True Stories Behind 23 of the Most Iconic Photos in American History

The first selfie

In 1939, more than 120 years after the first photograph ever was taken, Robert Cornelius set up a camera in the back of his family’s store and took what is believed to be the very first photographic self-portrait. What’s astounding is how long it took for someone to take that first “selfie.” One thing is for sure: He nailed his lighting.

The first presidential portrait

John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, was the first president to ever be photographed—even though the pic was snapped in 1843, more than a decade after he left office. It wasn’t until 1849, when James K. Polk was in office, that a sitting president had his portrait taken; his was shot by Mathew Brady, who was also well-known for his photographs of Civil War battlefields.

Death on the battlefield

For most of history, the horrors of war could only be described by those who’d been on the battlefield. That began to change in 1846 during the Mexican-American War, when an unknown member of the American armed forces took what’s believed to be the first battlefield photograph. But it wasn’t until the Civil War that non-military men began traveling with the army to photographically chronicle our nation’s fights. This photo, taken by Alexander Gardner, depicts “the effect of a shell on a Confederate Soldier” during the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1863

This iconic photograph of America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, was taken just one week before he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address in 1863 (which, contrary to popular belief, he did not write on the back of an envelope). According to the Lincoln Memorial Shrine, the picture was taken at Mathew Brady’s studio in Washington, D.C., by photographer Alexander Gardner, who would go on to take nearly 40 photographs of Lincoln before his death.

Billy the Kid

Born in 1859 in New York, Billy the Kid gained fame as a Wild West legend and one of America’s most notorious outlaws. By the time he was shot down in 1881 at age 21 by sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, he’d killed nearly a dozen men (though he claimed it was more than 20). This 1878 photo, which CNN says Billy paid 25¢ to have taken, sold for $2.3 million in 2011.

Aviation taking off

Wilbur and Orville Wright were famous brothers and best buddies who ushered in the age of modern aviation. On December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, they flew the first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight, depicted in the photo above. (Technically, Orville was in the plane, and Wilbur was on the ground, but they always took dual credit for everything.) The brothers took many photographs of their flight research themselves, but on this momentous day, Wilbur set up the camera and handed the shutter activation bulb to John T. Daniels, a member of the U.S. Lifesaving Service Station at Kill Devil Hills, who had been walking by and wanted to help out. It was the first time Daniels had ever seen a camera.

The San Francisco Earthquake

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a violent earthquake shook San Francisco. Thousands of lives were lost during the “great” San Francisco Earthquake, which still ranks as one of the most significant quakes of all time. Pictured here is the damage to a row of Victorian homes on Howard Street near 17th Avenue.

A young girl working in a cotton mill

Between 1908 and 1912, investigative photographer Lewis Hine traveled across America photographing children who worked in factories, fields and mines. Some were as young as 3, and all endured work weeks that averaged 65 to 70 hours. Hine’s photos—like this one of a young girl—helped catalyze a change in public sentiment toward child labor and ultimately led to modern child labor laws.

Charlie Chaplin as the “Little Tramp”

Charlie Chaplin’s most iconic on-screen character was the “Little Tramp,” which he debuted in the 1914 silent film Kid Auto Races at Venice. Dressed in baggy pants, a tiny hat and huge shoes, his most recognizable alter-ego had exaggeratedly polite manners, a super-expressive face and a hilarious toes-out walk. “Little Tramp” appeared in films through 1952 and made Chaplin one of Hollywood’s first celebrities.

Spanky and Petey

Before director Hal Roach conceived of Our Gang (later known as Little Rascals), children in Hollywood tended to be depicted as tiny adults. In 1921, Roach found himself riveted by the spectacle of a group of little kids bickering over a bunch of sticks and realized the natural charms of children were far more interesting. In 1931, 3-year-old George “Spanky” McFarland joined the cast and became the first breakout star of the show, alongside Petey, the dog.

A migrant mother

In 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange was concluding a month-long shoot depicting the desperate toils of migratory farm laborers in California when she came upon 32-year-old pea picker Florence Thompson and was drawn to her “as if by a magnet.” Lange’s series of photos of Thompson and her children (here, she’s nursing her youngest) may be among the most famous from those desperate times.

The Hindenburg disaster

In 1937, the Hindenburg was the largest blimp ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany—until it burst into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 passengers and crew members.

The “Luckiest Man”

In 1939, at Yankee Stadium in New York, first baseman Lou Gehrig announced his retirement from baseball. The reason? He was dying of ALS, which would become known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Nevertheless, Gehrig referred to himself as the “luckiest man on the face of the planet” as he wiped a tear from his eye. He died two years later, at age 37.

Raising the flag at Iwo Jima

“Perhaps no Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph is better known than Joe Rosenthal’s picture of six U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima,” according to the Pulitzer organization itself. Rosenthal took the photo for the Associated Press on February 23, 1945, and within days, it was everywhere, symbolizing American dominance in the Pacific war zone. It later became the model for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, which has added to its fame.

“VJ Day in Times Square,” or “The Kiss”

The photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took many photos of famous people throughout his career, but it’s his photo of two unknowns—a U.S. Navy sailor and a woman in a nurse’s uniform locked in an ecstatic embrace during the “Victory Over Japan Day” celebrations in New York City’s Times Square on August 14, 1945—that’s his most famous. The photo was published that same month in Life magazine, but it took many years before the pair of strangers was finally identified as Greta Zimmer Friedman, who died in 2016 at age 92, and George Mendonsa, who died in 2019 at the age of 95.

That Marilyn Monroe photo

A publicity still for the 1954 film The Seven Year Itch, this photo of Marilyn Monroe standing on a New York City subway grate with the wind blowing up her skirt, is arguably the most famous image of Monroe, who herself is still one of America’s most iconic celebrities.

Jackie O

This is the first official White House photograph of first lady Jacqueline Kennedy (later Jackie Onassis), taken at the beginning of 1961 by Mark Shaw, when she was just 31 years old. The image captures the style, elegance and grace the country would come to know her for. Though she was only first lady for three years—a term cut short by her husband John F. Kennedy’s assassination—she made a lasting impact, and the life she lived still inspires many to this day.

The loss of a father

It wasn’t just a nation that was left devastated by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This iconic American photo depicting 3-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s casket in Washington on November 25, 1963, left an indelible image that reverberates to this day.

“I Have a Dream”

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that racism would one day be a thing of the past. He delivered his famous speech during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., less than five years before his assassination.

The man on the moon

On July 21, 1969, astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin posed for one of the most iconic photos in all of American history, taken beside the U.S. flag—which was planted squarely on the surface of the moon. According to NASA, “Mission commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera” during the Apollo 11 mission.

Christa McAuliffe’s final moments

Christa McAuliffe was an American teacher who’d been selected from more than 11,000 applicants to be the first educator in space. Tragically, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, instantly killing McAuliffe and the six other crew members onboard. This photo of her smiling was taken as she walked to the launchpad, mere moments before her untimely death.

One last look at the World Trade Center

Sept. 11, 2001: The world looked on, first in disbelief, then in abject horror, as airplanes hit the World Trade Center towers, one after the other. Here, black smoke billows out of the doomed towers, just moments before they crumbled to the ground, taking with them the lives of nearly 3,000 people.

X González standing in silence

At the March for Our Lives rally in support of gun control in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2018, X Gonzalez, a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, closed their eyes and cried silently for six minutes and 20 seconds—the exact amount of time the Parkland shooter took to kill 18 people and injure 17 others, on February 14, 2018.

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Sources:

• Library of Congress: “Robert Cornelius, self-portrait; believed to be the earliest extant American portrait photo”
• Library of Congress: “Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection”
• American Battlefield Trust: “Mathew Brady”
• Military History Now: “How Early Photographers Captured History’s First Images of War”
• U.S. Geological Survey: “The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake”
• International Center of Photography: “Lewis Wickes Hine”
• National Baseball Hall of Fame: “Luckiest Man”
• The Pulitzer Prizes: “Joe Rosenthal and the flag-raising on Iwo Jima”
• CNN: “Three decades after the Challenger disaster, Christa McAuliffe’s lessons will finally be taught”
• CNN: “Billy the Kid photograph fetches 2.3 million at auction”
• Lincoln Memorial Shrine: “The Gettysburg Portrait”
• Smithsonian Magazine: “The Wright Brothers’ First Flight Photo, Annotated”
• NASA: “Buzz Aldrin on the Moon”