Lightning illuminates a thundercloud as a storm front hits the North Sea region near Westerhever, northern Germany, on August 11, 2014. (Photo by Daniel Reinhardt/AFP Photo/DPA)

Travel photographer Amos Chapple recently crossed into Turkmenistan on a three-day transit visa and was able to photograph many of the sights and monuments in Ashgabat, the capital and largest city. Turkmenistan is a single-party country, a former Soviet state, run by a president at the center of a cult of personality.

Photo: A young couple leave the Alem Entertainment Center in Ashgabat. The current president has a history of breaking obscure records. In 2012 the wheel atop this complex was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel. The structure was built at a cost of $90m. (Photo by Amos Chapple via The Atlantic)

“A prototype lunar lander was destroyed on August 9, 2012, at Kennedy Space Center during its first free flight”. – James Dean via Florida Today

Photo: Morpheus Ground Level Hot Fire. Photo Date: April 2nd 2012. Location: VTB Flight Complex; Photographer: Joe Bibby

A protester holds a poster displaying the message “Get away UK” during an anti-British demonstration in the Iranian capital that resulted in a break in at the British Embassy on November 29, 2011 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by FarsNews/Getty Images)

Nyibol Lual, 13 years old, helps her family to prepare the land for cultivation on May 31, 2017, in Panthau, Northern Bahr al Ghazal, South Sudan. The family has a small land where they cultivate sorghum. An estimated 63 per cent of the population in Northern Bahr al Ghazal is experiencing severe food insecurity, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report. The situation is particularly bad in Aweil West and Aweil South counties, where the exhaustion of household food stocks and growing dependence on financially inaccessible markets have left the population facing Emergency levels of food insecurity. (Photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran/AFP Photo)

A Belarusian law enforcement officer approaches women, who react while sitting on the pavement during a rally of opposition supporters following the presidential election in Minsk, Belarus on August 10, 2020. Belarusian police clashed with protesters on Monday after the opposition accused President Alexander Lukashenko of rigging his re-election victory amid a chorus of criticism from Western leaders. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

May Matthews (left) and Romy Clark from Bonhams Edinburgh carry a carved wooden model of an Atlantic Salmon by Rogers Brookes (estimate £1,500-2,000) during a photo call for the upcoming Home and Interiors sale, and Sporting and Wildlife sale, at Bonhams, Edinburgh, on September 16, 2020. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

Russian people walk during heavy rain in Moscow, Russia on 17 September 2020. Over two hours a third of the monthly average rainfall fell in Moscow. (Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA/EFE)