Maintenance engineer Darren Unsworth cleans one of the crystal Edwardian chandeliers that illuminate Blackpool Tower Ballroom on January 16, 2012 in Blackpool, England. Blackpool's famous Tower Ballroom is undergoing an annual spring clean which includes lowering the ornate chandeliers where each shard of crystal is cleaned for the coming season of dancing. The dance floor consisting of 30,602 blocks of mahogany, oak and walnut is also sanded and polished to give the perfect dance floor. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Actor Matthew Settle walks the runway at the 9th Annual 'Dressed To Kilt' charity fashion show at Hammerstein Ballroom on April 5, 2011 in New York City.

ABC's “Dancing with the Stars”, Season 30 stars American Latin and ballroom dancer and choreographer Jenna Johnson (L) and American dancer, singer, actress, and YouTube personality JoJo Siwa on September 17, 2021. (Maarten de Boer/ABC via Getty Images)

There are many types of collections. Some are formed by purposefully collecting certain objects, such as stamps or coins. However, some collections are only a byproduct of an obsession, a quirk of mind. For example, Paul Brockmann got into the habit of buying his girlfriend and later his wife a dress every time they went ballroom dancing. It might seem excessive to some, but it was his way of showing his affection. Overtime, this collection grew to be enormous, counting 55,000 dresses in total. Basic math tells us that either they went ballroom dancing three times per day for every day of their lives, or he bought them in huge bundles every time.

A punks sticks out his tongue at the start of the annual Rebellion Punk Rock Festival on August 4, 2011 in Blackpool, England. This weekend a clash of musical cultures hits the famous seaside town as pogoing punks attending the annual Rebellion Festival at The Winter Gardens come shoulder to shoulder with traditional holidaymakers and the waltzing dancers of the Tower Ballroom. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Grand banqueting halls, opulent lobbies and vast ballrooms; you could easily be forgiven for thinking this was a collection of photographs was documenting some of Europe’s grandest hotels. However, a closer look will reveal the majestic rooms to be engulfed in swathes of dust and moss; hotels that once hosted royals and high society abandoned to the elements. This is the latest result of urban exploration photography, going beyond “no entry” signs to capture images of dilapidated buildings across Europe. IT worker Thomas Windisch, from Graz in Austria, indulged his passion for photography by traveling across the continent, visiting over 100 abandoned hotels along the way. Here: inside a hotel in Austria. (Photo by Thomas Windisch/Caters News)

Italian-American actress and model Julia Fox is seen on September 07, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

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”)