Kevin Carter was a South African Photojournalist who, in March 1993, took the most infamous photograph, so far, of the brutality and disregard for human
suffering in sub-Saharan Africa. The photo
a female Sudanese toddler, alone and severely
emaciated, attempting to crawl to an aid
station for food. A vulture is standing on the
ground behind her, waiting for her to die so it
can eat her.
Carter claimed that he waited 20 minutes for
the vulture to spread its wings, which he
thought would make a better picture, and
when it didn’t, he took the picture as is. For
those 20 minutes, the toddler had to rest
before resuming its trip. She whimpered and
panted, and Carter did nothing to help her.
He took the picture, scared the vulture away, then left the girl to continue crawling on her own. No one knows what became of her, but it very likely that she starved to death. This account is denied by Joao Silva, a journalist friend of Carter, who stated that the child’s parents left for only a moment to take food from a plane. Either way, Carter claimed later that he just “didn’t want to get involved.” He killed himself the next year, after winning the Pulitzer for this photograph, by carbon monoxide poisoning, in his truck in Johannesburg.
hematomas covering most of his body, to the point that he was more blue than flesh-colored, multiple broken bones, one ear and one big toe missing, and his testicles looked like “blackened oranges.”
Halimi died en route to a hospital.
7 Edison Electrocutes an Elephant
Not just Topsy the Elephant, but a rather long series of animals,
all of which had shown themselves to be a danger to humans.
This included horses, lions, tigers, and bears. Edison was happy
to oblige the state of NY in executing these “menaces to
society,” by employing alternating current, but his ulterior
motive was merely to show the world the danger of alternating
current, invented by Nikola Tesla, his arch-rival. Edison’s direct
current didn’t have the strength to electrocute an elephant, and
he considered it safer.
So, on January 4, 1903, at Luna Park Zoo, Coney Island, Topsy was hooked up to Edison’s lighting plant, and electrocuted with 6,600 volts of AC. But this was after they fed her carrots that had been soaked in cyanide, just to be sure. They deemed Topsy to be a permanent threat to humans, as she had killed three handlers in three incidents, one of which involved a handler, who regularly whipped her, trying to feed her a lighted cigarette just to watch her suffer. She stomped on him.
1,500 people watched, and no one said a word in complaint. Edison filmed it, and the film is available on YouTube, if you feel like being outraged. The funny thing is that the ASPCA, which is supposed to protect the rights of animals, considered hanging to be cruel, as it would cause strangulation, not a snap of the neck, and yet had no problem with cyanide poisoning and electrocution.
6 Kevin Carter’s Famous Photograph
5 Forced Relocation of the American Indians