r/UtterlyUniquePhotos

A young JFK holding a snake in Palm Beach, Florida, with his younger sister Rosemary Kennedy behind him, 1936. Four years later, Rosemary would undergo a lobotomy at the behest of her father. She would spend the rest of her life requiring 24 hour care until she died in 2005.

"I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon." This is 4 year-old, Hudea photographed by Turkish photographer Osman Sağırlı in 2014. The image was taken at the Atmeh refugee camp in Syria, she travelled to the camp - near the Turkish border with her mother and two siblings.

On this day in 1931, Lili Elbe died in Dresden. Elbe was a Danish painter, transgender woman, and one of the earliest recipients of gender-affirming surgery. It wasn't the surgery that made her a woman that killed her, it was a later uterus transplant she gambled on to become a mother.

John Howard Griffin posing as a black man in the Deep South as part of an experiment to see life and segregation from the other side of the colour line. In 1959 he had darkened his skin and for six weeks he 'lived as a black man', navigating the harsh realities of segregation.

In 1946, World War II veterans in a small Tennessee town armed themselves, laid siege to the county jail, and forced a corrupt local government out of power. It is one of the only times in modern American history that citizens took up arms against their own officials and won.

October 1962. These photos show James Meredith waiting for class at Ole Miss, days after he'd won the right to study there. In the first frames there are students at desks and a teacher at the blackboard. Then the room empties in protest. Even the teacher walks out, leaving Meredith sat there alone.

On this day in 1940, 14 yr-old Marcel Ravidat was walking with his dog, Robot near the town of Montignac. When Robot fell down a hole Marcel followed him and found a cave leading to the discovery of the 17,000 yr-old Lascaux cave paintings. (Robot was fine)

Fresh air was once considered an important treatment for tuberculosis. Patients at St Thomas’ Hospital were wheeled outside in their beds onto where they rested in the open air and sunshine. 1935

Cyclist Janez Brajkovič's leg after a race.

A penny auction at a foreclosed Michigan farm (1936) During the Great Depression, rural communities held “penny auctions” to stop farm foreclosures. Locals hung nooses to scare off outside bidders, bought the farm back for pennies, and returned it to the original family.