115 Fascinating Photos That Might Teach You About History In A Way School Can’t (New Pics)

Pictured above is Dr. Eugene Lazowski, a Polish doctor who saved 8,000 Jewish people by creating a fake typhus epidemic in Stalowa Wola, a city in Poland that was occupied by the Nazis during World War 2. Here is an excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times in 2006: "When the Nazis overran Poland in World War II, Lazowski yearned to find a way to fight back, to protect human life, and he seized upon a paradoxical instrument of salvation- the German army's profound fear of disease. While German industrialist Oskar Schindler, whose heroic story was told in the movie 'Schindler's List,' employed bribes and influence to protect as many as 1,000 Jews who worked in his factory, Lazowski slyly used medical science to save the lives of thousands of Jews and other Poles in 12 Polish villages. He and a fellow physician, Stanislaw Matulewicz, faked a typhus epidemic that forced the German army to quarantine the villages." Matulewicz discovered a bacteria strain that when injected into a person would cause them to test positive for typhus without suffering from the ill effects of the disease. Lazowski began to inject this bacteria strain into non-Jews because he knew that the Nazis would immediately k**l Jewish people infected with typhus. He then sent the blood samples to German labs. Once typhus was detected, the Nazis proceeded to quarantine the outbreak area. Lazowski kept track of how many "typhus" cases he was sending to the labs to make sure they actually correlated with how the disease typically progresses. The quarantine spared the lives of approximately 8,000 men, women and children from being deported to concentration camps. Lazowski kept his activities a secret, not even telling his wife. After the war, he moved to Chicago where he had to undergo more training to receive his medical license in the US. In 1981, he began working as a professor at the University of Illinois, eventually obtaining emeritus status. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 93.

Jesse Owens (USA) winning gold medal for the long jump in summer Olympics in N**i Germany, 1936. The man saluting behind Owens is Lutz Long, a German Olympic long jumper, notable for winning the silver medal in the event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin and for giving technical advice to his competitor, Jesse Owens, who went on to win the gold medal for the long jump. After the Olympics, the two kept in touch via mail. Long was k****d during the Battle of St Pietro in 1943. Here’s the transcript of the last letter to Owens by Long: I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not fear so much for myself, my friend Jesse, I fear for my woman who is home, and my young son Karl, who has never really known his father. My heart tells me, if I be honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war is done, someday find my Karl, and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we were not separated by war. I am saying – tell him how things can be between men on this earth. If you do this something for me, this thing that I need the most to know will be done, I do something for you, now. I tell you something I know you want to hear. And it is true. That hour in Berlin when I first spoke to you, when you had your knee upon the ground, I knew that you were in prayer. Then I not know how I know. Now I do. I know it is never by chance that we come together. I come to you that hour in 1936 for purpose more than der Berliner Olympiade. And you, I believe, will read this letter, while it should not be possible to reach you ever, for purpose more even than our friendship. I believe this shall come about because I think now that God will make it come about. This is what I have to tell you, Jesse. I think I might believe in God. And I pray to him that, even while it should not be possible for this to reach you ever, these words I write will still be read by you. Your brother, Luz”

Dewey family cat, who died in 1910, and meant enough to his owner to be honored with a gravestone that stands today over 113 years later. It reads: "He was only a cat but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain"

During WWII, Jews in Budapest were brought to the edge of the Danube, ordered to remove their shoes, and shot, falling into the water below. 60 pairs of iron shoes now line the river's bank, a ghostly memorial to the victims.

The date was August 8, 1982. The Red Sox were playing an afternoon game at Boston's Fenway Park. Suddenly a screaming foul ball whizzed past the first base dugout and Red Sox left fielder Jim Rice heard the unmistakable sound of ball striking flesh. Looking around the corner of the dugout into the stands Rice saw 4 year old Jonathan Keane bleeding profusely from his head. Realizing in a split second that it would take several minutes for park EMT's to get to the scene, the future Hall of Famer sprang into action. Rice leaped over the railing into the stands, cradled the young fan into his arms and carried the boy into the dugout where he received immediate attention from the team's medical staff. Within just a few minutes Jonathan was rushed to the hospital where doctors credited Rice with saving the boys life. Jim Rice played the rest of the game in a blood stained uniform, a true badge of courage.

Women in Afghanistan during the 1970s.

“Mom found a note my dad wrote, before Alzheimer's took his ability to communicate.” Source: Reddit

A man and his cat. Photo taken in Skibotn, Norway by Ismo Höltto, 1967

Pictured above is the grave of Leonard Phillip Matlovich (1943-1988). Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was an American Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known openly gay man in the United States of America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk. His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a famous cause around which the gay community rallied. In the 1970s, he appeared in the cover of Time Magazine and in several tv channels, making him a symbol of the LGBT community.

In 1969, when black Americans were still prevented from swimming alongside whites, Mr.Rogers decided to invite Officer Clemmons to join him and cool his feet in a pool, breaking a well-known color barrier. François Clemmons said: "On April 4, after Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. That was a tremendous blow to me personally and politically and emotionally. My world was absolutely shattered. And I was living in what they call Schenley Heights in Pittsburgh, a black bougie neighborhood...When April 4 came and Dr. King was assassinated, they were burning down the Hill District [a historically black neighborhood in Pittsburgh], which was six, seven blocks from me. I had only been there eight or nine months, and I was terrified of what was going to happen. I remember Fred Rogers called me and said, 'Franc, what are you doing? How are you doing?' He knew where I lived. And at one point he said, 'We’re concerned about your safety. We don’t like that you’re over there. I’m coming to get you'...I never had someone express that kind of deep sense of protection for me...and that experience drew Fred and me really, really close. I thought, Well, this is the real thing right here."

Moses by Michelangelo is a marble sculpture created in 1513-1515. One of the numerous intricate aspects of this work of art is a little muscle in the forearms that only contracts when the pinky is lifted; otherwise, it is undetectable. Moses is raising his pinky, so the teeny muscle there is contracted. The attention to detail is impeccable.

The Pinocchio incident, 1940.

Pictured above is Astronaut Leland D. Melvin's official NASA portrait. When NASA astronaut Leland Melvin was assigned to a space shuttle mission in 2008, he was told he could bring his family for the official photo shoot wearing the famous orange “pumpkin suit.” They didn’t say two-legged or four-legged, and although dogs are not allowed on base at NASA, family is family. So, Melvin brought his rescue dogs Jake and Scout along with a neighbor to hold them and keep them quiet in the back of his van. “I got to the guard shack, flashed my badge, and I gunned the van and drove to the photo lab,” Melvin said. He then went up the back stairs where the photographer was waiting, went into the photo lab with 100 MilkBones to keep the dogs busy while he changed into the suit and came out. “They (the dogs) ran toward me, and I told the photographer to hold his finger on the shutter and that’s how the photo was born.” After the photo shoot, Melvin had to change and the MilkBones were gone. “The dogs started barking and a security guard came in and asked if there were dogs in there,” Melvin said. “We said, ‘No, that’s the doggy screensaver.’ ” After he changed he was able to quiet the dogs and get out of there.

Portrait of Istvan Reiner, taken shortly before he was k****d in Auschwitz. He was four years old. One particularly haunting photograph shows Istvan Reiner, four, smiling at the camera in the now infamous striped uniform given to inmates. It was taken just weeks before he was m******d at the c****************p alongside tens of thousands of other innocent people. The photo was donated to the United States H*******t Memorial Museum by Istvan’s half-brother Janos Kovacs.

An upset little patient after a visit to the dentist, 1920s

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In 1996, a newborn baby girl was left in a garbage can near the city of Kolkata, India. Three friendly street dogs discovered and protected her for nearly two days, even attempting to feed the child before authorities were contacted and the young one was saved.

Jewish prisoners after being liberated from a train that was taking them to a c****************p, 1945

Pictured above is Albina Mali-Hočevar, a resistance fighter who fought for the liberation of Yugoslavia during World War II. Albina Mali-Hočevar wanted to fight during World War II. When the young Slovenian teenager heard that her fellow partisans had assigned her to be a nurse during the conflict, tears of frustration filled her eyes. But by the war’s end, Mali-Hočevar would see plenty of action. Famous today for the scars across her face, which fragmented her gaze, Mali-Hočevar spent the conflict fighting for the liberation of Yugoslavia. After Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Mali-Hočevar joined up with the People’s Liberation Movement of Yugoslavia at the age of 16. And as the war unfolded, Mali-Hočevar grew ever closer to the action. Though initially designated as a nurse, Mali-Hočevar soon went on to fight in multiple battles. She was badly wounded twice at 17, and once at 18. Mali-Hočevar ended up losing an eye, and scars crisscrossed her face. Through it all, however, Mali-Hočevar took her duties as a nurse seriously. “The nurse Albina always paid more attention to the wounded than to herself,” said one account of Mali-Hočevar’s brave service. “She knew neither fear nor exhaustion while… there were wounded [partisans] to be taken care of.” She was later recognized for her bravery when Yugoslavia awarded her the Yugoslavian Order of the Partisan Star, 3rd class. Albina passed away on January 24, 2001.

Soldiers paying tribute to 8 million horses, donkeys and mules that died during World War I, 1915