No matter how you spell it or how you pronounce it, H2O is a wonder: a beautifully simple, simply beautiful element that, when all is said and done, means nothing less than life.
We drink it. We swim in it. We inhale it with the air we breathe, and exhale it when we sleep, when we talk, when we laugh, when we stand outside on a cold night watching the stars, our breath made visible. We sail on it, ski on it and whitewater raft on it. We are, to a large extent, made of it.
Our planet is a shining blue marble in the darkness of space because of it.
And now, today, we’re messing with it. The sheer number of human beings on Earth (seven billion, with another two billion likely by 2050) is adding unsustainable stress to the supply and the quality of fresh water all over the globe. While water is life, the limited—and in too many cases, nonexistent—availability of clean, potable water means lingering sickness and even death for countless people in scores of countries.
Here, LIFE.com offers a gallery celebrating the most wondrous of all the classic elements—a small, humble gesture of gratitude toward dihydrogen monoxide, without which we, and everything we know and love, would simply dry up and blow away.
Swimmer Kathy Flicker spits water in a swimming pool in 1962.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesMissionary priest Vincent Ferrer (left) and assistant Mahadev (right) splash in water from a new well on a model farm in India in 1968.Co Rentmeester—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesThirsty young football players drink water from a garden hose in Denver, Colorado, in 1939.Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesLinda Joy Young bathes in a sink, Pasadena, Calif., in 1951.Ed Clark—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA girl in a village on Saipan (Marianas Islands) carries a bottle of water in her arms and a baby on her back in 1944.W. Eugene Smith—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA little girl receiving tests gazes into pool containing baby ducks — an early use of animals as part of medical therapy, 1956.Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA sharecropper's son gets water from a pump on a farm in the Mississippi delta in 1937.Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA steelworker in Aliquippa, Penn., washes up at an outdoor pump in 1936.Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA Bald Eagle's bath in 1949 California.J. R. Eyerman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA soldier drives a Jeep out of the water in 1946.Thomas D. McAvoy—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesRehearsal for an underwater wedding, San Marcos, Texas, 1954.John Dominis—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesWater-proofing, 1948.Bernard Hoffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesWriting underwater with a pen, 1948.Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesWomen demonstrate the Porpoise Diving Fin, a streamlined 2-inch thick mahogany plank at the end of a tow rope, 1948.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesKathy Flicker dives at Princeton University's Dillon Gym pool in 1962.George Silk—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesA polar bear seen underwater at a London zoo in 1967.Terence Spencer—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesUnderwater ballet, 1945.Walter Sanders—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
