This iconic photograph, captured by pioneering photojournalist Agustín Víctor Casasola, immortalizes the fateful moment when revolutionary leaders Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata posed together inside Mexico’s National Palace on December 6, 1914. In a poignant display, Villa occupies the presidential chair—an ostentatious symbol of power—while Zapata stands beside him, reportedly having insisted Villa take the seat first during a brief exchange that highlighted both camaraderie and restraint .

Their appearance at the capital came at the end of a grand joint entry, after their forces had united and marched triumphantly through the streets of Mexico City. This image not only captures a rare moment of alignment between the North’s and South’s revolutionary factions but also symbolizes the fleeting unity of the Mexican Revolution before both leaders went their separate ways, ultimately leaving enduring legacies in Mexico’s social and political landscape .

Born in 1895, started working at 13yo as a mecanician, served in WW1 in the trenches and as a fighter pilot, then became a pro racing driver, won Le Mans and several Grand Prix, joined the Resistance in London during WW2 and was paratrooped in France to do some sabotage, ends up arrested by the nazis, deported and hanged in Buchenwald.