30 Powerful Pictures That Defined American History

A jubilant American sailor grabs and kisses a white-uniformed nurse while thousands jam Times Square to celebrate the long awaited-victory over Japan in 1945.

Navy CPO Graham Jackson cries as he plays "Goin' Home" on the accordion while President Franklin D. Roosevelt's body is carried from the Warm Springs Foundation where he died in 1945.

A young boy walks on a dirt road lined with the corpses of hundreds of prisoners who died at the Bergen-Belsen extermination camp, near the towns of Bergen and Celle, Germany on April 20, 1945.

Black cleaning woman Ella Watson stands with broom and mop in front of an American flag, reinterpreting Grant Wood's "American Gothic" painting in 1942.

Wounded Jeremiah Purdie is led past stricken comrades during the fierce firefight for control of Hill 484 just south of the DMZ during the Vietnam War in 1966.

A grieving widow cries over the plastic bag containing the remains of her husband found in a mass grave of civilians killed by the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive, February 1968.

Kent State University student Joe Cullum and others kneel beside wounded student John Cleary after members of the National Guard opened fire on protesters on May 4, 1970.

Half-dressed American soldiers of the 9th Infantry fire at enemy troops somewhere along the South Vietnamese–Cambodian border in 1970.

Freedom Riders Julia Aaron and David Dennis along with 25 others are escorted by two Mississippi National Guardsmen from Montgomery, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom at Lincoln Memorial in 1957.

During the Newark riots in 1967, a police officer holds a trio of suspects against a fence outside a looted store.

Country Dr. Ernest Ceriani takes a break in the hospital kitchen at 2 a.m. after performing a cesarean section where the baby and the mother died due to complications in 1948.

Sen. John F. Kennedy and his bride, Jacqueline, enjoy dinner at their outdoor wedding celebration in 1953.

Commuters reading about John F. Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

President John F. Kennedy's flag-draped coffin in Washington, DC, 1963.

Sen. Robert Kennedy after being shot in the head during his presidential campaign in Los Angeles, 1968.

An atomic mushroom cloud bursts through the clouds during the "Operation Ivy" H-bomb test in 1952.

Rock star Jim Morrison of the Doors sings onstage in front of a psychedelic backdrop in 1968.

A group seeks shelter from the rain at the Woodstock music festival in 1969.

Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr of the Beatles taking a dip in a Los Angles swimming pool in 1964.

Leon James and Willa Mae Ricker demonstrate a step of "The Lindy Hop" dance craze in 1943.

Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald performs at Chicago's Mr. Kelly's nightclub in 1958.

The wives of NASA's Project Mercury astronauts in 1959 (from top right to bottom left): Jo Schirra, Louise Shepard, Annie Glenn, Rene Carpenter, Marjorie Slayton, Trudy Cooper, and Betty Grissom.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stand on the moon's surface after planting the American flag in 1969.

An audience sports 3D glasses during the opening-night screening of Bwana Devil, the first full-length color 3D motion picture, at Paramount Theater in 1952.

American actress Kim Novak sits down and removes her coat while a line of seated men in the dining car of the New York–bound 20th Century Limited train watch her every move, April 1956.

Painter Jackson Pollock, cigarette in mouth, drips splashes of paint onto canvas in 1948.

Yankee player Mickey Mantle tosses his batting helmet away in disgust during a bad day at bat in 1965.

Actor Charlton Heston as Moses flings his arms wide in a scene from The Ten Commandments as it is shown at a drive-in movie theater in 1958.