Photos That Shook The World (Contains graphic images, may cause distress)

Palls of black smoke from raging oil fires billow over Baghdad, on March 27, 2003. The oil-filled trenches were set off by Iraqis to try and block the visibility of U.S. warplanes and missiles.

Iraqi civilians scream for help as they are caught in the crossfire while marines from the U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit Fox Company "Raiders" push into southern Iraq to take control of the main port of Umm Qasr on March 21, 2003.

U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq, on March 29, 2003. Confused front line crossfire ripped apart an Iraqi family after local soldiers appeared to force civilians towards positions held by U.S. Marines.

The charred remains of dead Iraqi soldiers lay outside a bus hit by a U.S. tank shell on a highway between Baghdad's international airport and the city center, on April 7, 2003.

A man runs down a street warning people to flee shortly after a twin car bomb attack at Shorja market in Baghdad February 12, 2007

An Iraqi man holds the body of a boy after a car bomb explosion at a market in the neighborhood known as New Baghdad, southeast of Baghdad February 18, 2007.

A construction worker removes debris from inside the destroyed Education building December 11, 2003 in Baghdad

This unsourced picture shows ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein being dragged from hiding following his capture by US troops, on December 13, 2003 in an underground hole at a farm in the village of ad-Dawr, near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq. The picture is one of a series of images of the deposed dictator unauthorized for release by the US army that has been circulating in recent days on the internet.

In this March 31, 2004 photo, Iraqis chant anti-American slogans as charred bodies hang from a bridge over the Euphrates River in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. A convoy containing four American contractors from the private military company Blackwater USA had been ambushed, all four inside were killed.

In this undated photo, Charles Graner, a U.S. Army reservist appears poised to punch a Iraqi detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison as other detainees lay bound at the hands and hooded. Detainee at right appears to be partially clothed. Outrage among Iraqis and much of the world erupted as photographic evidence surfaced of torture and abuse inside the prison in 2004.

Iraqi workers clean debris near a large pool of blood at the scene of a suicide attack in the city of Hilla, on February 28, 2005. A suicide bomber detonated a car near police recruits and a crowded market, killing 115 people

Ray Jacques reads the San Francisco Chronicle's war special section inside a Starbucks coffee shop in San Francisco, in this March 20, 2003 photo.

Civilians are still being killed at a rate of at least 4,000 a year, and police at about 1,000. As in the days when US and British forces directly ran the country, torture is rampant, thousands are imprisoned without trial, and disappearances and state killings are routine.
Meanwhile power and sewage systems barely function, more than a third of adults are unemployed, state corruption has become an institutionalised kleptocracy and trade unionists are tried for calling strikes and demonstrations (the oil workers' leader is in court in Basra on that charge tomorrow). In recent months, mass protests in Sunni areas have threatened to tip over into violence, or even renewed civil war.

The onslaught triggered a death toll which certainly runs into hundreds, rather than tens, of thousands: estimates range from the Iraq Body Count's minimum of 173,271 up to 2012 (acknowledged to be an underestimate) through the Iraqi government and World Health Organisation's 223,000 and Lancet survey's 654,965 "excess deaths" in the first three years, to the ORB polling organisation's estimate of more than a million.


The occupation was a catastrophe for Iraqis. It destroyed the country's infrastructure, created 4 million refugees, reduced cities like Falluja to ruins – littered with depleted uranium and white phosphorus as cancer rates and birth defects multiplied – and brought al-Qaida and its sectarian terror into the country.

Ten years on, the US still has a powerful presence in Iraq – now starting to resemble a sort of American-Iranian condominium – with thousands of military contractors, security and intelligence leverage and long-term oil contracts. But it's a long way from the archipelago of bases and control its leaders had in mind.

Over a century ago, on June 30th, 1908 a huge explosion detonated over an unpopulated region of Russia called Tunguska. It is probably one of the most enduring mysteries of this planet. What could cause such a huge explosion in the atmosphere, with the energy of a thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs, flattening a forest the area of Luxembourg and yet leaving no crater? It is little wonder that the Tunguska event has become great material for science fiction writers; how could such a huge blast, that shook the Earth’s magnetic field and lit up the Northern Hemisphere skies for three days leave no crater and just a bunch of flattened, scorched trees?
Although there are many theories as to how the Tunguska event may have unfolded, scientists are still divided over what kind of object could have hit the Earth from space. Now a Russian scientist believes he has uncovered the best answer yet. The Earth was glanced by a large comet, that skipped off the upper atmosphere, dropping a chunk of comet material as it did so. As the comet chunk heated up as it dropped through the atmosphere, the material, packed with volatile chemicals, exploded as the biggest chemical explosion mankind had ever seen…

12,000 years ago, a large object smashed into North America, causing global destruction. Dust and ash was released into the atmosphere, triggering global cooling and possibly causing the extinction of a number of large mammals around this time. The Tunguska event was of a similar energy to that catastrophic impact, but fortunately for us, Tunguska had a benign effect on the world. It simply exploded high in the atmosphere, flattened a region of Russia and vaporized.


Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/28028/was-the-tunguska-fireball-a-comet-chemical-bomb/#ixzz2Orfm6ZVs