In this digital age, it’s easy to forget what it’s like to hold a newspaper in your hand. A physical newspaper brings a certain weight and finality to the news that’s greater than anything a phone or computer can possibly provide. The subjects of many historic news stories have been told and retold in countless books, documentaries and movies, but the covers themselves also made history. Here are some of the most powerful and shocking front page headlines of all time — covers that shook the nation and world with news that changed the course of history.
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| President John F. Kennedy’s assassination changed the course of American history, and newspaper headlines, including these from the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune on November 22, 1963, delivered the shocking news to the world. |
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| The original headline for the first edition of the New York Times on July 21, 1969, read “Men Land on Moon” when it went to press at 9.30 p.m. It was then updated at 10:58 p.m. to read “Man Walks on Moon” after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface at 10:56 p.m. EDT. (Buzz Aldrin would step out 19 minutes later.) Finally, when the late city edition went to press at 12:46 a.m., and both astronauts had walked on the moon, the headline was changed again to “Men Walk on Moon.” |
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| Elections are notoriously unpredictable, and on November 3, 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune learned that the hard way when it printed a newspaper with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” before the election results were official. Of course, that ended up being completely incorrect: President Harry S. Truman defeated his challenger Thomas Dewey by a margin of 303 to 189 electoral votes. Two days after the election, Truman gleefully posed with the erroneous headline in a now iconic photo. |
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| The death of a well-known member of the British royal family is always big news, but when it involved the “People’s Princess” being killed suddenly at the age of 36, it was something else entirely. When Diana, Princess of Wales, and her romantic partner Dodi Fayed got into a fatal car accident in Paris in August 1997, it made headlines around the world. One of the most iconic newspaper covers came from the United Kingdom’s Sunday Times on August 31, 1997. |
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| The events of September 11, 2001, shook the entire world, but the front page of the following day’s USA Today stands out for the amount of information it’s able to convey on one cover. The headline is simple and straightforward, and the bulleted subheadings provide additional, but concise, details. The two photos included are some of the most iconic from the day: one of the Twin Towers on fire, and the other of President George W. Bush learning about the attacks. |
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| In the spring of 1970, a group of students at Kent State University—located just south of Cleveland in Ohio—were demonstrating against the Vietnam War when members of the Ohio National Guard fired into the crowd, killing four students and injuring several more. This event set into motion a nationwide student strike at other universities. The cover of the next day’s Cleveland Plain Dealer provided a glimpse into the terror on campus that day, showing 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio screaming next to a body on the ground. |
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| More than 50 years ago, on August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon gave a televised evening address during which he resigned from office. Following the Watergate scandal, Nixon likely faced impeachment and made the decision to step down himself before that occurred. Newspaper headlines, including this one from the Washington Star-News, not only broke the news of the upcoming resignation, but also alerted people to the time of the televised address. |
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| When newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left-wing terrorist group, it was major news. But things got even stranger when, after a few weeks with the revolutionary cell, Hearst started sympathizing with the group and joined forces with them, in perhaps the most well-known case of Stockholm Syndrome. In September 1975, Hearst was taken into custody by the FBI for crimes she committed as part of the group, including a bank robbery. What makes this front page announcing her capture particularly interesting is the fact that her father, Randolph Hearst, was president of the San Francisco Examiner at the time. |
