Haunting photos and their stories......

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Monk performs ceremony on man who died <br />
On November 25, 2011 travelers in the station hall of the Shanxi Taiyuan Train Station in Shanxi, China, noticed that an old man had been asleep for an...

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Man captures his own assassination and solves his own murder <br />
Reynaldo Dagsa was a Filipino politician who was celebrating New Years Day with his family in 2011. Moments after taking this photo he...

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The vulture and the little girl


http://i.imgur.com/ZORpzw2.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/ZORpzw2.jpg)
In 1993, in Sudan near the village of Ayod, this little girl's parents briefly left her behind while they went to get food from a plane. The emaciated toddler struggled to make her way to the food station as well, but became tired. A vulture landed nearby and watched her as she rested.Kevin Carter, the South African photojournalist who took this photo, committed suicide a little over a year after it was taken. He had been heavily criticized over the photograph. After he took it, he chased the bird away, but he often expressed regret for not doing anything more to help the child.


Two people embrace in their final moments


http://i.imgur.com/cfttUbB.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/cfttUbB.jpg)
In 2013 an eight story garment-factory building collapsed in Bangladesh. At least 1,129 people were killed and 2,515 people were injured. Taslima Akhter, the Bangladeshi photographer who took this photo, tried to find out more about these two but was unable to learn more clues about them.Aktar says of the photo, "I felt like I knew them — they felt very close to me. I looked at who they were in their last moments as they stood together and tried to save each other — to save their beloved lives.Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too."


The remains of the astronaut Vladimir Komarov


http://i.imgur.com/MO6QX7k.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/MO6QX7k.jpg)
For the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union, the government decided they wanted something big from the space program in 1967. Vladimir Komarov was selected to command the Soyuz 1, and his best friend, Yuri Gagarin, would be his backup astronaut. Both of them knew that the capsule was not safe to fly, but everyone was terrified of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's reaction to delaying or cancelling the mission.Though he could have backed out, Komarov decided to stay on the mission, because if he didn't Gargarin would have to go and would die instead. Gagarin showed up to the launch in full gear and tried to convince the crew to let him pilot the craft instead, but the crew (including Komarov) refused to let him, and Komarov flew the ship.This photo is of Komarov's open casket funeral, where his charred remains can be seen on display. Komarov demanded it personally before his flight to send a message to the government officials who had caused his death. His final “revenge” was forcing his superiors to look at what they had done.


Mother and son's final selfie


http://i.imgur.com/cv6o1Wi.jpg
Gary Slok was a 15-year-old Dutch teenager headed for vacation with his mother, Petra Langeveld. The pair was excited to be headed to Kuala Lumpur. As the two settled into their seats on the ill-fated flight MH17, they decided to take a selfie together. Three hours after this picture was taken, their plane was shot down by a missile and crashed near the Ukrane-Russia border. Slok and his mother were among the 298 people killed.Slok played as a goalkeeper for his local football team in Maassluis, Netherlands. During a memorial service for the boy, a spokesman for the team said, "Sadly they never got the chance to fulfill that dream. But his story and his last picture tell you how dreams of many people with wonderful lives ahead of them have been wrecked.”


The self-immolating monk


http://i.imgur.com/0NquoBY.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/0NquoBY.jpg)
In 1963, the Buddhist majority in South Vietnam had reached their breaking point in the growing tensions under the repressive Catholic regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem.In May of that year, Buddhists had gathered in the imperial city of Hue to demonstrate many issues, among them, the right to fly the Buddhist flag alongside the national flag. The government aggressively broke up the gathering and nine Buddhists died in the violence that ensued. Buddhists were outraged by the violent actions of the government and their refusal to take responsibility for those who had died at the demonstration.To protest against the Diem regime, two elderly monks committed ritual suicide by immolating themselves in a busy intersection in Saigon, Vietnam on June 11, 1963. Thich Quang Duc is the 73-year-old monk pictured.

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The face of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
http://i.imgur.com/FyIfg4O.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/FyIfg4O.jpg)
Indira collapsed on a beach after finding the body of her sister-in-law, Maheswari. Offshore, other bodies floated by, many of them children. They were the victims of the 2004 tsunami that hit India and killed at least 228,000 people across multiple countries. Today, Indira lives in a cement house given to her by the government. The photo won the Reuters photographer an award and was published all over the world, but it didn't make Indira any better off. She remains poor and is in failing health.


Love is eternal
http://i.imgur.com/Y66sgnh.jpg
The skeletons in this picture are about 2,800 years old. The University of Pennsylvania also determined that the two died together in about 800 B.C.. They come from an archeological site called Hasanlu in Iran and were unearthed in 1972.The two are both males and could be relatives or lovers. The town they were in had been burned by a military attack. They likely hid from soldiers but asphyxiated quickly because of the fire. In their final moments, they turned to kiss each other before dying.


Omayra Sanchez
http://i.imgur.com/qDcrrDI.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/qDcrrDI.jpg)
Omayra Sanchez was a 13-year-old Colombian girl who became trapped in the debris of her collapsed home, which was caused by a mudslide from the eruption of a volcano in 1985.Sanchez's legs were bent in a kneeling position and trapped under concrete. Her deceased aunt also had her arms wrapped tightly around the girl's legs.The workers and volunteers realized there was no way to rescue the girl without severing her legs. They lacked the equipment to be able to save her from the effects of amputation, so the doctors decided that it would be more humane to let her die. Sanchez lasted three days before succoming to the likely effects of exposure. The entire world followed her televised plight and was outraged that the government didn't do more to save her and other victims of the mudslide.


The Jonestown Massacre
http://i.imgur.com/bnYtNK5.jpg
In 1978, Jim Jones founded The People's Temple, a communist cult church, and opened a compound in Guyana, South America. Living conditions at the compound weren't that great. It was over crowded, members worked long hours and were getting sick, and Jones wouldn't shut up babbling on the loudspeaker all hours of the day and night.A congressman from California heard the reports of the poor conditions and went for a visit. At the visit, some members slipped him a note asking if they could leave with him. He told everyone there that anyone was welcome to go back to the States with him. The problem: members aren't allowed to leave without Jone's permission, which he wouldn't give.The congressman and four others were killed on the tarmac of the airport. In a delusional panic, Jones declared that the United States would retaliate and come kill them and shoot their babies. So he ordered everyone to commit non-optional "revolutionary suicide." Adults and children drunk grape Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide and Valium. In total, 912 people died from drinking the poison, over 276 of whom were children.


The soldier with shell shock
http://i.imgur.com/WGK19Pn.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/WGK19Pn.jpg)
This picture was taken during the Battle of Courcelette (France) in September 1916. The man is crouched in a trench displaying "shell shock" and what was coined at the time as the thousand-yard-stare, which was described as being the blank, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier. The stare is a disassociation from trauma, and can be seen in cases of post traumatic stress disorder, though not always. An eerie thought about the photo, people didn't smile for pictures during this time.