Haunting photographs of people before their execution:
A thread 🧵
1. Public execution of a child molester in Yemen.
2. Sgt. Leonard Siffleet moments before being executed by a Japanese officer in WWII.
3. German commando captured in American uniform is prepared for execution, December 23, 1944.
4. Photo from 2017 of an Iraqi officer named Abu Bakir al-Samarayi. The picture shows him with a defiant, fearless expression on his face moments before an ISIS militant executed him.
5. Chinese guerrilla fighter Cheng Benhua smiling moments before execution by the Japanese. She was 24.
6. Chinese women about to be executed for drug smuggling, facing their last moments with a smile.
7. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi is given the last rites before being hanged as a collaborator, 1946.
8. The last Jew in Vinnitsa, 1941.
9. Jack Sullivan, who murdered railroad officer John Bradbury during a gunfight, is seen smoking a cigar a few moments before he took his last breath in the lethal gas execution chamber, 1936.
10. Execution by cannon, Shiraz, Iran, 1890s.
11. A Liberian army soldier stands ready to execute a former cabinet minister following the 1980 coup.
12. Nigerian man smiling at firing squad.
13. Mexican rebel Fortino Samano moments before his execution by a firing squad during the Mexican Revolution, 1916.
14. Execution of a German Communist in Munich, 1919.
15. A woman condemned to die of starvation in pre-Soviet Mongolia.
16. Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, is hanged next to the crematorium at the camp, 1947.
17. A man convicted of murder imprisoned in a wooden cage on a street in China. He was left to die of thirst, starvation, and exposure, circa 1930.
18. Photo of Muhammed al-Maghrabi, convicted of raping and killing 3-year-old Rana Almatari, screaming just before he was publicly executed by being shot at close range with an AK-47.
19. Different expressions of six Polish civilians moments before death by firing squad, 1939.
20. A prison guard feeding a female drug dealer some lychees the night before her execution.
21. Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, 1944.
22. Partisan before being hanged by the Nazis, shouting: "Death to fascism, freedom to people."
23. The first picture of the electric chair being used on a person. Her name was Ruth Snyder.
24. Joe Arridy was a mentally challenged man who was wrongfully accused and arrested for murder and rape. This is a photo of him giving his toy trains to a fellow inmate preceding his execution, 1939.
25. German General Anton Dostler before his execution by a firing squad in Italy, December 1945.
26. German commandos captured in American uniform are prepared for execution, 1944.
27. Japanese troops using prisoners of war for target practice, 1942.
28. Rainey Bethea walks up the stairs with guards for his public execution in August 14, 1936 in Owensboro, KY.
29. Russian spy laughing through his execution in Finland, 1942.
30. An Iranian man smiles as he is about to be executed by hanging from a crane.
Unbelievable cases of missing people who were found when all hope was lost 🧵
1. In May 2019, Amanda Eller was lost for 17 days in the woods of Maui after a short hike. Without a phone, food, or water, she survived on berries, stream water, and sleeping among leaves. A rescue helicopter eventually found her at the top of a waterfall.
2. Eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted in 1991 while waiting for the school bus. Eighteen years later, a parole officer discovered her during an investigation. Jaycee had been forced to bear two children with her captor and was kept in a series of tents and sheds in his backyard.
3. Natasha Anne Ryan disappeared in 1998 at the age of 14. Initially, police didn’t take her case seriously, as she had run away with her boyfriend a month earlier. In 2003, during the trial of a serial killer who had confessed to killing her, Natasha was found alive in her boyfriend’s home, where she had been living voluntarily.
1. On the walls of Cologne City Hall, Germany, hidden under a larger statue of Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden, there is a carving from around 1410 showing a man performing oral sex on himself.
2. A carving of a demon consuming a naked man at St Michael the Archangel, Laxton, Nottinghamshire, England.
3. An erotic sculpture at the church of San Martín de Elines, Spain.
1. Lina Medina of Peru became the youngest confirmed mother in history at age 5 in 1939. She suffered from precocious puberty, and her pregnancy remains a mystery as she never disclosed the father's identity.
2. Rajo Devi Lohan from India became the world’s oldest mother in 2008 at 70 years old after undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF). She gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
3. Valentina Vassilyeva, an 18th-century Russian peasant, reportedly had 69 children, including 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.