Civil rights activist James Meredith, who defied segregation to become the first African-American student enrolled at the University of Mississippi, pulls himself across Highway 51 after being shot in Hernando, Mississippi, June 6, 1966

Rosemary Kennedy, sister of John F Kennedy, pictured in 1938. In 1941, aged 23, her father forced her to undergo a lobotomy, due to her mood swings, seizures and intellectual disability. This procedure rendered her permanently incapacitated and unable to speak.

The discovery of an ancient Maya statue deep within the jungles of Honduras, 1885.

Schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe watches a successful launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger after being selected to join a later mission in January 1986, which would ultimately end in disaster. Oct. 30, 1985.

Famed sharpshooter Annie Oakley holding a gun Buffalo Bill gave her, 1922

The Beatles pose with “The Greatest”, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), at the Fifth Street Gym on Miami Beach, 1964.

In Chicago in 1954, owners lined up with their dogs in order to receive vaccines that had been ordered by the state in response to a rabies outbreak. Some 45,000 received shots.

On October 14 1987, 18 month old Jessica McClure fell into an eight inch diameter well pipe in her aunt's backyard in Texas. She remained there for 58 hours before being rescued at about 8:30pm on October 16, 1987.

Young boys play baseball on Chicago’s South Side in the late 1940s

The result of firefighting in extreme winter conditions. The remains of the Eureka building in Chicago. 1920

A German World War II prisoner is released by the Soviet Union and reunited with his 12-year-old daughter, who has not seen him since infancy. 1956

The 7th Infantry Regiment attached to the 3rd Infantry Division drink Hitler’s wine on the patio of the Berghof, his Bavarian residence, below the Eagle’s Nest. 1945

A woman is humiliated for having had personal relations with the Germans. In the Montelimar area, France, French civilians shave her head as punishment. August 29, 1944.

John Lennon showing his son Sean Lennon the mixing table at The Hit Factory, NYC. Photo taken by Bob Gruen, August 1980

Frederick Fleet, 24, the lookout on the Titanic who first spotted the iceberg (shouting, "Iceberg, right ahead!") that sank the ship in 1912. In 1965, aged 77, after the death of his wife and being evicted from his house, Fleet hanged himself.

A survivor (far right) flees the collapsing structure of the airship Hindenburg. New Jersey, 8th May 1937

In front of St Margaret’s hospital, Darlinghurst, Australia, a nun runs to get medical attention for a young boy who had consumed his mother’s prescription medication. Photo by Mervyn Bishop, 1971

US gymnast Kerri Strug holds her pose after sticking the landing on her vault despite a painful ankle injury suffered on her first attempt, securing the Gold Medal for her team. Atlanta Olympics, July 23, 1996

John F. Kennedy campaigns in rural West Virginia, precariously perched on a high-chair to deliver his speech, 1960

American soldier, bison hunter, and showman "Buffalo Bill" Cody, 1871

Barbara Ledermann, a childhood friend of Anne Frank, outside a cinema showing the film "The Diary of Anne Frank." She stood debating whether to go in. Finally she decided not to. "I’ve seen too much human suffering already," she said. 1959

A fireman jumping from a window into a safety blanket at Southwark Bridge Road in London. July 1922

In 1966, a dog named Pickles found the stolen FIFA World Cup when out for a walk with his owner, David Corbett, in South London.

Jackie Kennedy taking a mirror selfie with John F Kennedy and Ethel, his sister-in-law and wife of Robert Kennedy. 1954

A woman sat in a wagon reserved for white people to protest against racist segregation laws during Apartheid. South Africa, 1952.

Judy Garland (bottom right) and her sisters in 1935. That year, they stopped performing under their birth name, Gumm, and took the stage name Garland for future performances.

A worker leans out over the city as he works on the construction of the Empire State Building. 1931

The unbroken seal on King Tutankhamun's tomb, which stayed 3,245 years untouched until the excavation in 1922.

A priest with the body of former Hungarian Prime Minister Laszlo Bardossy after his execution at Marko Place prison, Budapest, January 10, 1946

Gail Hooper, 18, from Memphis, Tennessee, selected as Miss National Catfish Queen, holds a 56-pound catfish at the Hotel New Yorker. 1954

An East German guard throws a ball back to a child playing on the West German side of the Berlin Wall. 1962,

Governer Bill Clinton during his presidential campaign playing the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, June 3, 1992

An elderly couple helping to clear the debris during the post-war reconstruction of bomb-damaged Dresden, 1946

Paul McCartney, aged 21, shows his guitar to Ed Sullivan before the Beatles’ live television appearance in New York on February 9, 1964. Behind Sullivan, from left, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr.

World War I dogs, especially terriers, were used as rat hunters in the war's rat-infested trenches. Here, a terrier poses with some of his kill near the front lines of France in May 1916.

14-year-old Ryan White, who became an advocate for HIV/AIDS research in the United States after failing to be readmitted to school following a diagnosis of AIDS. As a hemophiliac, he became infected with HIV from a contaminated blood treatment. April 1986

This photograph of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia and Tsarevich Alexei was taken in May 1918 aboard the ship that ferried them from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg, Russia. It is the last known photograph taken of them.

Photographer Huynh Thanh My, pinned down with a Vietnamese battalion in a Mekong Delta rice paddy on 13 October 1965, about a month before he was killed while covering combat. His younger brother, Nick Ut, later came to work for the AP as a photographer.

Young Freedom Riders John Lewis and James Zwerg stand together after being attacked and beaten by pro-segregationists in Montgomery, Alabama on 20 May 1961.

President Kennedy enjoys a laugh with his children Caroline and John Jr. dressed in Halloween costumes, 1963.

University of Pittsburgh students cheer as they look down on Forbes Field from the top of their campus's Cathedral of Learning as the Pirates are winning their first World Series in 35 years against the Yankees. Oct. 13, 1960

Mass induction of 9,000 new citizens at New York's Polo Grounds on the first official Veterans Day, 1954

President Reagan laughing at a joke made by Queen Elizabeth during a state dinner at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Her joke was a comment on the bad California weather she had experienced since her arrival. 1983

King Hussein of Jordan (1935 – 1999) and his son watch a military exercise in the Jordanian desert, 1969

Astronaut Scott Carpenter’s wife, Rene, and son, Marc, watching his 1962 orbital flight on TV. Carpenter’s was NASA’s second manned orbital flight, after John Glenn’s, and lasted nearly five hours.

A lone American bugler during World War I, circa 1918

Russian soldiers teaching German POWs a Cossack dance in the snow circa 1915

A young widow grieves over the coffin of her husband during his burial in the Lion Cemetery, Sarajevo, 1992

Zeppelin flying over Gran Vía, Madrid, 1930

Actor Sean Connery poses with wrestler Chopper Howlett, circa 1950s

Veterans of four different wars from the same town of Geary, Oklahoma, 1940s

The Sex Pistols with their manager Malcolm McLaren signing a new contract with A&M Records after being dropped from EMI, outside Buckingham Palace, London, 10th March 1977. The contract was terminated after one week.

Two-year-old Agim Shala, a Kosovar refugee, is passed through a fence to her grandparents at a United Arab Emirates-run camp in Kukes, Albania. 1999

Pink Floyd in Paris, 1969

The moment at which a Gestapo informer is recognised and exposed by a young Belgian woman at a transit camp in Dessau, Germany, shortly after liberation by the Allies. 1945

The Great Blizzard of New York City, 1947

John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie during a ticker tape parade in Manhattan. New York, USA. 1960

A nurse holds newborn Lucien P. Smith, Jr. His mother Eloise was pregnant with him while returning from her honeymoon aboard the Titanic. Lucien’s father died in the disaster. Eloise later married a fellow survivor, Robert P. Daniel. 1912

Future cult leader Charles Manson as a young boy, circa 1940s

Maria Feodorovna photographed with her 2-year-old son, the future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, in 1870.

Geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor (1880–1963) and meteorologist Charles Wright (1887–1975) in the entrance to an ice grotto during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic, 5th January 1911

A South Vietnamese widow cries as a bell at a Saigon Buddhist pagoda tolls the ceasefire at 8AM, on Sunday, January 28, 1973.

This photo of the Statue of Liberty appeared in a 1930 National Geographic article that featured the first successful aerial color photos. The photographer used Finlay, a process that required a shorter exposure than autochrome.

Mother and child in gas masks. France, 1918

Wives of POWs (prisoners of war) at a convention of League of POW-MIA (missing in action) families. District of Columbia, US, 1972

Bobby Fischer, considered by many to be the greatest chess player who ever lived, plays 50 opponents simultaneously. He won 47 of the matches, drew 2 and lost 1. 1964

Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square vigil as it appeared on 4 June 1999.

Chief United States Game Warden George A. Lawyer, with an illegal 10’9″ shotgun weighing 250 pounds, which was used for duck hunting. 1920

Medic Thomas Cole looks up with his one unbandaged eye as he treats wounded Staff Sergeant Harrison Pell during a firefight on 30 January 1966, during the Vietnam War.

Andy Warhol being carried to an ambulance unconscious after being shot by Valerie Solanas, in an assassination attempt on June 3, 1968 (1022×667)

British actor Peter Sellers reading about his own hospitalisation following a heart attack. He had previously survived over a dozen heart attacks over a period of five days in the 60s. 21st March 1977

Actress Elizabeth Taylor, who famously played Egyptian Queen Cleopatra in 1963, visits the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition with US Senator John Warner. Circa 1976-1977

North Vietnamese troops walk the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Truong Son Mountains, which form the 750-mile-long spine of Vietnam, stretching along much of the country’s western border. 1966

As a birthday gift from British Airways, the Queen Mother is offered a seat in the cockpit of a Concorde jet in 1985.

Nadia Comaneci of Romania completes a somersault during the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Comaneci was the first gymnast to ever be awarded a perfect score in an Olympic gymnastic event, and in total, won three gold medals in Montreal.

Ronald Reagan serving as a lifeguard in 1927 at Lowell Park in Dixon, Illinois

Pyramid of captured German cannons on Place de la Concorde in Paris on the eve of the Victory Parade on July 14, 1919

The inauguration of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, on October 28, 1886. A military and naval salute marked the event, presided over by U.S. President Grover Cleveland.

The Queen Mother (1900-2002) holds her baby, the future Queen Elizabeth II, in May 1926.

Young men walking in the Selma-Montgomery March. Alabama, USA. 1965.

Worshippers enter a synagogue on 23rd Street for a special D-Day service. June 6, 1944

Members of 1st Marine Division carrying their wounded during the Vietnam War, 1966

Workers carrying the painting “Christ and the Wife of Zebedee” by Florentine artist Matteo Rosselli, after the Accademia Gallery in Florence, Italy became flooded as a result of heavy rain. 1966

60s supermodel Veruschka, who turned 82 this month, pictured in 1966

A Persian cat posing with his ribbons and trophy at the Atlantic City Cat Show, 1945.

President Ronald Reagan with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Camp David, November 15, 1986.

Future President Lyndon B. Johnson, aged 7, in the Texas hill country near Stonewall, Texas, 1915

A Wall Street investor tries to sell his car after losing all of his money in the stock market crash, 1929

Elvis fans being restrained by police outside of a concert in Florida, 1956

Workers add a new section to the top of the World Trade Center Building in New York, Oct. 23, 1970, making its height some 1,254 feet, four feet taller than the Empire State Building.

Hergé, the creator of The Adventures of Tintin, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the character as he stands next to a bronze statue of Tintin and Snowy. Belgium, 1979

An early meeting of the Mickey Mouse Club at a theater in Ocean Park, California, c.1930. By 1932, the club had 1 million members in the U.S.

George H.W. Bush with daughter Dorothy, at home in 1971

A British soldier during the Great War on the way to hospital after being bandaged at a Field Dressing Station, showing the helmet which saved his life. 1917

Polish pole vaulter Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz taunts Soviet fans booing him, after setting a new world record in the Olympic pole vault final in Moscow, winning the gold medal. 30 July 1980

Director Steven Spielberg with a mechanical shark during principal photography of the film "Jaws." 1974

Pope John Paul II immediately after being shot during a procession in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, Italy. Though critically wounded, the Pope survived four gunshot wounds to his abdomen. May 13, 1981

A German colonial officer takes a leap on the back of a tamed zebra in East Africa, 1910

Mine workers are X-rayed at the end of every shift before leaving the diamond mines, in case they try to smuggle any diamonds by swallowing them. Kimberley, South Africa, October 1954.

The Soweto Uprising, when 10,000 black schoolchildren marched to protest a new law that forced them to learn Afrikaans in schools. In response, police massacred over 100 protesters. South Africa, June 16, 1976