1 - Head Exchange

Did you know that in this famous picture of Abraham Lincoln, they put the head of the American president on someone else's body? The original portrait was of John Calhoun, a South Carolina political philosopher and statesman who became vice president during the administrations of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson - but not Lincoln!

2 - Composition

Another American president who had his head placed on someone else's body was Ulysses S. Grant. In fact, the above composition from the US Civil War era was created from several photos. The background, for example, is from an image showing prisoners captured in battle, and the horse-mounted guy is a general named Alexander M. Cook. Grant, who as you can see below in the portrait on the right just lent the same face:

3 - Erasing Disaffected

Joseph Stalin had no problem with “erasing” people he disliked - and he had it done even in his photos quite often. Here's a notorious example, where a Soviet commissioner named Nikolai Yezhov was removed from a portrait with Stalin after displeasing the dictator:

Nikolai was arrested in 1939 and executed some time later

Another classic example is what you can see below, in which the same image has been altered several times over the years to eliminate people joining Stalin's blacklist. Check out:

4 - Between friends

Stalin was not the only dictator to have people erased from his portraits. Adolf Hitler has also done this on several occasions - as you can see below, when Joseph Goebbels was removed from the original image. Look:

5 - Many faces

And since we're talking about Adolf Hitler, the following images were created by a team from the Office of Strategic Services, the agency that later gave rise to the CIA, at the end of World War II. The idea was to imagine how the Nazi could change his appearance if he could escape Germany.

The selection below was also created at the end of the conflict, but by the staff of a Canadian newspaper:

6 - Small adjustment

Pay attention to the following photo. She had a discreet little edit ...

In the original version, the soldier helping what is holding the Soviet flag over the Reichstag apparently had a watch on each wrist. It is said that one of them was actually a compass - but both would have been erased so as not to convey the idea that the Soviet military was looting the German capital. Look:

7 - Taking a little sleep

Have you ever seen the following picture, in which John Lennon apparently seems to be having a good sleep with Che Guevara? In fact, the original portrait shows the former Beatle playing alongside guitarist Wayne Gabriel, but someone had the idea to put the face of the Cuban revolutionary in the picture.

The assembly is very convincing, don't you think?

8 - Assembly

The following image actually shows two separate photos that were combined to give the photographer a more dramatic result. The scenes were clicked on by Brian Walski as a British soldier asked Iraqi civilians to stay down and protect themselves.

9 - Accidental tourist

The image you can see below viralized shortly after the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, and supposedly show a tourist being photographed just as one of the planes is about to hit the building. However, the guy in the picture - a Hungarian named Péter Guzli - turned out to be a joke he had made (in bad taste!) For some friends.

10 - The Upside Down Book

Who has never seen the famous George W. Bush picture in which he appears holding a book upside down while visiting a preschool in Houston, Texas! For the - then - US president never made the gaffe of trying to read the book upside down, and the image was manipulated to make it look stupid.

11 - Shark Food

The following photo shows a couple who were allegedly surprised by a huge white shark while diving in Australia. But you don't have to worry about divers, because the image is just a montage and no one became food of the big fish.

12 - Bait

And since we're talking about alleged shark attacks ... The image below went viral in the early 2000s and even today appears from time to time in amazing photo lists. However, the scene was created from two different portraits, one of the military man hanging from a ladder attached to the Black Hawk, and another of a white shark jumping into the sea.

* The above list is based on an article by Adrian Willings from the Pocket Link portal.

* Posted on 3/3/2017