I had the recent good fortune of helping the University of Missouri's College of Journalism order some prints from their Pictures of the Year International archives.
One order is now in Beijing for display as part of the Olympics, naturally featuring many Olympic highlights from over the years. The order I looked at yesterday is for display as part of the J-school's 100-year anniversary and is more on the news side. Shots of Babe Ruth, Iowa Jima, the "Dewey Defeats Truman" picture, Mother Theresa, and 46 more.
While looking through them all, I was simply awestruck. We see great photos every day, so sometimes can become a bit immune to the 'standard wedding shot'. It was a great reminder to me of the ability of great photographers to capture great memories and invoke great emotion in a manner that isn't possible with any other medium.
While they don't have an online gallery of the sets of images I was viewing, you can view their 2008 winners here and some of their archive of winners here.