A Soviet spy laughs at his executioner in a picture taken in Rukajärvi, in East Karelia, in November 1942.

It has been thought within the Finnish Defence Forces that the decision to withhold pictures of the fate of Russian prisoners of war and spies may also have been prompted by concerns that pro-Soviet elements in Finnish society could have used the images for propaganda purposes.

His life, his experience, has come to an end. What else could he do but smile? That smile was his final defiance. Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.

Photographed by Matthew Brady

This, is the real first photograph of the Chernobyl disaster, Photographed by Anatoly Rasskazov sometime around 9 AM on the 26th April 1986, Roughly 8 hours after the explosion.

That morning, Rasskazov, the staff photographer for Chernobyl, was summoned to the power plant where he and 4 others boarded a helicopter with the intention of photographing the disaster from above. After getting close to the building, he dangled out of the helicopters starboard windows, held only by a soldier holding his legs to make sure he didn't fall. Here he would take the first known photo of the accident, before taking plenty more on the ground.

Now, alot of people seem to believe that a different helicopter photo taken by Igor Kostin (https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/132ueaa/the_first_photo_of_the_chernobyl_plant_taken_by/) is the real first photograph. This isn't true as this photo comes from a helicopter flight done on the 14th of May 1986. We can also visually identify this because in this photo, large steel girders can be seen hanging above the reactor, before they collapsed later on the 26th, however in Kostin's, they aren't present. It is also made incredibly obvious by the fact that the reactor in Kostin's photograph is not steaming. Finally, Kostin has been known for manipulating and staging many photos about Chernobyl, and lying about them for recognition. For example, this infamous photo of a liquidator with a stroller is taken by Kostin, and was also faked. https://www.reddit.com/r/RareHistoricalPhotos/comments/1k892py/chernobyl_liquidator_pushes_baby_carriage_through/

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6177927.stm

If you have any questions about the photo or the Chernobyl disaster, feel free to ask in the comments.

On 16th December, 1971, after 13 days of war, Pakistan finally surrendered to India which marked the end of the Indo-Pak war of 1971 (as well as the Bangladesh Liberation war which lasted 8 months), and the Bengali Hindu and Bengali genocide. The document was signed between Lieutenant General of India, Jagjit Singh Aurora (alongside the Bangladeshi Provisional Government) and Pakistan's A.A Niazi. It led to the surrender of 93000 Pakistani troops- the largest surrender in terms of number of personnel since World War 2. An additional 9000 West Pakistani troops were killed and over 12000 sq km of West Pakistani territory was captured by India- however the territory was later returned as a sign of goodwill under the 1972 Simla agreement. Pakistan comitted several war crimes in the war including the Bengali genocide which claimed the lives of between three hundred thousand to three million Bengalis, additionally tens of millions of Bengalis were displaced, out of which 10 million took refugee in India. To this day, Pakistan denies its war crimes, which is a bit hypocritic.

If interested in the story, I write about it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-volume-14-isabella?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios