Arapaima photo from a Thai amusing picture site.

Idolomantis diabolica

Young man identified as Billy the Kid (on left) playing croquet with other regulators, Summer 1878.

Fox News:

A rare coin dealer in California has concluded that a grainy image of legendary gunman Billy the Kid playing croquet is the real thing and could be worth as much as $5 million.

That is not bad for a photo purchased by Randy Guijarro of Freemont, Calif. for $2 as a part of a miscellaneous lot at a Fresno junk shop in 2010… The company is negotiating a private sale of the photo. …

The 4×5-inch tintype – which depicts Billy the Kid and several members of his gang, The Regulators, relaxing in the summer of 1878 – will be the subject of a two-hour documentary airing Sunday on the National Geographic Channel.

Taken just one month after the tumultuous Lincoln County War came to an end, it offers a rare window into the lives of these gunmen. Rather than a threatening outlaw, Billy the Kid seems to be enjoying some downtime following… a wedding.

Kagin’s web-site.

This Life magazine photo, taken at Loiano, Italy in April 1945, is a closeup by internationally-famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White of the plexiglass grip of Lieutenant John Ernser’s .45 pistol containing a photo of his girlfriend. Ernser, age 26, was commanding an infantry platoon engaged in attacking fortified German positions.

The availability of acrylic plexiglass from the canopies of crashed or shot-down aircraft during WWII led to a common practice by American troops of replacing the original standard-issue grips on pistols or fighting knives with clear plexiglass replacements over photographs.

If you were not killing an enemy soldier with the modified weapon, you could stare at the image of your girlfriend and dream of home.

Below is a captured German trench knife (from my own collection) which has had its blade chromed and which has a girlfriend photo on one side, and two male photos on the other side.

Allegedly observed crossing Route 128 in Northeastern Massachusetts.

A retired soldier sells matches on the street in Canterbury, Kent, 1928.

England in 1928.

Wikipedia tells us that the life expectancy for African lions in the wild is 10-14. The male lion taken by Dr. Walter Palmer recently in Zimbabwe, known as “Cecil” by the media, was 13.

Aged lions do not die in bed in a retirement home surrounded by solicitous animated friends. Bad things happen to aged lions as this photo collection on Clash Daily demonstrates.

Note the human cries of “Scheiße!”

There is a snow leopard stalking these bharal blue sheep in this photograph taken in the Himalayas by Ingrid Vandyke. Click on the image, and try locating it in the larger version.

If you can’t find it, the Daily Mail has even bigger images and finally points it out.,