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Zeppelins were majestic skyliners, luxurious behemoths
that signified wealth and power. The arrival of these
ships was news, which is why Sam Shere of the Interna-
tional News Photos service was waiting in the rain at the
Lakehurst, N.J., Naval Air Station on May 6, 1937, for the
804-foot-long LZ 129 Hindenburg to drift in from Frank-
furt. Suddenly, as the assembled media watched, the grand
ship’s flammable hydrogen caught fire, causing it to spec-
tacularly burst into bright yellow flames and kill 36 people.
Shere was one of nearly two dozen still and newsreel pho-
tographers who scrambled to document the fast-moving
tragedy. But it is his image, with its stark immediacy and
horrible grandeur, that has endured as the most famous—
owing to its publication on front pages around the world
and in life and, more than three decades later, its use
on the cover of the first Led Zeppelin album. The crash
helped bring the age of the airships to a close, and Shere’s
powerful photograph of one of the world’s most formative
early air disasters persists as a cautionary reminder of how
human fallibility can lead to death and destruction. Almost
as famous as Shere’s photo is the anguished voice of Chi-
cago radio announcer Herbert Morrison, who cried as he
watched people tumbling through the air, “It is bursting
into flames... This is terrible. This is one of the worst ca-
tastrophes in the world... Oh, the humanity!”