15 creepy photos that will give you the chills

In the wee hours of July 17, 1918, Russia’s entire royal family, as well as several of their servants, was murdered, bringing a swift and violent end to a 300-year-old imperial dynasty. The family had been imprisoned by the Bolsheviks since February of 1917. before that, the patriarch of the family, Tsar Nicholas II, had made some ill-advised decisions, including leading the country into World War I in 1914, the same year that this photo was taken.

Check out these urban legends that turned out to be true.

While a dynasty fell in Russia, the deadly influenza pandemic was killing somewhere between 50 and 100 million people worldwide. Pictured here is a Red Cross truck moving the sick in October 1918.

On January 28, 1986, the tenth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart a mere 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, including a school teacher, Christa McAuliffe, who’d been selected from more than 11,000 applicants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project.

Here’s a reminder of what can happen when vaccines to crippling diseases aren’t available. In the first half of the 20th century, polio would arrive with summer, from where no one knew, striking unsuspecting victims without warning. The illness affected the respiratory systems of patients, who were kept in ‘iron lungs’. A vaccine was discovered in 1955. This photo, from the same year, is of an emergency polio ward at Haynes Memorial Hospital in Boston, USA.

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Source: RD.com