Romanian anti-austerity protests feature in collection of world's most powerful photos

Romania's anti-austerity protests cropped up in a recent collection of 40 moving photographs from the last 100 years featured on website buzzfeed. The pair of photos showed a girl handing a heart shaped balloon to a member of a phalanx of riot police and the policeman holding the balloon, in full riot gear. Elsewhere, the collection is at times a surprising mix, there are some favorites that often crop up in these collections; some second world war shots, including the liberation of Jewish prisoners from a train bound for the concentration camps and a prisoner war standing up defiantly to SS Chief Heinrich Himler. There are several landmark 60s photos, such as the Apollo mission photo of the earth seen from the moon and Jackie Kennedy in blood stained clothes standing next to Lyndon B Johnson as he is sworn in following John F Kennedy's assassination. From the same decade is the famous black power salute from the 1968 Olympics when sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised a clenched fist on the winners podium when receiving their medals, while the 'flower power' picture of an anti-Vietnam war protester placing a flower in the barrel of a soldier's gun also make an appearance. But there are quite a lot of more recent photos, including some from the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, the aforementioned photos of the anti-austerity protests in Bucharest, last year's uprisings in Egypt and an elderly couple who were the first to have a same sex marriage in New York last year. Some notable absentees as well, the naked Vietnamese girl running down the street after her village was napalmed by US troops isn't there, nor are any of the self-immolations by Buddhist monks, which have been occurring more frequently recently with rising Tibetan protests against the Chinese government. All in all, an interesting collection and well worth a look. See the photos here. Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com (photo source: ioanamoldovan.com / via: theworldreporter.com)