16+ Powerful Photos That Captivated The Internet

"30+ years ago my big bro painted this rock to act as a guardian at my bedroom door to keep me safe from nightmares," wrote the Redditor who posted this. "Now it guards the front door of my house."

Anyone who's ever graduated from college knows how tough it can be. A Masters degree is even tougher.

The Redditor who posted this says it shows his family celebrating his brother's accomplishment: becoming the first person in the family with a Masters.

The story of Anne Frank hiding from Nazis with her family is a powerful one. While most of the family was killed in the Holocaust, Anne's father Otto survived.

He's seen here revisiting the attic where his family hid, years after the fact.

This candid photo from 1986 captures so much humanity. In the top right, a nurse is laughing. The newborn baby is crying. The mom is cracking up with laughter after seeing her husband faint.

Sometimes the curvature of our planet is immediately apparent. Case in point: Lake Pontchartrain, an enormous estuary just north of New Orleans, shows the curvature when you look at the power lines that stretch across it.

He might say you can't see him, but if you're a Make-a-Wish kid, you can absolutely see John Cena. The WWE superstar has granted over 500 wishes, at a rate of one wish every eight days for over a decade.

This shows the quiet scene at Texas Christian University, just outside the hall where graduation ceremonies were commencing. A photographer captured this pic of a support staff worker who applauded each and every grad.

These hospital workers are used to making room for this mother duck with her ducklings. Every year, she lays eggs in a hospital courtyard, then pecks on the windows when it's time to move on.

"My brother was injured during the Special Olympics and couldn’t compete. In the picture, is a Special Olympics medal from Friday’s competition," wrote the Redditor who posted this. "One of these young men won the medal, and chose to give it to my brother as an act of friendship and support."

Yao Ming, a basketball legend in both the United States and his native China, is seen here in a crowd. At seven and a half feet tall, he can't exactly blend in.

Older people can often feel lonely and alienated as they lose spouses and friends. This wholesome tweet shows a great way to show them that they're still important people.

This photo shows a Falcon 9 rocket launch, bound for the International Space Station, launched by Elon Musk's SpaceX company. The perfect reflection on the water is just a bonus.

Most people are pretty proud of themselves if they've climbed Mount Everest. Kami Rita Sherpa, seen here, has climbed the world's tallest mountain an astonishing 23 times over the years.

Soccer (sorry, football/futbol/whatever) is played just about everywhere in the world. The pitch might look different — it might be right next to an icefield in Greenland, for instance — but it's always the beautiful game.

Bald eagles might be a symbol of the United States, but these beautiful birds of prey are found elsewhere as well. This shot from Canada shows the precision entailed in their flight.

Anyone who uses a wheelchair probably feels short at one time or other. The freedom to get up high and see over the crowd clearly elicits a powerful response — just look at how happy this guy is.

This is an ordinary, albeit stunning, waterfall at Yosemite. But once a year, the heavens conspire to shine the sun's light on it in such a way that it looks like molten gold.

We're used to seeing the moon pretty clearly, but sometimes other bodies from our solar system are visible as well. Here, Jupiter and four of its moons are plainly visible, even though they're more than 300 million miles away.

The last male Northern White Rhino passed away last year, marking the animal's possible extinction as only two females are left in Kenya. Scientists are working on IVF for the females, but there is no guarantee it will work.

Although this animal looks like a giant wolf, it's actually not. This beast is grey wolf, husky, and German shepard.

Imagine owning a dog bigger than a Great dane!

These gorillas sure wanted their 15 minutes of fame posing with these anti-poachers!

These gorillas have grown up with the rangers who raised them after their parents were killed by poachers, so they've learned to imitate them.

Early this spring, NASA made history after releasing the first image of a black hole.

The best part? A woman, Dr. Kate Bouman, developed the computer program that was able to capture the photo.

Am I the only person who gets chills looking at this photo?

This is a wild image of Bruce McCandless II flying untethered in space. He was the first to do it.

You're lucky if you're ever able to see a whale during a whale watching adventure.

To catch the skeleton of a whale is not something they advertise for those expeditions.

This before and after of a lighthouse in Michigan captures what happens after an ice storm out by the lake.

It really looks like a magical castle fit for an ice king and queen.

This is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. And that is a woman at the bottom, showing just how great this piece of history really is.

This photographer captured the moment the moon landed directly over the sun during a solar eclipse.

It looks like the perfect photo for a poster in my room.

While I definitely wouldn't want to be anywhere near a volcano when its just erupted, it sure makes for an amazing photo op.

Curtis Jenkins, a school bus driver in Dallas, bought all of the kids who ride on his bus a Christmas gift that they asked for.

This is proof that there is good in the world.

It's hard to believe something like this actually exists in real life, and the good news is that it does.

This is the Ubari oasis in Libya, and that is where I want to retire.

This is a mesh net drain system that helps capture pollutants from going into larger water reserves.

This Australian town is really living in 2019 and we're still stuck somewhere in the past.

Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife began replanting trees on the property in the 90s after his own father had completely deforested the area previously.

Although no one knew it at the time, this would be the very last sunset that would touch these two towers, and the last time they would ever appear in the New York City skyline.

Although it certainly looks like it. But in fact, this is the surface of Venus, as taken by Russia’s Venera 13 spacecraft. The craft only actually lasted 127 minutes before it eventually succumbed to Venus' extremely harsh atmosphere.

This picture show last month's protest rally in Hong Kong, just one of the ongoing demonstrations in the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement.

In fact, this magnificent creature was already dead when it was abandoned at a Melbourne wildlife park and left to rot in a tank filled with formaldehyde.

These photos show the holographic animals which are used in place of real ones at one Denmark circus. That way, no creatures are harmed or treated poorly just for our own selfish entertainment.

This man is posing with the very helmet he was wearing when he was shot with a 7.62 round at just 20' away. In other words, this is the helmet that saved his life.

Not only is this noteworthy in terms of how far technology has come, but also in its lifesaving abilities. After all, an aged photo could very well turn out to be exactly what locates a person who's been missing for years and no longer looks like how they did when they were last spotted.

A total of 5 million women across the country came together to create a 300-mile long human chain, stretching from the northern to southern tip of Kerala, to protest sexism and oppression.

As one Redditor explained, the gesture their doing with their hands is how they say pledges.

Even to the untrained eye, they're a remarkable find. But for more context, they're believed to be around 10,000 years old, and divers even found a picture of a mastodon carved into one of the stones.

This is the clearest photo of Neil Armstrong walking on the phone, as taken from the reflection in his comrade Buzz Aldrin's space helmet.

A record-breaking 4,855 people came and stood in the rain for hours, just to see if they were a stem cell match for one 5 year-old-boy battling a rare type of cancer. All these people selflessly came to see if they would be able to help save this youngster's life.

This brave 6-year-old girl is pictured here being escorted by U.S. Marshalls inside her new school in the year 1960. She made history by becoming the first African American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South

In this photo, we see two young boys teaching each other about their respective cultures and their respective hunting rituals.

Well, it would be if it still had a magnetic field, atmosphere, and water.

If you look really closely in that little black space in the middle of the picture, you'll see a dot. And that "dot" is actually a picture of a single atom.

The famous building's magnificent sails had touching images of the brave men and women, most of whom are volunteers, fighting he devastating fires that are scorching the country.

This customer has taken a photo with his barber ever since he began going to that particular shop. The evolution of both time, appearance, and camera quality is incredible to see.

As she explained,

"Being disabled changes the way people see you and how you see yourself. To boost my confidence when using my mobility aids and to diminish their stigma, I punk-ed out my rollator."

As reported in CNN, the powerful photos were meant to illustrate the "connection between America’s past and America’s present."

Deputy Captain Geoffrey Keaton was posthumously awarded the honor for Commendation for Bravery and Service, which his toddler son accepted on his behalf at his funeral.

As she explained,

"I sent my stepmom a pic of my now shaved head cause of chemo and she sent back this. She made me feel like a warrior when I really needed it."

This photo shows the moment a son finally achieved his dream of taking a picture with both his mom and his dad, something which hasn't happened since the pair divorced when he was just nine months old.

When he learned how difficult it was for his grandkids to get to and from school every day without a bus available to take them, Doug Hayes of Gladstone, Oregon, purchased a mini school bus he dubbed the "Grandfather Express" to take them there himself.

As this Redditer user explained,

"My mom works for an elementary school in a poor part of Pennsylvania. Today someone anonymously donated hats, gloves, and shoes or boots for every single student. This is going to make a huge difference for some of these kids."

Dr. Robert Parry always takes a moment to sit down and personally draw popular characters onto his patient's dressings so their surgical scars aren't the only lasting impressions they leave the hospital with.

The story behind these Jewish men's matching tattoos is a powerful one: 73 years before this photo was taken, they checked into Auschwitz within hours of each other.

They survived the Holocaust, going on to live long lives.

This child is remarkably well-preserved considering they've been dead for over 500 years. An unfortunate victim of human sacrifice, this Incan child was drugged before being buried to appease the gods.