ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli looks on after landing back on Earth from their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft on May 24, 2011 in Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The mission of the Soyuz TMA-20 was launched last December to the International Space Station with the flight engineers Catherine Coleman from the United States, Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. The next expedition is expected to launch this June. (Photo by Stephane Corvaja/ESA via Getty Images)

Revellers celebrate New Year's Day in central Moscow, Russia, January 1, 2016. (Photo by Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters)

“Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (August 30 1863 Russian Empire – September 27, 1944 Paris, France) was a Russian chemist and photographer. He is best known for his pioneering work in color photography of early 20th-century Russia”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Dinner during haying. Russian Empire, Novgorod province, county Cherepovets, 1909. (Photos by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky via US Library of Congress and Prokudin-Gorsky.org)

P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews). Enjoy.

Two brides kiss during their wedding ceremony to each other at the wedding registry office in St. Petersburg November 7, 2014. The two St. Petersburg women married in the official city ceremony last week, seemingly circumventing Russia's ban on same-s*x marriages. One of the brides was born a man but is undergoing hormone therapy and considers herself a woman. Though her male passport identity ensured the marriage was legal by Russian law, a St. Petersburg lawmaker has vowed to nullify their wedding. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying Lomonosov, Aist-2D and SamSat-218 satellites lifts off from the launch pad at the new Vostochny Cosmodrome outside the city of Uglegorsk, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the city of Blagoveshchensk in the far eastern Amur region Thursday, April 28, 2016. The launch of the first rocket from Russia's new space facility has been delayed after a last-minute problem. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool Photo via AP Photo)

A boy plays with a toy plane on the eve of a solar eclipse, in La Higuera, Coquimbo Region, in the Atacama desert about 580 km north of Santiago, on July 1, 2019. A total solar eclipse will be visible from small parts of Chile and Argentina on July 2. (Photo by Martin Bernetti/AFP Photo)

Lulu, her Playa name, falls into a foam pit as approximately 70,000 people from all over the world gather for the 30th annual Burning Man arts and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, U.S. September 1, 2016. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

A hat and boots belonging to a volunteer with the Israeli Antique Authority are seen inside the Cave of the Skulls, an excavation site in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, Israel June 1, 2016. A team of volunteers and archaeologists are searching for remains of The Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the oldest known Hebrew texts, in a national bid, initiated by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), to prevent the robbery of such important artefacts and once found to hand them over to the state for preservation. (Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)