Pilgrims rest on June 6, 2019 in Villamanrique, during a pilgrimage to the village of El Rocio. El Rocio pilgrimage, the largest in Spain, gathers hundreds of thousands of devotees in traditional outfits converging in a burst of colour as they make their way on horseback and on board decorated carriages across the Andalusian countryside. (Photo by Cristina Quicler/AFP Photo)

Actor Mike Lane, standing six feet 10 inches in his stocking feet, makes a perfect monster as he carries actress Nancy Knox down the stairs into Frankenstein's dungeon, February 28, 1958. They have featured parts in the upcoming Boris Karloff movie “Frankenstein 1970”. (Photo by David F. Smith/AP Photo)

A model is photographed as she gets her make up done backstage prior to Dino Alves's runway show during the 51st Lisbon Fashion Week, in Lisbon, Portugal, 14 October 2018. (Photo by Jose Sena Goulao/EPA/EFE)

A competitor makes their way through fire as they take part in the Tough Guy endurance event near Wolverhampton, central England, on January 27, 2019. The Tough Guy event challenges hundreds of competitors to run a gruelling course whilst negotiating up to 300 obstacles including water, fire, and tunnels. (Photo by Oli Scarff/AFP Photo)

Dancers from the McLoughlin school in Glasgow, Scotland put on make-up as they get ready to participate in the 2022 World Irish Dancing Championships on its 50th anniversary, in Belfast, Northern Ireland on April 14, 2022. (Photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

How sure are you of your geographical knowledge? Buzzfeed recently put Americans’ geographical knowledge to the test with a survey in which participants had to write in countries’ names on a blank European political map. Unfortunately, they didn’t fare too well, but some of their responses are hilarious (or hilariously mis-informed). But don’t be so quick to judge Americans – when Buzzfeed posted a similar survey testing Brits’ knowledge of the 50 United States, they also came up short. On the one hand, knowing a country’s states is different from knowing independent countries, but on the other, some U.S. states are larger than some European nations, and some U.S. states have larger economies than some European nations.