We’re a little late for Earth Day, but we had to post this picture JFK drew as a young boy. Found in Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy’s personal papers, this image features a tree on a hill with the words “Plant a tree” at the bottom. JFK’s childhood signature is scribbled on the back.
life:
Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein.
Here’s Ralph Morse’s famous photograph of Albert Einstein’s office — just as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist left it — taken mere hours after Einstein died, Princeton, New Jersey, April 1955.
(see more photos here)
life:
Exclusive, heartbreaking photos from the Lorraine motel on the day Martin Luther King died. (see more here)
Pictured: Theatrice Bailey attempts to clean blood from the balcony, hours after the 6 p.m. shooting.
“I don’t know if there were official people around taking notes and pictures and things like that. Nobody was there when we were there. And the fact that the blood was still on the floor, and this man is actually putting it in a jar … When you see a picture like that, God, it feels invasive.”
life:
The image is chilling, bordering on surreal: On December 18, 1941, as World War II rages and countless innocents endure the horrors of the Third Reich’s “final solution” — killing operations at the Chełmno death camp, for instance, began less than two weeks before — Adolf Hitler presides over a Christmas party in Munich.
Stark, jarring swastika armbands offset the glint of ornaments and tinsel dangling from a giant Tannenbaum; festive candles illuminate the scene. Confronted with the image, the question naturally arises: How could Nazi leaders reconcile an ideology of hatred and conquest with the peaceful, joyous spirit of the Christian holiday — much less its celebration of the Jewish-born Christ?
Here, LIFE.com presents astonishing photos from this unsettling affair, and the equally remarkable story behind them.
