History through the lens: 15 photos that will make your heart clench (16 photos)

In the age of gadgets and digital technology, photographs have ceased to be valuable.





Even during significant events, people take a huge number of photos, half of which are immediately deleted, and the other half are used only a couple of times in life. But historical photographs are something else. Each photo is a message from another era, where triumph and tragedy, hope and absurdity are mixed.

1. Winter tea, Moscow, 1974



2. Sir Winston Churchill on his 90th birthday with his wife Clementine. London, November 30, 1964





3. The world's only accident involving a car and a submarine



On August 19, 1961, a Volvo PV544 collided with the submarine HMS Bävern II (Beaver) in the Swedish town of Lysekil.

4. Return to the Shelter: Otto Frank at the Secret Door of His Family



Fifteen years after the war, Otto Frank stands again in front of the bookcase that hid the entrance to the shelter where his family spent two years in fear and hope. His fingers touch the secret door where Anne wrote her diary and eight people lived, holding their breath at every creak of the floorboards. He is the only one who survived.

5. State funeral for victims of the American bombing of Prague in 1945



6. Demonstration in St. Petersburg on the occasion of the declaration of World War I



On July 20, 1914, the city exploded with spontaneous patriotic jubilation. Crowds of citizens with icons, portraits of the emperor and national flags filled Nevsky Prospect after the announcement of Nicholas II's manifesto on Russia's entry into the war.

7. Ozzy Osbourne at 26



8. Historic meeting under the English Channel: how the British and French shook hands across the tunnel



On December 1, 1990, the builders of the Eurotunnel from France and Great Britain met in the tunnel under the English Channel. At 12:12:12, 37-year-old Frenchman Philippe Cosette put down his pickaxe and shook hands with 42-year-old Englishman Graham Fagg through the hole in the limestone.

9. US female soldiers salute a Soviet traffic controller at the Brandenburg Gate, May 1945



10. Workers restoring the 3,200-year-old temples of Abu Simbel in Aswan, Egypt, in 1968



The sandstone temples were hand-cut into more than 1,000 pieces and moved to 180 meters inland to avoid possible flooding due to the construction of the new Aswan High Dam.

11. Children in Brooklyn collect alcohol from gutters, 1920



This surreal photo shows a typical weekday during the Prohibition era. Barefoot children with cans and buckets scoop up spilled whiskey from gutters while agents smash the barrels before their eyes.

12. The Mewes Brothers



George and Willie are African-American albino brothers who were kidnapped and forced to perform in a circus in the early 1900s. The boys were 6 and 9 years old when they were forcibly taken from their home in Virginia and turned into performers in a traveling freak show. Their story is one of the darkest examples of human exploitation in the entertainment industry.

13. Rock concert in the USSR, 1988



14. Mobile hair salon in London, 1930



In the 1930s, an unusual car drove around the streets of the British capital - a beauty salon on wheels, offering fashionistas haircuts, styling and manicures right on their doorstep.

15. 1955: The First Home Microwave Revolutionizes the Kitchen



This photo shows one of the first home microwave ovens being tested by an ordinary mother, heating up a jar of baby food.