee to them, they would have shown the way to freedom from the tyranny of violence. I ask you to believe me when I say that you will find an unexpected number of such men and women in India. They have been having that training for the past 20 years.

We have been trying for the past half a century to throw off the British rule. The movement of independence has been never so strong as now. The most powerful political organization, I mean the Indian National Congress, is trying to achieve this end. We have attained a very fair measure of success through non-violent effort. We were groping for the right means to combat the most organized violence in the world which the British power represents. You have challenged it. It remains to be seen which is the better organized, the German or the British. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-European races of the world. But we would never wish to end the British rule with German aid. We have found in non-violence a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world. In non-violent technique, as I have said, there is no such thing as defeat. It is all ‘do or die’ without killing or hurting. It can be used practically without money and obviously without the aid of science of destruction which you have brought to such perfection. It is a marvel to me that you do not see that it is nobody’s monopoly. If not the British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud. They cannot take pride in a recital of cruel deed, however skilfully planned. I, therefore, appeal to you in the name of humanity to stop the war. You will lose nothing by referring all the matters of dispute between you and Great Britain to an international tribunal of your joint choice. If you attain success in the war, it will not prove that you were in the right. It will only prove that your power of destruction was greater. Whereas an award by an impartial tribunal will show as far as it is humanly possible which party was in the right.

You know that not long ago I made an appeal to every Briton to accept my method of non-violent resistance. I did it because the British know me as a friend though a rebel. I am a stranger to you and your people. I have not the courage to make you the appeal I made to every Briton. Not that it would not apply to you with the same force as to the British. But my present proposal is much simple because much more practical and familiar.

During this season when the hearts of the peoples of Europe yearn for peace, we have suspended even our own peaceful struggle. Is it too much to ask you to make an effort for peace during a time which may mean nothing to you personally but which must mean much to the millions of Europeans whose dumb cry for peace I hear, for my ears are attended to hearing the dumb millions? I had intended to address a joint appeal to you and Signor Mussolini, whom I had the privilege of meeting when I was in Rome during my visit to England as a delegate to the Round Table Conference. I hope that he will take this as addressed to him also with the necessary changes.
I am,
Your sincere friend,
M. K. GANDHI

 

[MikeHattsu]

http://www.mkgandhi.org/letters/hitler_ltr1.htm

That's a later one.

This is the one in the OP:

Dear friend,

Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth.

It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay the price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success? Any way I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you.

I remain,
Your sincere friend
M.K.Gandhi

 

[ManUnkindH]

thanks guys, this is fascinating .

Also, those WW1 german soldiers with gas masks are the stuff of nightmares. Holly cow!

 

[More_Badass]

thanks guys, this is fascinating .

Also, those WW1 german soldiers with gas masks are the stuff of nightmares. Holly cow!

Look scary, but were completely ineffective

Was listening to Dan Carlin recently. Cavalry in the age of machine guns = incredible amounts of death

 

[BouncyFrag]

Hitler inspecting a big ass gun.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Apparently Sweden changed from driving on the left to driving on the right in 1967

This is supposdely a photo taken on the first day of the changeover

Not as bad as you'd expect, to be honest

Look scary, but were completely ineffective

Was listening to Dan Carlin recently. Cavalry in the age of machine guns = incredible amounts of death

Or in the age of chemical warfare for that matter, which makes it even funnier. That picture is a pretty great depiction of WW1 as having changed how war was fought. That utterly ridiculous combination of old and new tactics.

 

[StayDead]

Pics of Nazi Germany are so damn eerie.

They're eery, cool and scary all at the same time. I realise the scenes from Science Fiction/Action films showing off the bad guys are probably based somewhat off of these Nazi rallies (matching the scale and atmosphere), but those pictures look like they could've just been plucked from a movie and if for some reason I was never taught about WW2 I wouldn't have any idea that they were real photos.

Photographs can be beautiful, terrifying and powerful, but they really are one of humanities greatest discoveries. They give us a medium in which to capture small moments in time much better than that of a painting to allow us to pass down to future generations a better way of looking back at the past. I love WW2 photos especially as they make it seem a hell of a lot more real. We rarely get to see the "real" war. We only see the dramatised films and other extracts made after the war. I would never want to experience something like the people back then experienced, but through photographs you can more easily understand what those people must've been feeling.

 

[Shuggananas]

Hitler inspecting a big ass gun.

The fully assembled gun weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes, and could fire shells weighing seven tonnes to a range of 47 kilometres (29 mi).

fuckin' hell

 

[Fantastapotamus]

Like a lot of great pictures it looks like nothing special unless you know the context.
A watch from Hiroshima,at 08:15 the bombing started. All watches stopped working at this time.

Some other,more recent, pics
Homs, Syria

Kiew, Independence Square

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas having fun during the filming of Temple of Doom

French people discover Coca Cola

Former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Hitler inspecting a big ass gun.

The fully assembled gun weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes, and could fire shells weighing seven tonnes to a range of 47 kilometres (29 mi).

fuckin' hell

seven ton shells? So basically it was a canon that could fire light tanks as its ammunition...

 

[Shuggananas]

seven ton shells? So basically it was a canon that could fire light tanks as its ammunition...

tanks don't even cut it lmao

 

[munchie64]

That's a later one.

This is the one in the OP:

Ah I thought it seemed a bit long.

 

[AniHawk]

picture of the emir of burkhara

Spoiler

taken in 1911

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

tanks don't even cut it lmao

The perspective is a bit misleading here, plus tanks are built to be incredibly heavy. Anything other than a light tank would far outweigh that shell.

 

[Daniel Jackson]

Hitler inspecting a big ass gun.

That's crazy. I've seen that picture before, but I thought it was nazi-propaganda manipulation (some kind of manual Photoshop)

 

[Übermatik]

fuckin' hell

That's crazy. I've seen that picture before, but I thought it was nazi-propaganda manipulation (some kind of manual Photoshop)

 

[Kiko]

So cool looking.

 

[Vampirolol]

That's totally Metal Slug.

 

[retroman]

Incredible pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Here are my contributions:

Italian monk wearing a funeral mask (1892)

Chester E. Macduffee standing next to the diving suit he invented (1911)

Test pilot George Aird ejecting from his fighter jet (1962)

 

[Always-honest]

I don't know if it's the case for this particular photos but most of the photos you see like this were actually staged and they weren't in any danger.

no, there is a documentairy about this photo. There were many other photo's and even the photographers were in extreme danger.

It's on Netflix. They were trying to find the people on that famous photo.

 

[CadetMahoney]

That gun and that Japanese battleship Yamato
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/YAMATO_Moder.JPG

is why you get all those funky bosses in ww2 schumps that you thought where "over-designed". Just art imitating life.

 

[hobblygobbly]

German wehrmacht (defence force) prisoners of war watching a film regarding the concentration camps

16 year old German soldier.

 

[Joni]

That's crazy. I've seen that picture before, but I thought it was nazi-propaganda manipulation (some kind of manual Photoshop)

Now consider the fact they actually had two of those. And then be glad they never finished the big one. The big one had four times the range.

 

[dreamcastmaster]

That's totally Metal Slug.

It's a boss in Metal Slug 2 on the neo geo pocket.

 

[VaultBoy101]

Chester MacDuffy standing next to the diving suit he invented (1911)

Everything about this photo looks straight out of Bioshock Infinite.

 

[Sp3ratus]

Man, this is such a cool thread. It's really lead me down a rabbithole of looking at numerous old pictures from about 1880s-1920s and WW2. Found a few cool ones I'll post here. Thanks for the thread, OP and thanks to everyone for sharing all those great pictures.

The image above is that of German Nazi-era Muslim soldiers in prayer. They are from the German 13th Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS Handschar, a full Muslim division of the German army. The unit, which mostly consisted of Bosnian Muslims, was formed in March 1943 after Germany conquered Croatia, which included Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bosnian Muslims were accepted into the Nazi ranks because of Heinrich Himmler’s belief that the people of Croatia were of Aryan descent, not Slavic. The Nazis also believed that the new division would help them win the support of most Muslims around the world. In time, the division also included Croatian Roman Catholics, who formed 10 percent of its ranks.

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/muslim-waffen-ss-13th-division-1943/

Image above of a human chess match taking place in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1924.

Washington, D.C., 1925. Snow removal -- Ford tractor.

Just found another one I wanted to add:

This photograph shows the U-Boat 110, a German Submarine that was sunk and risen in 1918. It shows the control room in the submarine, including the manhole to the periscope well, hand wheels for pressure gear, valve wheels for flooding and blowing and the air pressure gauges.

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/control-room-ub-110-german-submarine-1918/

I also really like this photo, so much history in just one photo:

Photo is of 9 reigning kings. Taken in 1910 at the funeral of King Edward VII.

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nine-kings-one-photo/

 

[ElTorro]

seven ton shells? So basically it was a canon that could fire light tanks as its ammunition...

Almost literally. Here is one shell next to a tank.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Almost literally. Here is one shell next to a tank.

except that tank is further away and also weighs roughly 26 tons.

 

[Marky Mark]

Incredible pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Here are my contributions:

Italian monk wearing a funeral mask (1892)

I won't lie, this would be so cool to have at my funeral.

 

[BumRush]

Really cool thread, OP...beautiful pictures

 

[ElTorro]

A trench on the WW1 battlefield of Verdun. These fights went on for so long, without any movement in the front lines, that soldiers were literally fighting on top of the decomposing corpses of comrades who died there before.

The amount of human suffering in both World Wars must have been unbelievable. Can't imagine how much such an experiences changes you. There are videos of shell-shocked soldiers which are heartbreaking.

 

[retroman]

Everything about this photo looks straight out of Bioshock Infinite.

Here's another diving suit created by Chester E. Macduffee (1942)

 

[lazygecko]

Is that Putin?

 

[Vaga]

Bombs dropped on Kobe, Japan (1945)

Hiroshima - Before and After (1945)

Lt. Custer and Union Troops (1862)

Abandoned boy holding a stuffed toy animal. London 1945

Japanese Archers circa 1860

 

[KingSnake]

This thread is so interesting. Thanks OP for it.

 

[Roo]

16 year old German soldier.

Damn, he looks 30-40 yo =/

 

[Minister of the Dog]

In this 1942 photo provided by the War Relocation Authority, Japanese American detainees are seen in a mess hall at the Fresno Assembly Center in Fresno, Calif. Before being shipped to permanent internment camps, most Japanese were rounded up and detained for months in temporary "assembly centers" such as this one, in often primitive conditions and under the watch of armed guards. (AP photo/War Relocation Authority)

 

[Walpurgis]