September 12, 1940. A warm afternoon in southwestern France. As two schoolboys hunt rabbits on a ridge covered with pine, oak, and blackberry brambles, their dog chases a hare down a hole beside a downed tree. Widening the hole, removing rocks, the boys follow -- and enter not merely another world, but another time. Underground, they discover "a Versailles of prehistory" -- a series of caves, today collectively known as Lascaux, boasting wall paintings up to 18,000 years old. In 1947, LIFE's Ralph Morse went to Lascaux, and became the first photographer to ever document the astonishing, vibrant paintings. Here, on the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the cave and its treasures, in a gallery featuring rare and never-published photographs, Morse -- still vibrant himself at 93 -- shares with LIFE.com his memories of what it was like to encounter the long-hidden, strikingly lifelike handiwork of a vanished people: the Cro-Magnon
Albert Einstein, the genius physicist whose theories changed our ideas of how the universe works, died 55 years ago, on April 18, 1955, of heart failure. He was 76. His funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs, and only one photographer managed to capture the events of that extraordinary day: LIFE magazine's Ralph Morse. Armed with his camera and a case of scotch -- to open doors and loosen tongues -- Morse compiled a quietly intense record of an icon's passing. But aside from one now-famous image (above), the pictures Morse took that day were never published. At the request of Einstein's son, who asked that the family's privacy be respected while they mourned, LIFE decided not to run the full story, and for 55 years Morse's photographs lay unseen and forgotten.
^^ sad...really
i had kinda hope speakman had died, what a pity
Scary guy
