The British monarchy, according to the Victorian writer Walter Bagehot, “is commonly hidden like a mystery, and sometimes paraded like a pageant.” The mystery has diminished since his day. So has the monarch’s power. But the pageantry, in an era of instant worldwide communication, is even more widely observed, and it was on full display […]
Tag: Photos
Northern Ireland 25 Years After the Good Friday Agreement, in Photos
Twenty-five years ago, Britain and Ireland signed the Good Friday Agreement, ending decades of bloodshed known as the Troubles. At the stroke of a pen, Northern Ireland became one of the world’s most ambitious experiments in how to reconcile a deeply divided society. Even now, remnants of separation between Protestant and Catholic Northern Ireland linger: […]
A Female Mossad Agent’s Treasure Trove of Photos
On Oct. 8, 1965, the chief of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, presented the country’s prime minister with a plan to assassinate several leading Palestinian militants based in Beirut, Lebanon, with letter bombs. “It will be a woman doing it,” said the Mossad chief, Meir Amit, according to transcripts of the meeting with the […]
With Fingerprints, DNA and Photos, Turkey Seeks Families of the Missing
When a powerful earthquake struck southern Turkey last month, a lawyer concluded that her relatives had been buried in the rubble of their collapsed apartment. Three days later, rescue workers recovered the bodies of her mother and brother, she said, but days, then weeks, then a month passed with no sign of her father. His […]
After the Quake: Photos and Videos From Turkey and Syria
More than 11,000 lives have been lost in Turkey and Syria, and the death toll is expected to rise after a powerful earthquake on Monday. Many more people are injured and homeless. Rescuers have been racing against time to work through the rubble, but the cold weather and fuel and truck shortages have complicated the […]
Mohandas K. Gandhi, affectionately called “Bapu,” or father, was killed on Jan. 30, 1948. He is still revered by many, his name a byword for a certain kind of virtue and action.Credit…Gandhi’s Life in Photos, 75 Years After His Assassination
Seventy-five years ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi was shot dead by an assassin while on his way to deliver a regular evening prayer. Gandhi, by then largely known as the mahatma, or “great soul,” had helped lead India into its independent future less than a year before, with millions of Indian nationalists by his side. He died […]
Photos: Mauna Loa’s Eruption Offers Rare Glimpse Into the Earth
In 1963, a geophysicist named John Tuzo Wilson proposed that the islands, which are covered with layers of volcanic stone, sit above a magma plume, which forms when rock from the deep mantle bubbles up and pools below the crust. This “hot spot” continually pushes toward the surface, sometimes bursting through the tectonic plate, melting […]
Photos from China’s Latest Covid-19 Lockdowns
Less than a month after softening pandemic restrictions, China has reinstated some “zero-Covid” policies in an effort to control a new wave of infections surging across the country. Covid-19 cases have climbed almost every day since late October, and China recently recorded its first coronavirus-related death in months. In response, officials have closed businesses, resumed […]
India’s Partition: A History in Photos
Polarized by religion, friends and neighbors turned on each other. Hundreds of thousands were killed and millions displaced. The atrocities were horrific — pregnant women and infants were not spared. That was the unexpected result of Britain’s haphazard plan to leave the subcontinent in 1947 after nearly three centuries and split it into Hindu-majority India […]
Ukraine’s Children Bear Burdens of War: Photos
A late-July morning, and the sounds of the summer camp were the sounds of summer camps everywhere as children raced from activity to activity. But the Midgard Forest Camp is in Kyiv, in wartime Ukraine, and when the air was pierced by a warning siren, the children knew what to do, abandoning their jump ropes […]