Construction workers take a lunch break on a steel beam atop the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, New York, September 29, 1932. In the background is the Chrysler Building. (Photo by AP Photo)

While the lido was described as bringing “modernism to the masses” on the British coast it was just the latest example of a trend that had been developing since Victorian times – transforming seaside towns into resorts for leisure and entertainment. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the fashion was for local authorities to build great piers stretching from the promenade out into the sea. The Eastbourne Pier, pictured here in May 1931, was erected between 1866 and 1870 to an ingenious design by Eugenius Birch, which saw the structure sitting on special cups allowing the supporting struts to “move” in bad weather. Arranged on the pier's 1,000-foot length were kiosks, a theatre, a ballroom and a camera obscura. 1931. (Photo by Aerofilms Collection via “A History of Britain From Above”)

These Arab recruits line up in a barracks square in the British Mandate of Palestine, on December 28, 1940, for their first drill under a British solider. Some 6,000 Palestinian Arabs signed up with the British Army during the course of World War II. (AP Photo)

French army deminers secure a helicopter in a hangar at the Gao airport, on February 9, 2013. Two Malian soldiers and four civilians have already been killed by landmines, and French troops are still fighting off what Paris called “residual jihadists” in reclaimed territory. (Photo by Pascal Guyot/AFP Photo via The Atlantic)

A Herero man holds the head of a freshly butchered cow, killed to supply meat for a funeral, 2012. (Photo by Jim Naughten, courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York)

A demonstrator with face painted in the colours of the Palestinian flag protests outside the Israeli Embassy in west London July 26, 2014. Foreign ministers from the United States, Europe and the Middle East called on Saturday for an extension of the 12-hour ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. (Photo by Luke MacGregor/Reuters)

Shell, which is the replica of the biggest detonated Soviet nuclear bomb AN-602 (Tsar-Bomb), is on display in Moscow, Russia, August 31, 2015. The shell is part of an exhibition organized by the state nuclear corporation Rosatom. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)