8 Ordinary Photos Hiding Mind-Blowing Details



#8. Spot the Dictator


If we asked you to name the most significant thing about this picture, you'd probably say "The fact that everyone's wearing the same hat." However, there are two historically important things about it: First, this was taken on August 2, 1914, at Munich's Odeonsplatz, and it shows the cheerful reaction of a German crowd in the plaza during the announcement of World War I, because there's no way something like that could go wrong for them. Remember, at this point words like "Nazi" and "Holocaust" meant nothing to the German people.

The second thing is that within this crowd, there's a subtle hint of the terror that awaits the country -- take a closer look at the man in the circle and see if you recognize him ...

"World war? Now there's an idea."

Yep, that's a 26-year-old Adolf Hitler looking stoked that his country is going to war, or possibly asking people if they like his new mustache. He's two decades away from hijacking the nation into Nazism and leading them into an even more devastating global conflict.

Altona-Behrenfeld, 1933
You can't see his legs, but judging from that haircut, he must have been wearing cigarette jeans.

The photo was taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, who would go on to become Hitler's personal photographer. In 1932, Hitler visited Hoffmann's photo lab and mentioned that he was in the 1914 Odeonsplatz crowd. Hoffmann looked in his negatives and, sure enough, found a face that could only belong to the future Fuhrer.

Hoffmann Collection, U.S. National Archives
"Or Charlie Chaplin. But most likely the Fuhrer."

Recently, German historians have put the authenticity of the photo in doubt, claiming that Hoffmann could have faked it to shut up critics who questioned his boss' patriotism. While we wouldn't put something like that past Hitler, those guys will excuse us if we don't trust the historians in a country where half the children still don't know what Nazism was.

#7. Tank Man Begins

NY Times

If someone posted this image in your Facebook feed, you'd probably glance at it for half a second and assume that it's a completely normal photo of two guys running in the park (even though they have some perfectly good bikes right in front of them that they could use instead). However, once you look at the background, two odd little details stand out. The first one, of course, is that there are tanks coming from the upper right corner:

Where's the Tiananmen Square Tank Man when you need him?

So, despite the first guy's amused expression, these guys aren't just jogging: They're escaping from tanks. The second, even more significant detail is the lone man who can be seen between the trees behind Chuckles here -- a lone man standing in the middle of the street, carrying two grocery bags, in front of some tanks.

"The gypsy lady said that when the time came, I would know what my nickname means."

Yes, that's the (still unknown) dude from the famous photo of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, seconds before he planted himself before a bunch of tanks sent to disperse protesters and forced them to stop there for an awkwardly long time.

"So, uh, what mileage do you get from these things?"

The photo was taken by Reuters correspondent Terril Jones, who figured that no one would care about it once he noticed that someone else had photographed the same situation from a far better angle. Jones didn't publish the photo until 2009, after reading a New York Times retrospective on Tank Man, but the most mind-blowing part is that it shows how deliberate the unknown man's actions were. He didn't just cross the street one day and run into some tanks -- he saw them coming a mile away and intentionally stayed there to block their passage.

Meanwhile, this dude was probably looking for the nearest bathroom.

#6. Spot the Dictator II


Quick, which one of the kids in this picture is currently a murderous dictator? This looks like a completely normal class photo, but one of those innocent young faces actually belongs to an infamous public figure of today, and no, believe it or not, it's not the kid with the backward cap. Here, we'll help you out:

This is right before they saved summer camp with an upbeat rap battle.

Even with the red circle and all, it's still hard to understand how the next Saddam Hussein could be in this picture, since not only does it look fairly recent, but these seem like average, happy children having fun. In case you haven't guessed it yet, the kid in the circle is Kim Jong Un, the current "Dear Leader" of North Korea, a communist regime that, yes, still murders its citizens whenever it feels like doing so and labels them as "war criminals" for so much as talking on a cellphone.

As it turns out, in his teenage years, Kim Jong Un was sent to Switzerland for schooling. From 1996 to 2001, he studied and made friends with classmates who were unaware of his true identity. At that point the only thing Kim cared about was playing basketball and, given the time frame, possibly his namesake from the Power Rangers.


It's the exact same face, give or take a few chins.

In 2001, "Pak Un," as his friends knew him, simply didn't show up to school one day, and they didn't see him again until about 10 years later, when North Korea's then-ruler Kim Jong Il died and his successor turned out to be a guy they went to school with. That should make the next class reunion awkward, whether he shows up and kills a bunch of people or not.

#5. Bill Paxton Making a Cameo on the Day JFK Was Shot

Roy Cooper Collection, Dallasobserver.com

You can probably tell, just from the lustful look on the face of every woman (and some of the men) present in this picture, that they are looking at president John F. Kennedy. In fact, this picture was taken while Kennedy was giving a speech at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth on November 22, 1963, the same day he was shot and killed.

So what crazy detail are we looking for here? Lee Harvey Oswald waving from a window? The Illuminati? Nope, but check out the little kid in the back:

Hint: Upon learning what happened to the president, he started yelling "Game over, man! Game over!"

Look familiar? If you've seen Aliens, Twister, Apollo 13, Titanic or Aliens (no one's seen it just once), then it damn well should, because that's freakin' Bill Paxton at age 8.

We feel it would be criminal not to remind you that he was Chet in Weird Science.

On the day of Kennedy's assassination, little Billy Paxton's brother convinced their dad to take them to see the president talk. Apparently Paxton's dad wasn't a huge fan of civic acts, because in the photo the kid is actually sitting on the shoulders of some guy he'd never met. Here's another angle:

Roy Cooper Collection, Dallasobserver.com
Paxton was 8 feet 10 inches tall by age 9.

Paxton even has the photos himself -- you know, just in case anyone asks him to provide an alibi for that day. And speaking of presidents ...

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