Art, obsession, and identity
Ever since we were told to form a line, humanity has spent hours, sometimes days, queuing for something, be it to shop, vote, eat, or escape. Waiting in line became the new norm for many of us during the global coronavirus pandemic, and it's worth taking a closer look at this mostly orderly but sometimes chaotic social phenomenon.
Click through the gallery for a lineup of some famous and notorious queues throughout history.
In September 2022, hundreds of thousands of mourners began to line up to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II. As is tradition when the monarch dies, her coffin was lying in state at Westminster Hall, where members of the public could file through to say goodbye. The logistics alone were mind-boggling: an estimated 200,000 people visited Westminster Hall over a three-day period, and preparations were made for a line of up to nine miles (14.5 km) long. A careful route was mapped out for the extensive queue, with barriers and police stationed throughout. It stretched down London's South Bank along the River Thames, passing various landmarks like the London Eye and the Globe Theatre.
The long queues of voters during the historic general elections on April 27, 1994, in South Africa. The elections were the first in which citizens of all races were allowed to take part. Altogether, 19,726,579 votes were counted.
Screaming fans pictured in November 1963 form a 11,000-strong queue for Beatles tickets ahead of the Fab Four's Christmas concert at the Empire, in Liverpool. The line was 1.6 km (1 mile) long!
Some of the 1,400,000 hungry inhabitants of a bombed-out Hamburg line up clutching pails for soup in 1945 after the end of World War II.
Queues in Bedford Square, London, for the British Museum's exhibition of artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamen. Between March 29 and December 31, 1972, 1.6 million visitors passed through the exhibition doors.
People queued for over three hours in a line longer than a kilometer to pay their respects to Sir Winston Churchill as the great statesman lay in Westminster Hall, London. He had died on January 24, 1965.
Unemployed men wait in line for coffee and bread at a soup kitchen on 203 East 9th Street, New York, circa 1930. So-called soup kitchens and the queues they attracted were commonplace in the Depression-era United States.
Some of the longest queues formed by shoppers occur just after the launch of new Apple products. Here, a happy customer back in 2003 is one of the first to get her hands on the new iPhone 3G— after queuing for 13 hours outside a store on Oxford Street, London, to do so!
Music fans wait in line for rows of public toilets at the Woodstock Festival in Bethal, New York, in August 1969. Heavy rain would soon turn the ground into a quagmire.
British soldiers guided by the touch of their comrades line up at a field hospital after being blinded by mustard gas in World War I.
Children queue outside a Waterstones book shop in London on June 20, 2003, for the launch of 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,' in a scene that was repeated around the world.
A line of condemned captives await their fate during an auto-da-fé—the ritual of public penance of heretics and apostates—at a 1692 ceremony in Seville during the Spanish Inquisition.
Thousands of New Yorkers wait in line outside Morrisania Hospital in the Bronx in 1947 for vaccination against smallpox after an outbreak of the disease killed two people and infected several others.
Children line up waiting to be caned at the Field Lane Ragged and Industrial School in London. The squalid and overcrowded school provided inspiration for Charles Dickens as he was researching material for his novel, 'Oliver Twist' (1873). As of 2016, an estimated 128 countries have prohibited corporal punishment in schools.
Migrants and refugees mingle in a line together at a camp to register after crossing the Macedonian-Greek border near Gevgelija on September 16, 2015. In May 2016, Reuters reported that more than 10,000 migrants were settled on the border in what become Europe's largest refugee camp.
In a scene replicated around the world, laborers stand in a queue as they wait to receive their weekly wages. These workers are employed at the construction site of a shopping mall in Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi, India.
Between January 9 and February 3, 1963, 518,525 people waited in line for up to two hours to view Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the National gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Shoppers, some of them masked, queue outside a store in Watford, England, while observing social distancing recommendations, during the coronavirus outbreak.
This April 1, 2019, aerial view shows a queue of internally displaced persons waiting for supplies at the Picoco refugee camp in Beira after Cyclone Idai devastated the Mozambican coast. The cyclone was the largest ever to hit Africa.
Moviegoers, mostly women and children, line up in front of the Capitol Theater on Broadway in August 1939 for 'The Wizard of Oz.' The queue of 10,000 people surrounded the entire block.
Nothing changes. Here, guests arrive at the North American premiere of Marvel's 'Thor:The Dark World' at the El Capitan Theatre on November 4, 2013, in Hollywood, California.
Immigrants on Ellis Island in New York City wait patiently in line at the reception center to be processed before starting a new life in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, approximately 12 million immigrants passed through the inspection station.
Royal visits have always captured the imagination of the public. Back in 1821, the visit by Tsar Alexander I of Russia to the Saint Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg drew thousands, and long queues ensued.
What does Wimbledon tennis mean to you? Yep, rain, strawberries, and queues. Here, tennis fans line up for prized center court tickets, with many having camped out on the street overnight.
Children of stricken families, many of them orphans, queue for food served by volunteers wearing masks during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
Between 1991 and 2002 during the civil war in Sierra Leone, over 1,270 primary schools were destroyed. Today in this West African country, well organized children in uniform can be seen across the country every morning queuing for their lessons.
Migrants from poor Central American countries moving slowly towards the United States queue along the highway to get a ride to Guanajuato in central Mexico on November 11, 2018.
Bus queues have been around since, well, buses. Here, passengers line up to board an open-top bus in London during a public holiday in 1921.
Migrant workers and their families queue to buy train tickets at a railway station in India after the government imposed restrictions on public gatherings to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
See also: Almost history: events that nearly changed the world
History's famous and most notorious lines and queues
Thousands of Britons queued for miles through London to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth
LIFESTYLE Curiosity
Ever since we were told to form a line, humanity has spent hours, sometimes days, queuing for something, be it to shop, vote, eat, or escape. Waiting in line became the new norm for many of us during the global coronavirus pandemic, and it's worth taking a closer look at this mostly orderly but sometimes chaotic social phenomenon.
Click through the gallery for a lineup of some famous and notorious queues throughout history.