1. Starving boy and missionary

2. Heart surgeon after 23-hour-long (successful) heart transplant. His assistant is sleeping in the corner.

3. Father and son (1949 vs 2009)

4. Diego Frazão Torquato, 12 year old Brazilian playing the violin at his teacher’s funeral. The teacher had helped him escape poverty and violence through music

5. A Russian soldier playing an abandoned piano in Chechnya in 1994

6. Christians protect Muslims during prayer in the midst of the 2011 uprisings in Cairo, Egypt

7. A firefighter gives water to a koala during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia, in 2009

8. Terri Gurrola is reunited with her daughter after serving in Iraq for 7 months









9. Indian homeless men wait to receive free food distributed outside a mosque ahead of Eid al-Fitr in New Delhi, India

10. Zanjeer the dog saved thousands of lives during Mumbai serial blasts in March 1993 by detecting more than 3,329 kgs of the explosive RDX, 600 detonators, 249 hand grenades and 6406 rounds of live ammunition. He was buried with full honors in 2000

11. Man Falling from the World Trade Center on 9/11. “The Falling Man.”

12. Sunset on Mars

13. A dog named “Leao” sits for a second consecutive day at the grave of her owner, who died in the disastrous landslides near Rio de Janiero in 2011.

14. “Wait For Me Daddy,” by Claude P. Dettloff in New Westminster, Canada, October 1, 1940

15. The Graves of a Catholic woman and her Protestant husband, Holland, 1888

16. An Afghan man offers tea to soldiers

A picture is worth a thousand words, but not all pictures are created equal. These pictures are powerful. They are gripping and unforgettable because of the volumes they speak about the human condition – about some of the best and worst moments of contemporary human existence.We should warn our readers that some of these pictures may upset them, while others may fill them with joy. But that’s precisely because these images reflect some of the best and worst parts of the human experience and world events. Our post of must-see photos from the past described our history while these photos, for the most part, describe our present – our suffering and our triumphs, our perseverance and our failures, our compassion and our hatred, our intelligence and our stupidity.Some of these photographs may mean more to some of our readers than to others. But hopefully, they will remind us all that the world can always use a little bit more love, tolerance, compassion and understanding.Source: Source