Margaritaville. It’s a brand, a business empire, a state of mind. It’s a radio station, a tequila, a state of bliss. But most important, it’s a song.

Too often, the merchandising surrounding Jimmy Buffett’s signature tune has obscured its magic. But strip away the brand. Ignore the frozen Margaritaville Crunchy Pimento Cheese & Shrimp Bites. Forget the T-shirts emblazoned with WOMAN TO BLAME. What’s left is a finely crafted, cheeky but nuanced nugget of genius.

The melody of “Margaritaville” floats in on a breeze of Caribbean instrumentation. The vocal is so relaxed it’s practically flat on its back in a hammock. The lyrics evoke both a beach bum’s apathy and a broken heart drowning under a slosh of booze. The song is short, simple, silly, sad, and sublime—and still strong enough to support the enormous mythology surrounding Jimmy Buffett. It’s a heavy task to lay on a four-minute tune that peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1977.

As large as it looms, “Margaritaville” is only a piece of Buffett’s unprecedented success story. He has been releasing records for half a century and counting. Many of those LPs bombed—his 1970 debut, Down to Earth, reportedly sold 324 copies when it was first pressed, though some claim it moved 374. Many other albums gave you songs you know by heart.

Rarely have critics been kind to Buffett. But what some call corny, others consider poetry. Bob Dylan named Buffett as one of the songwriters he most admired, specifically mentioning fan favorite “He Went to Paris.” Before “Margaritaville,” Buffett’s unique skills drew only scraps of deserving press—as scarce then as now. A brief 1976 New York Times review read, “Mr. Buffett is a clever man, both in his words and his music. The lyrics generally hint at deeper meaning without getting portentous about it.” Contemplative? Yes. Portentous? Never.

Between records, Buffett tours. He has played Greenwich Village folk clubs and Texas roadhouses, headlined at Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, opened for the Eagles on their Hotel California tour, and shared the stage with Willie Nelson at Nelson’s annual Fourth of July festival. But his travel doesn’t always involve riding in a bus stuffed with bandmates. Sometimes piloting one of his planes or captaining one of his boats, he has crossed the Atlantic, traversed the equator, gone to Paris, sailed through rain and snow, and cut records in the shade of a volcano.

Some of the legends that surround Buffett are false (he insists, for example, that he never smuggled drugs into Key West); many more are true. He did crash his twin-engine amphibious plane off the coast of New England. He did dodge bullets shot at his plane by the Jamaican police. He did have to follow a scorching set by Lionel Richie’s Commodores—he decided the best way to follow the “Brick House” band was with a liquid-courage-powered 12-minute monologue and a single song (“Why Don’t We Get Drunk,” punctuated by the eponymous lyrics, plus “and screw”).

From the stage to the deck of so many sloops, Buffett has beaten the odds again and again, thanks to hard work, dogged perseverance, immense talent, and lots of luck. And he’s done it with a smile on his face, and a guitar—or a margarita—in his hand.

Here are some photos from LIFE’s new special issue Jimmy Buffett: Going Strong in Margaritaville. Available here.

David Wolff – Patrick/Gett

Jimmy Buffett, circa 1970.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Jimmy Buffett, circa 1970.

Gems/Redferns/Gett

Jimmy Buffett performed at the Calavaras County Fair on June 10, 1978 in Angels Camp, California; the broken leg was from a pickup game of softball.

Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty

Jimmy Biuffett watched the launch of the Space Shuttle from a VIP area at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, 1981.

AP/Shutterstock

From left to right: Clint Black, Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, Jimmy Buffett, George Strait and Toby Keith performed at the 38th Annual CMA Awards at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Nov. 9, 2004.

Frank Micelotta/Getty

Jimmy Buffet performed during a press conference for the renaming of Dolphin Stadium to LandShark Stadium on May 8, 2009 in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Alexander Tamargo/Getty

Jimmy Buffett performed at Jimmy Buffett & Friends: Live from the Gulf Coast, a concert presented by CMT, on July 11, 2010 in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Rick Diamond/CMT/Getty

Jimmy Buffett raised the margarita that set the Guinness World Record for the largest ever in celebration of the Margaritaville Casino grand opening in Las Vegas, Oct. 14, 2011.

Shutterstock

Jimmy Buffett, with wife and family, arrived at a “Men In Black II” screening after-party to benefit Hayground School at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton, N.Y.. June 30, 2002.

Evan Agostini/Getty

Parrotheads Joe and Vicki Manning of Maryland traveled up to tailgate and attend the Jimmy Buffett concert at Jones Beach in New York,on August 10, 2021.

Newsday LLC/Getty

The post Jimmy Buffett: Hey, Margaritaville! A Pirate Looks at 75 appeared first on LIFE.

Here, in acknowledgement of the long, icy, often-uphill trail that sportswomen have had to navigate through the years, LIFE offers a series of Winter Olympics photos from the 1940s to the 1970s — pictures featuring the still-famous (Peggy Fleming, Lidiya Skoblikova, Andrea Mead Lawrence) as well as more than a few largely forgotten female athletes who made a mark in the Olympics, whether they medaled or not.

Fifteen-year-old Andrea Mead Lawrence, the first American alpine skier to win Olympic gold, trained in 1947.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Six-time U.S. national figure-skating champion Gretchen Merrill, St. Moritz Olympics, 1948.

Mark Kauffman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

French figure skater Jacqueline du Bief, St. Moritz, 1948.

Mark Kauffman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

British figure skater Jeanette Altwegg, bronze medalist at St. Moritz, 1948.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Canadian Patricia Gault, St. Moritz, 1948.

Mark Kauffman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Olympic figure skater, St. Moritz, 1948.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gretchen Merrill, St. Moritz Olympics, 1948.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American skier Brynhild Grasmoen, St. Moritz, 1948.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Great Britain’s Sue Holmes, Cortina, Italy, 1956.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified skater, Cortina, Italy, 1956.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified athlete, Cortina, Italy, 1956.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American figure-skating silver medalist Carol Heiss, Cortina, Italy, 1956.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Russian cross-country skiers Radya Yeroshina (silver) and Lyubov Kozyreva (gold), Cortina, Italy, 1956.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American silver medalist Penny Pitou (left) and German downhill gold medalist Heidi Biebl, Squaw Valley, 1960.

Nat Farbman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Slalom silver medalist Betsy Snite (USA), Squaw Valley, 1960.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American downhill skier Penny Pitou (silver medalist), Squaw Valley, 1960.

Nat Farbman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American downhill skier Penny Pitou (silver medalist), Squaw Valley, 1960.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified athlete, Squaw Valley, 1960.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Figure skater Carol Heiss (gold medal, Ladies Singles), Squaw Valley, 1960.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Figure skater Carol Heiss (gold medal, Ladies Singles), Squaw Valley, 1960.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Russian speed-skating gold medalist Lidiya Skoblikova (center), with Poland’s Elwira Seroczynska (left, silver) and Helena Pilejczyk (right, bronze), Squaw Valley, 1960.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified athlete, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified athlete, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American skier Jean Saubert (center) received kisses from French downhill gold and silver medalists (and sisters), Christine and Marielle Goitschel, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified athlete, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Left to right: Christine Goitschel, Jean Saubert, and Marielle Goitschel, Innsbruck, 1964

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American speed skater and four-time Olympic medalist Dianne Holum, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified athlete, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Three-time Olympic medalist Lyudmila Titova, Russian speed skater, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American figure skater Peggy Fleming, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Twelve-year-old Romanian figure skater Beatrice Hustiu, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American figure skater Janet Lynn, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American figure skater Peggy Fleming, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Peggy Fleming, gold medalist, Ladies Singles figure skating, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Anne Henning, 16, won the 500-meter speed skating race at the Sapporo Winter Olympics, 1972.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Figure skaters Janet Lynn (American, bronze), Beatrix Schuba (Austrian, gold) and Karin Manguessen (Canadian, silver), Sapporo Winter Olympics, 1972.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American speed skater and four-time Olympic medalist Dianne Holum, Sapporo Winter Olympics, 1972.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Women’s luge, Sapporo Winter Olympics, 1972.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Women of the Winter Olympics: Amazing Athletes in Action appeared first on LIFE.

In 1953 LIFE acknowledged the occasional absurdity of holiday commerce with a guide to some the odder “fancy” items being offered to shoppers. LIFE photographer Yale Joel wittily executed the idea by shooting these silly objects in a high-fashion setting, as if a jewel-encrusted spray gun was in fact the pinnacle of glamour.

Then, in 1969, photographer Yale Joel came back with a more outlandish version of the same premise.

The guide in LIFE’s December 7, 1953 issue was headlined “Good-for-Nothing Gifts,” with the tagline, “they are better to give than to receive.” According to the story, one of the hottest gift of 1952 was—for real—a sequined fly swatter. This meant that in 1953, manufacturers produced fancy versions of other household objects to try to capitalize on the trend. This led to all sorts of odd offerings: “Holiday shoppers whose main object is to pamper the recipient may choose jeweled backscratchers which are almost too pretty to use, velvet eyeglasses which are designed to be worn instead of a hat, timepieces for pets who cannot tell time.”

Thus did ordinary objects gain big price tags. The encrusted backscratcher, for instance, retailed for $6.95 at Lord and Taylor—which would about $70 in 2020 prices. Even today, you can buy backscratchers in packages of six for ten bucks.

But Lord & Taylor’s bejeweled backscratcher was a major bargain compared to the gifts Joel shot for another tongue-and-cheek gift guide years later in LIFE’s December 12, 1969 issue. This guide promised to have “something for everyone, and a few things for nobody.”

The guide included an 80-carat diamond for $450,000 (more than $3 million today), a “Masterpiece of the Month” club for art lovers ($1 million, or $7.2 million today) in which buyers would receive works of 20th century masters by mail, and a kit for making your own fur coat from 75 sable fur pelts for $125,000, “including tailoring.”

Then there’s a giant phone receiver ($5, or $36 today), which would get this gift guide’s award for Best Sight Gag.  

If nothing else, Joel and the editors of LIFE seemed to be having fun. Maybe that’s the real lesson for stressed-out shoppers: It’s the holidays. You may want everything to be perfect, but don’t forget to enjoy yourself.

This dog collar, which featured a Swiss watch, was made by Hammacher Schlemmer and cost $50 in 1953; a version with a compass instead of a watch cost $22.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

These velvet glasses that slid back on the head were sold by Lord & Taylor for $15 in 1953.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This satin edged sleep mask, edged with gold braid and had gold eyelashes, brows and twinkling stars, sold for $3.95 in 1953 from Lord & Taylor.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This back-scratcher encrusted with gilt, pearls and seashells was sold by Lord & Taylor for $6.95.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Bloomingdales sold this spray gun that was coated with gilt and trimmed with flowers for $7.95 in 1953.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

These work gloves with red felt fingernails and a large ring on the wedding finger sold for $2.95 in 1953.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This 80-carat uncut diamond from Tiffany’s would have been quite the holiday splurge at $450,000 in 1969.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This oversized receiver, “for really big calls” as LIFE put it in 1969, was sold by Hammacher Schlemmer/Invento for $5.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This smashed radio on top of a broken mirror was presented as a “mixed media sculpture” gift idea in 1969, with a $35 price tag.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This Honeywell “kitchen computer,” suggested for budgets, menus and other calculations, went for $10,600, with a two-week course in programming included.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The cost of creating “a unique fur coat, with 75 of the world’s most expensive pelts” from Russian crown sable was $125,000—including tailoring—in 1969.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The post Just for Fun: A Look Back at LIFE’s Tongue-in-Cheek Gift Guides appeared first on LIFE.

The breadth is hinted at in the first two photos in the collection. One is of actress Jayne Mansfield from LIFE’s Aug. 18, 1961 issue, taking a tub in a bathroom that is decorated floor-to-ceiling in pink shag. The room is, like the voluptuous blonde herself, an over-the-top expression of 1950s femininity. The photo also presents the bath at its most familiar, as a moment of relaxation and indulgence.

Contrast that with the bath taken by coal miner Mabrey Evans, which captures in one image the challenges of his circumstances. The photo was taken for a story in LIFE’s May 10, 1943 issue on labor issues in the coal industry. The story described how after a hard day of work, Evans would kneel in front of a washtub and scrub himself clean:

The washing process takes Miner Mabrey Evans about 45 minutes every evening. He carefully washes his hands, arms and chest first in a tub of hot water, and then while he scrapes the grime off his face, Mrs. Evans rubs the coating of coal black from his back.

The contrast between the photos of the coal miner and the coquettish actress is but the beginning. The collection includes a Japanese laborers in a communal bath, a British prep school student braving a morning plunge in 35-degree water, an aging Mickey Mantle seeking relief for his injury-ravaged body after a baseball game, photojournalist Lee Miller taking an impudent bath in the apartment of Adolph Hitler, and a Tahitian woman recalling the paintings of Gauguin with her loll in the island waters.

Some of the most striking images in the collection are of soldiers. Some of these men clean themselves in washtubs, as did the weary coal miner. Some enjoy a communal soak in ancient Roman baths at Gafsa. One of the photos featuring soldiers in the most joyous in this collection, and also the most famous.

That picture features American soldiers cleansing themselves in the ocean on the island of Saipan in World War II. The battle, chronicled in harrowing detail by LIFE photographers Peter Stackpole and W. Eugene Smith, was a brutal one, resulting in the deaths of 29,000 troops and many more civilians. The context helps explain the emotion of this particular bath, as soldiers took advantage of a lull in the fighting to strip off their clothes and refresh themselves in the waters of the Pacific.

It is, in its way, the epitome of bathing, these men who have seen such horror finding momentary relief by submerging themselves in the revitalizing waters.

Jayne Mansfield combed her hair while bathing in the pink carpeted bathroom of her home, known as “The Pink Palace,” in Los Angeles, 1960.

Allan Grant; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Coal miner Mabrey Evans scrubbed his arm in a tub of hot water in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States, April 1943.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A student at Winchester College, an English boys school, took a morning bath in a cold tub in a room that was 35 degrees; his technique was to grasp the edges of the tub, plunge in bottom-first, and get out as quickly as possible, 1951.

Cornell Capa/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Artist Pablo Picasso taking a bath at his Riviera villa.

Photo by David Douglas Duncan /The LIFE Images Collection

Bathing was a complicated process for 24-year-old schoolteacher Dorothy Albrecht in rural Montana; first she needed to haul water from a cistern 100 yards away from her cottage and heat in on the stove before climbing into the washtub, 1941.

Hansel Mieth/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Photographer Lee Miller took a bath in Adolph Hitler’s apartment soon after the apartment was discovered by Allied forces, 1945.

David E. Scherman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Russell Finch, a writer, enjoyed the latest invention of the day, a portable television, while taking a bath, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A girl in Tahiti, bathing, 1955.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Basset Hound being bathed in the back yard.

Photo by Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Tokyo bath house, 1951.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A nurse bathed two children, India, September 1957.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Soldiers in their remote World War outpost of Amchitka Island, Alaska, bathed in halved oil drums, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Patients receive treatment on a hot baths spa, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen and wife, Neile, took a sulphur bath in Big Sur, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A woman used a new invention—a back brush equipped with front and rear-view mirrors so that she could see where she was scrubbing, 1947.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jeanne Crain on the set of the 1946 movie Margie.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Jeanne Crain balanced a soap bubble on her index finger as she luxuriated in a bath in a scene from the 1946 movie, Margie.

Peter Stackpole/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Aspiring actress Jo Ann Kemmerling read a book in the small tub that was set up in the kitchen of her New York City apartment, 1953.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Soldiers in the Roman Baths at Gafsa in Tunisia, 1943.

Soldiers Swim in Roman Baths at Gafsa

Mickey Mantle soaked in whirlpool bathtub after a game, 1964.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Blondie, the pet lion, revelled in the shower spray of lukewarm water her owner Charles Hipp is directing on her pelt, at home, 1955.

Joseph Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

British soldiers of the Dorsetshire County Regiment took hot baths, 1944.

Actress Peggy Knudsen took a seaweed bath to produce better circulation and skin tone, 1961.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Bald Eagle’s bath in California, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A photo from an essay on labor in Japan showed workers crowded in square cement bath, 1947.

John Florea/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Starlet June Preisser tried a milk bath—she didn’t like it—in preparing for a scene in the movie musical Strike Up the Band, 1940.

Peter Stackpole/LIfe Pictures/Shutterstock

American troops in the Pacific bathed during a lull in the fighting on the island of Saipan, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post LIFE Takes a Bath: Classic Pics of People (and Pets) Enjoying a Soak appeared first on LIFE.

History never stops moving. It evolves. It is fluid. What history looks like today is different from what it looked like, say, a hundred years ago; and what today’s history-in-the-making looks like now may be seen very differently just 20 years from now. Did anyone in 1907 really think Henry Ford was changing the world when he started tinkering with how to make his Model T? Other than maybe Henry himself, probably not. Will Elon Musk be seen in 2040 as a world changer because of his electric Tesla? He may or he may not.

When combing the past and the present for a list such as the 100 People Who Changed the World, there are criteria to consider, to be sure, but there are no hard-and-fast rules. There are judgments to be made, but there are no certain truths. Our list was less a hardened document than a current collection—a collection of men and women who, for better and sometimes for worse, have made a clear mark on our civilization. Such a list is by necessity subjective and open to delicious debate.

But while history may be fluid, it does tend to crystallize over time: The significance of Aristotle or Catherine the Great is easy to see from here. And certainly the importance of some of history’s great characters was apparent to their contemporaries: George Washington or Pablo Picasso or Mother Teresa. Others were largely invisible in their own time, their contributions realized only long after they were gone: Karl Marx died in 1883, many years before his writings would inspire powerful communist societies; Alan Turing, who died lonely and tortured, is now lauded as the brilliant father of the computer; and Rachel Carson gained respect as a naturalist writer not long before her death, but appreciation for her impact on environmentalism has blossomed more recently.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this exercise is pondering the ultimate impact of present-day figures. Steve Jobs makes the list by virtue of his influence on high tech and our daily lives. But what of Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps the founding figure of social media when he launched Facebook in 2004? His impact is huge, and he has made it possible for billions of people to come together; but the social media site has also made it easier to drive society apart, upending the news business and even the way elections are conducted. Can we yet evaluate the nature of Zuckerberg’s controversial creation and his ability to control it?

Similarly, Jeff Bezos presents a quandary. He might be seen as a retailing successor to Richard Sears, who made our list of 100 even though his great namesake legacy is now in bankruptcy. But Bezos also rides the wave of technology, and the power and reach of Amazon are frighteningly large. And by the way, without Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf, would we even have Zuckerberg and Bezos to kick around? Who are they, you ask? Just the guys who figured out a way for all the computers of the world to speak to each other, something we call the internet. If that invention hasn’t changed the world as we know it, well, tell us what has.

When it comes to game changers, Martin Luther King Jr. is of course included here for his enormous impact on civil rights. Yet King also has spiritual descendants whose work continues to alter our lives every day, including Alicia Garza. She’s the organizer who coined the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Florida teen Trayvon Martin. An anguished Garza posted “I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter . . . Our lives matter.” That sentiment was turned into a hashtag and became a movement that appears to be challenging racism in a way that has eluded the nation for centuries.

Will the moment last? Only time, of course, will tell. History will move inexorably forward, our questions today will have answers tomorrow, and lists like these will change—again and again and again.

Here are photographs of some of the people who made the list in LIFE’s 100 People Who Changed the World.

COVER IMAGES: (Mother Teresa) Tim Graham/Hulton/Getty; (Lincoln) Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty; (Jesus) 3LH/SuperStock; (Einstein) Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Library of Congress/Getty; (MLK) Flip Schulke/Corbis/Getty; (Steve Jobs) Robert Galbraith/Reuters; (Beatles) John Dominis/ The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; (Edison) Granger; (Hitler) Photo12/UIG/ Getty; (Eleanor Roosevelt) Marvin Koner/Corbis/Getty; (Gandhi) Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; (Oprah) Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

Mother Teresa at a hospice for the destitute and dying in Kolkata, India, 1969.

Terry Fincher/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1994 Nelson Mandela visited the cell in Robben Island Prison in South Africa where he had been held as a political prisoner from 1964 to 1990.

© Louise Gubb/Corbis/Getty Images

Circa 1910, women worked on an early outdoor version of the Henry Ford assembly line that would revolutionize mass production.

George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

Sojourner Truth, an anti-slavery and women’s rights activist, held in her lap a photo of her grandson James Caldwell, who fought with a Massachusetts regiment and survived being a POW in South Carolina during the Civil War.

Everett/Shutterstock

Helen Keller, blind and deaf, felt the face of her teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Albert Einstein in 1947, twenty-six years after the groundbreaking physicist won the Nobel Prize.

Donaldson Collection/Library of Congress/Getty Images

Catherine de Medici inspected the results of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a crackdown she had ordered against Protestants in Paris in 1572.

Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock

Billy Graham walked with children during an evangelical visit to Nigeria in 1960.

AP/Shutterstock

Oprah Winfrey in 2014 at the Critic’s Choice Awards, where the media entrepreneur had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Lee Daniel’s The Butler.

Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

The post LIFE’s 100 People Who Changed the World appeared first on LIFE.

Photos are proof. We know this from our own lives. Here’s what dad looked like when he was in high school. Look at this cake I baked. I ran into Taylor Swift at the mall—see, here we are in a selfie. A telling taunt of our age is “photos or it didn’t happen.”

The same holds true for the wider world. The pictures that really matter are the ones that prove something, that show us a definitive truth, that make us understand. Here’s what a human fetus looks like. Here’s the glory of Muhammad Ali. Here’s the shock we felt when the World Trade Center Towers collapsed.

In our quest to select the most important 100 photographs ever, we looked for pictures that demonstrated something important and meaningful. Some capture a news event or show the brutality of war. Others crystallize a particular cultural moment. Some take us on a fantastic voyage—up into space, perhaps, or inside the human body. Some photographs matter because they showed what cameras are capable of and illustrate the extraordinary power of photography as a medium.

The oldest photo we chose was the first one ever taken, of a French landscape in the 1820s. The process involved chemical applications and a multi-hour exposure that left an impression on a pewter plate. That grainy photo of the view outside the photographer’s window signaled our species’ transition to the world of pictures. Thanks to the internet and our smartphones, with their built-in cameras, we now see more images each day than the people who lived in a world of paintings and prints saw in a lifetime. Most of these photographs we flip past and forget. Others linger. The best reorient our understanding. The rare ones—the ones we feature in this special issue—change how we see the world.

Here are a few selections from LIFE’s new special issue 100 Photographs: The Most Important Pictures Ever and the Stories Behind Them

(clockwise from top left) Joe Rosenthal/AP/Shutterstock; Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated/Getty; Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-DIG-fsa-8b29516]; NASA

Regarded as the first photo ever taken, this image of a French countryside was achieved when Joseph Nicephore Niepce placed a thin coating of light-sensitive phosphorous derivative on a pewter plate and then placed the plate in a camera obscura and set in on a windowsill for a long exposure.

Joseph Niepce/Hulton/Getty

Lewis Hine’s photos such as this one of “breaker boys” who picked pieces of slate from conveyor belts as freshly broken pieces of coal rolled by, helped raise support for child labor laws.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection, [LC-DIG-nclc-01130]

Elizabeth Eckford’s walk through a crowd of hateful tormentors into Little Rock Central High School in 1957 is a defining image of the tumultuous effort to desegregate schools.

Bettmann/Getty

The image of U.S. Marines planting the American flag on Iwo Jima during World War II has been called the famous news photo of all time.

Joe Rosenthal/AP/Shutterstock

In a defining image of the Vietnam war, the wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center, with bandaged head) reached toward a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight south of the DMZ, October 1966.

Larry Burrows/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Woodstock music festival that drew half a million people to an upstate New York farm in 1969 signified the best of that age’s hopes and dreams.

Bill Eppridge/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Michael’s Phelps’ win over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one hundredth of a second at the 2008 Olympics was a golden example of the photo finish.

Heinz Kluetmeier/Sports Illustrated/Getty

Egged on by the bogus claims of the outgoing 44th president, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an historic attempt to disrupt the tallying of electoral college votes.

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty

The Hubble Space Telescope’s photo known as Pillars of Creation captured the conditions in which new stars are born.

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

The post The 100 Most Important Photos Ever appeared first on LIFE.