“Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” (1945)

Joe Rosenthal was a photographer for the Associated Press during World War II whose legacy was defined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.” Rosenthal captured the iconic event on February 23, 1945, on the small Japanese island of Iwo Jima, roughly 750 miles south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean. The picture depicts six men triumphantly raising an American flag, and commemorates an important military victory — though there’s a good deal more to the story. 

The island of Iwo Jima was a strategic stronghold occupied by the Japanese. On February 19, three U.S. Marine divisions landed on Iwo Jima and began a harrowing multiday battle with Japanese forces. On February 23, Americans took control of Mount Suribachi, a geographic landmark on the southern end of the island. In celebration of their conquest, troops raised up an American flag, though not the flag seen in the famous image. It was actually a smaller flag, captured by Sergeant Louis R. Lowery in a lesser-known photograph.

Hours later, troops were ordered to replace the first flag with a larger American flag that could be seen more easily from a far distance. This caught the attention of Rosenthal, who heard the plan from a nearby radioman. Rosenthal brought his camera to the mountain, where he photographed six men (five Marines and one Navy Corpsman) raising the larger flag in what has since become an iconic image. Tragically, it took another month for American forces to take the entire island of Iwo Jima, during which three of those men were killed: Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, and Private First Class Franklin Sousley. The three others who survived the battle, and the war, were Corporals Harold Keller, Harold Schultz, and 22-year-old Ira Hayes, a soldier of Pima Indian descent who went on to meet President Harry Truman at the White House.

“Guerrillero Heroico” (1960)

The photograph “Guerrillero Heroico” (“Heroic Guerrilla Fighter”) depicts Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, whose likeness has grown into a symbol used by counterculture groups around the world. The original image was taken by photographer Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960, depicting Guevara gazing stoically off into the distance. While the image may seem posed, it was actually captured by a stroke of luck in a mere matter of seconds.

Guevara became a popular figure throughout Cuba during the 1950s, playing a pivotal role in overthrowing the government alongside Fidel Castro. Shortly after the rebels rose to power, a ship named La Coubre exploded in Havana Harbor on March 4, 1960, killing as many as 100 local workers who were unloading ammunition. Guevara, Castro, and others attended the state funeral the next day, as did Korda, who was working for the Revolución newspaper at the time. While standing by the podium with his eyes focused on Castro, the photographer noticed that Guevara had emerged directly above him. He quickly grabbed his Leica camera and snapped two photos in rapid succession, before Guevara stepped back. He returned home to develop the photos, and cropped the original to remove another man off to the side as well as the fronds of a palm tree.

Korda described Guevara’s look in the photo as having “impressive force in his expression, given the anger concentrated in his gaze after so many deaths.” Oddly, the paper passed on publishing the photo until one year later, using it in an advertisement for an upcoming lecture delivered by the revolutionary. The image didn’t become popular until 1967, the year of Guevara’s execution. At the memorial service, a giant print of the photo was hung up by the Ministry of the Interior. A stylized version of the portrait was later used during the 1968 Paris student riots, and it became a popular symbol co-opted by various groups around the world. The image eventually took on a life of its own, and people began to lose sight of its original meaning, especially after the photo was used by major corporations such as Nike and Taco Bell in various ad campaigns.

Elvis Meets Nixon (1970)

In the year 1970, two of the most recognizable men in the world met face to face for the first time: Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon. The unlikely meeting took place on December 21, 1970, within the Oval Office, resulting in a now-legendary photo of the pair shaking hands. This image and others were taken by Nixon’s personal photographer, Oliver F. Atkins, who chronicled the impromptu and secret encounter that day.

While on a red-eye flight earlier that morning, Presley wrote a lengthy letter to President Nixon on American Airlines stationary. The rock star shared his concerns about the growing drug culture in America, and expressed an interest in becoming a “Federal Agent at Large” so he could help tackle the issue. He ended the letter by saying that he hoped to meet Nixon and “say hello if you’re not too busy.” Upon landing, he asked his limo driver to head straight to the White House, where he handed the letter to security agents at the gate. Initially, Nixon’s staffers assumed that it was just a prank. But after learning that it was indeed Elvis himself who wished to meet the President, they quickly organized an official, impromptu meeting to take place later that day.

At 11:45 a.m., “the King of Rock ’n’ Roll” returned to the White House wearing a purple velvet suit, caped cloak, gilded belt buckle, and amber-tinted sunglasses. He was immediately brought into the Oval Office, where Nixon was waiting, and thus began a 35-minute meeting where the duo discussed communism, the Beatles, Las Vegas, and even Presley’s family photos. While there, the musician requested an official badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in hopes of legitimizing his personal crusade against drug culture. Nixon obliged, and Presley was so overwhelmed with joy that he went in for a hug before the Secret Service could stop him. The pair agreed that the meeting should be kept a secret, as neither side was sure how their supporters would react. It wasn’t until January 1972 that word of this strange event finally broke, though nothing practical ever really came of it.

“Tank Man” (1989)

Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener spent the spring of 1989 in Beijing, China, covering the Tiananmen Square protests. On June 5, he captured an image that’s considered one of the most powerful acts of defiance in the face of authoritarian rule. His photo, titled “Tank Man,” shows an anonymous man in black pants and a white shirt standing in front of a line of tanks, refusing to let them continue patrolling the square.

The story behind the photograph begins months earlier, on April 15, after the death of Hu Yaobang, the former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party who had been forced to resign two years earlier. Hu had attempted to push the country toward democratization, an effort that resonated with many Chinese youth. However, the larger government was far less open to such reforms. After Hu’s death, around 100,000 students descended on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to continue pushing for his reforms and to protest the corrupt Chinese Communist Party that remained in power. A rally on May 19 drew 1.2 million people to the square, though it was only a matter of time before the government cracked down on the protests. This led to a horrible massacre on June 4, when military forces opened fire on demonstrators and killed hundreds of people, or possibly thousands. By the following day, the military had taken control of the square, and tanks and troops patrolled the streets once more.

On June 5, an anonymous lone man stepped into the middle of Chang’an Avenue on the edge of Tiananmen Square while a line of tanks approached him. The striking scene caught the eye of reporters and photographers who were staying at the nearby Beijing Hotel, and many turned their cameras toward the event from the balcony. Widener captured the most recognizable single image of the scene, which shows the man standing in front of four tanks, preventing their forward progress. Other, more zoomed-out photos show the true enormity of the situation, as there were dozens more tanks all in a line heading directly toward this single protester. After halting the parade of tanks, the man climbed on top of one, spoke to someone inside, and then climbed back down to prevent the tanks from continuing on. After several tense moments, two mysterious men emerged and dragged the protester away. Today, nobody truly knows the identity of “Tank Man” or what happened to him. Some say he was arrested and executed, while others claim he simply vanished off the grid — though certainly not from memory, thanks to Widener’s famous photograph. 

Vincent Van Gogh Painted “The Starry Night” in a Hospital 

One of history’s most famous modern art pieces was created in an unlikely place. Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh struggled with his mental and physical health for most of his life. In 1889, he admitted himself to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a hospital located near the town of Saint-Rémy in southern France. At the hospital, Van Gogh received two rooms, one bedroom and one spare room that he transformed into a private studio, which he used to create around 150 paintings during his 12-month stay. Among them was “The Starry Night”;the scenery in the artwork is reminiscent of southern France, with rolling hills and cypress trees. The brightest star, located near the center, is Venus. Today, “The Starry Night” hangs in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. 

Salvador Dalí Collaborated on a Film With Walt Disney

Salvador Dalí is a Spanish artist known for his surrealist artwork, such as the melting clocks in his 1931 painting “The Persistence of Memory.” What is less well known is that the artist once collaborated on a surrealist animated film with Walt Disney, though the film was not completed in his lifetime. Disney approached Dalí about the project after getting the idea from a Mexican folk song called “Destino.” The plan was for Dalí to handle the animations while Disney worked his magic on the rest. The film was three months into production in 1945 when Disney decided to pull the plug, anticipating a low return on investment due to the financial strain of World War II. All that remains of the original work is a short demo reel and some initial sketches. Many years later, the project was revived by Disney’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, and a team of animators who finished where Dalí left off. The six-minute short, titled “Destino,” was released in 2003.

Henri Matisse Began Painting After an Appendicitis Attack 

In 1889, Henri Matisse was working as a law office clerk in Saint-Quentin, France. He showed little interest in art at the time, but he would soon become one of the most prominent painters in 20th-century France. Matisse’s life changed in 1890 as he was recovering from a severe appendicitis attack. Isolated and bored, he welcomed the art supplies his mother gave him to keep him occupied. Matisse quickly took to painting, and within one year, he decided to quit his job at the law office and move to Paris to pursue art full time. He became a leader of the fauvist movement, a style characterized by bold colors and textured brushwork, as seen in his painting “Green Stripe,” created in 1905.

Georgia O’Keeffe Was the First Female Artist Exhibited at MoMA

New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA, is one of the most influential modern art museums in the world. MoMA debuted its first-ever female solo exhibition in the spring of 1946, featuring Georgia O’Keeffe, known as the “mother of American modernism.” She is famous for large-format paintings of natural subjects, especially flowers, many of which were highlighted in the exhibit. One, “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1,” sold at a 2014 Sotheby’s auction decades later for $44.4 million, setting the record for the most expensive painting by a woman artist. Also featured in the 1946 MoMA exhibit were landscape portraits from New Mexico, where O’Keeffe visited often and lived when she retired.

The Term “Impressionism” Comes From a Monet Painting

Having an entire art movement named after one of your paintings is quite a feat, and one that French painter Claude Monet can claim. His 1872 work “Impression, Sunrise” (depicting a port scene in Le Havre, France) inspired critic Louis Leroy to coin the term. Leroy called the piece “impressionist” because he thought the artwork looked more like an incomplete sketch than a finished painting. However, notable impressionists such as Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir proved that their style — characterized by thin brush strokes, unblended colors, and an emphasis on lighting — was anything but incomplete. The movement officially began in 1874 after a group of artists known as the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. met in Paris to launch a new exhibition; Monet was among the founding members. Impressionism became one of the most popular modern art movements, spanning two decades in the 1870s and 1880s. 

The American Museum of Natural History Gem Heist

In 1964, Jack Roland Murphy — better known as “Murf the Surf” — along with his accomplices Allan Kuhn and Roger Clark, orchestrated a burglary at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Weeks before the crime, the three well-dressed men made their way from Miami to a Manhattan penthouse, where they were living large and practicing stealing from wealthy hotel bar patrons in the process. Soon, they turned their attention to the jewels in the nearby museum. They spent time inside the building to learn the layout and plan their eventual break-in.  

On the night of October 29, the three men made their way to the museum. Murphy and Kuhn climbed a fire escape before breaking into the unlocked fourth-floor windows, while Clark served as a lookout below. Luckily for them, the gems’ display cases didn’t even have a working alarm system, enabling the thieves to easily make off with the Star of India (a 563-carat sapphire), the rare Eagle Diamond, the 100.32-carat DeLong Star Ruby, and handfuls of other precious gems totaling a modern-day value of about $3 million. The crime was hardly professional; they left a careless trail, and within days they were found and arrested, many of the gems recovered. Murphy appeared nonchalant in the press, smoking a cigar and claiming the arrest had thrown a wrench into his plans to spend the winter surfing. The public ate it up, turning them into unlikely folk heroes. Eventually, the trio served a few years each behind bars.

The Dresden Green Vault Burglary

One of the most high-profile heists in recent history was the 2019 Green Vault burglary. Located in Dresden, Germany, the museum (known locally as the Grünes Gewölbe) is known for having one of Europe’s largest collections of precious historical treasures, including jewelry, gemstones, and other artifacts that showcase the opulence of the Baroque era’s Saxon kings. In the early hours of November 25, 2019, thieves began their break-in by starting a fire nearby, which destroyed an electrical box and caused the street lights around the museum to go dark. They then broke the museum’s security panel and smashed through a window, making their way to the priceless jewelry displays; within minutes they had made off with a trove of irreplaceable items valued at about $128 million. The suspects then started another fire — this time to a car in a nearby parking garage — before jumping in their own getaway car and fleeing to Berlin.

After an extensive investigation, raids were carried out a year later in Berlin and the first of the suspects was apprehended. In the end, five men, all from the same prominent crime family, admitted their involvement in the heist; one even apologized and said he’d made a mistake. In early 2023, they were convicted and given prison time ranging from four years and four months to six years and three months. Despite extensive efforts to recover the stolen artifacts, many of them still remain missing.

The “Skylight Caper”

In the early morning hours of September 4, 1972, a man wearing a ski mask and spiked climbing shoes scaled a tree to get to the roof of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He lowered a ladder to his two awaiting accomplices, and then, using a rope, the trio rappelled into the building through an unsecured skylight. Once inside, they tied up the security guards and started their spree, stealing 18 paintings (including a rare Rembrandt landscape) and 39 other artifacts valuing $2 million in 1972 (about $15 million today). 

The men were believed to have left in haste, on foot, after accidentally tripping an alarm. (Another Rembrandt, as well as paintings by Pablo Picasso, El Greco, and more, were left behind on the floor.) Within a few days of the heist, the museum was contacted and told where to find one of the stolen items near a public pay phone. One month later, an envelope with photos of the stolen paintings and a ransom request for $500,000 arrived at the museum; it was not a successful attempt, but one of the paintings was returned in good faith. A year later, there was another ransom attempt from the supposed capers, but it amounted to nothing and the trail went cold. In the 1990s, new suspects and leads were pursued, but the case remains unsolved. 

1720s to 1760s: Rococo 

The rococo style took the ornateness of Baroque art to a whole new — and some would say excessive — level. Emerging in France in the 1720s, it was characterized by gaiety, curvaceousness, and sensuality, in stark contrast to the more serious classical style, which heavily references classical antiquity, specifically ancient Greek and Roman art. It certainly wasn’t to everyone’s liking; as London’s Victoria and Albert Museum points out, some found it “superficial, degenerate, and illogical.” Leading rococo artists included François Boucher, Jean-Antoine Watteau, and Thomas Gainsborough. 

1800s to 1850s: Romanticism 

Reaching its peak around 1800 to 1850, Romanticism marked a shift away from the dominant classical tradition. With an emphasis on the imagination, emotion, and individualism, it rejected the calm, ordered world of classicism and Enlightenment-era thought in Europe, and instead showed a far deeper appreciation of nature and a preference for emotion and the senses over reason. The movement included the likes of John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, Eugène Delacroix, and the visionary artist William Blake. 

1840s to 1870s: Realism 

Realism as an artistic movement began in the mid-19th century, alongside the development of naturalism. Its focus was very much on subjects painted from everyday life and in a naturalistic manner: scenes of peasant laborers, working-class life, crowds in city streets, and people drinking in cafes and bars. It also brought about a more open and frank treatment of the body and romantic subjects. At the time, the work of realist artists such as Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, and Honoré Daumier caused a great deal of shock among the primarily upper- and middle-class audiences that typically viewed and purchased art.

1860s to 1900s: Impressionism 

Impressionism developed in France from the early 1860s to the 1880s, spearheaded by artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne. The movement was based on spontaneity and painting outdoors, in contrast to the more traditional process of making sketches to work with later in the studio. Impressionist artists focused largely on landscapes and scenes of everyday life, often using small but easily visible brush strokes to emphasize movement and the shifting nature of light. The impressionists were ridiculed by the established art community in France, but today remain highly popular and widely celebrated. From around 1886, a group of artists — most famously Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent Van Gogh — began to expand and develop impressionism in distinctly different directions. They became known as the post-impressionists. 

1907 to 1920: Cubism 

Cubism was a revolutionary artistic movement pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Beginning in 1907, the radical new style of painting transformed everyday objects, landscapes, and people into geometric shapes, as if seen from multiple points of view at the same time. This not only served to emphasize the three-dimensional form of the object portrayed, but also stressed the two-dimensional nature of the canvas. The groundbreaking shift in perspective and perception opened up entirely new ways for portraying visual realities in art, making cubism one of the most influential artistic styles of the 20th century.

1920s to 1960s: Surrealism 

While cubism sought to change our way of seeing things, surrealism sought to tear down our grasp of rational thought altogether. Led by the French poet André Breton, who defined the movement in 1924 with his Manifesto of Surrealism, it challenged society’s imposed values and norms, and brought to the forefront the power of the unconscious mind and dreams. Fundamentally, its aim was to revolutionize the human experience. Notable surrealist artists included Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró. 

1950s to 1970s: Pop Art

Pop art developed primarily in Britain and the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s. The movement’s name comes from the use of imagery and references from popular culture. It was partly a rebellion against what artists had been taught at art school and what was typically seen in museums — things the pop artists saw as having little to do with everyday life. Instead, pop artists used movies, popular music, comic books, advertising, and product packaging as their sources, and incorporated techniques and materials from the commercial world. Andy Warhol is arguably the most famous of all the pop artists, known for his iconic replication of brands such as Campbell’s Soup and images of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe. 

Georgia O’Keeffe Painted From the Backseat of Her Model-A Ford

Modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe sought to be closely connected with the scenic New Mexican landscape that was the subject of many of her works. Part of maintaining that connection meant painting outdoors, though the area was known for its unrelenting heat and plentiful bee swarms. Undeterred, O’Keeffe came up with an idea that would protect her from the elements while she painted. During her first visit to New Mexico, she had purchased a custom Model-A Ford to explore the land with. It had detachable front seats, and she would remove the passenger seat and spin the driver’s seat around to face the back. This allowed her to set up a canvas on the back seat while sitting comfortably and using the car as protection from the sun and insects.

O’Keeffe was said to be a fearless driver by her friends, and she took her vehicle throughout the state and set up her mobile art studio wherever she found inspiration. She found opportunities to connect with nature outside of the car as well, often hiking and camping in the desert terrain and bundling up during the colder months so she could continue to paint. O’Keeffe was also known to paint from inside her bedroom window overlooking the Chama River Valley, maintaining that unbreakable connection with nature. The artist’s efforts to experience the world around her paid off, as she produced some 2,000 paintings, many of which centered around local flowers and majestic southwestern landscapes.

Salvador Dalí’s Mustache Is Reportedly Still Intact

Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí was the epitome of eccentricity. His avant-garde paintings redefined the art world, and his unconventional stunts — such as keeping an ocelot as a pet — only grew his legend. Though Dalí died in 1989 at the age of 84, his most striking physical feature, his mustache, is reportedly still intact.
Few individuals wore as recognizable a mustache as Dalí. And according to Narcís Bardalet, the embalmer who tended to Dalí’s body after his death, the iconic facial hair was still in place when Bardalet exhumed the body in 2017 to collect DNA for a paternity claim. The facial hair was perfectly situated “[like clock hands at] 10 past 10, just as he liked it,” Bardalet observed. While still alive, Dalí was known to be proud of his distinctive handlebar mustache; he once claimed that he and French novelist Marcel Proust used the “same kind of pomade” for their curls. The mustache was even the subject of a book, 1954’s Dali’s Mustache: A Photographic Interview, which the artist himself co-authored with photographer Philippe Halsman. The book features their interview alongside 28 images of Dalí’s unique and seemingly immortal facial hair.

Frida Kahlo Took Up Painting After a Tragic Bus Accident

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was on her way to becoming not a painter but a doctor when tragedy struck on September 17, 1925. During a bus ride, Kahlo was crushed in a terrifying and near-fatal accident that left her confined to a bed for many months after. No longer able to pursue her medical dreams, Kahlo turned to painting to cope with the loneliness of her recovery, discovering a new passion that saw her become one of the most celebrated painters in history.

Kahlo’s accident and recovery not only forced her to shift career trajectories, but also left her with deep and complex emotions that she conveyed through her art. It was a rarity at the time for female artists to be so open and expressive about their inner worlds, but Kahlo’s works defied those barriers. The trauma that she endured in the wake of the accident came through in paintings such as 1929’s “The Bus,” which captures a seemingly innocuous moment just before the fateful accident. In 1944, she painted the macabre piece “The Broken Column,” showing a leatherback brace that she wore for many years even after her initial recovery. Throughout the rest of her career, Kahlo never shied away from expressing her true self in her paintings, no matter how honest and dark the subject matter.