Dr. Hannah Cobb from The University of Manchester looks at a viking sword during a viewing at CFA Archaeology of artefacts discovered from the first fully intact Viking boat burial site on October 18, 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

A 12th century manuscript of The Old Testament sits in the Chained Library of Hereford Cathedral after it's annual spring clean on January 24, 2012 in Hereford, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Hindu women perform a ritual known as Aarti around a Shivling (a symbol of Lord Shiva) on the last day of Jaya Parvati Vrat festival in Ahmedabad, India, July 10, 2017. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

A small series by illustration Alex Solis remembering those things that used to rule the world.

This is Raymond, an orphaned koala that was found abandoned beside a road in Brisbane, Australia. He was named after the man who found him.

Anti-nuclear activists demonstrate during a “Say to Goodbye to Nuclear Energy” protest on September 11, 2011 in Kobe, Japan. Japan is marking sixth months since a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck Japan offshore on March 11 at 2:46pm local time, triggering a tsunami wave of up to ten metres which engulfed large parts of north-eastern Japan and also damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing the worst nuclear crisis in decades. The current number of dead and missing is reportedly estimated to be 22,900. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)

“The telectroscope (also referred to as “electroscope”) was the first non-working prototype (i.e. conceptual model) of a television or videophone system. The term was used in the 19th century to describe science-based systems of distant seeing. The name and its concept came into being not long after the telephone was patented in 1876, and its original concept evolved from that of remote facsimile reproductions onto paper, into the live viewing of remote images”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Visitors to London wave to people they can see in New York as they peer through the Telectroscope situated by Tower Bridge on May 23, 2008 in London, England. The device named the Telectroscope provides a live visual link up between London and New York, to another Telectroscope by Brooklyn Bridge. (Photo by Cate Gillon/Getty Images)