Athletes attend training session at the Ak Bulak Nordic Arena outside Almaty, Kazakhstan, July 16, 2015. Kazakhstan is aspiring to host the 2022 Winter Olympics but many in the Central Asian nation view the bid as yet another vanity project of long-ruling President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Almaty, the financial capital, will go head-to-head with the Chinese metropolis Beijing on Friday when the International Olympic Committee elects the winner at its session in Malaysia. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

A female swimmer reacts after finishing the competition in a pool carved from thick ice covering the Songhua River during the Harbin Ice Swimming Competition in the northern city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province, January 5, 2016. The swimming competition was held on the official launch day of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

Rohingya refugee children pictured in a camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 19, 2017. With a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims sparking accusations of ethnic cleansing from the United Nations and others, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday said her country does not fear international scrutiny and invited diplomats to see some areas for themselves. (Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

Mount Agung's eruption is seen next to a Balinese temple at Kubu sub-district in Karangasem Regency on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on November 26, 2017. Indonesia authorities raised the alert for the rumbling volcano to highest level on Monday and closed the international airport on tourist island of Bali stranding thousands of travelers. (Photo by Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP Photo)

Ramela Meseljevic, a 7 year-old girl born without both of her hands and one of her legs shorter than the other, writes during classes in the her school in Begov Han, Bosnia and Herzegovina December 2, 2015. International Day of Disabled Persons is observed on December 3 with the theme "Inclusion matters: access and empowerment of people of all abilities". (Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

Ralph Mirebs, an urban explorer and photographer in Russia, has revealed extraordinary photos of Soviet space shuttle prototypes gathering dust in an abandoned hangar. The abandoned hangar is located at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is still in operation today (with the close of NASA’s shuttle program, Russian Soyuz shuttles are the only way for astronauts to reach the International Space Station). The Buran prototype shuttles found by Mirebs, however, are from an earlier era – they are the last remnants of a space program that began in 1974 and was finally shuttered in 1993. (Photo by Ralph Mirebs/Exclusivepix Media)

The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. The Chernobyl disaster is the worst nuclear power plant accident in history in terms of cost and resulting deaths, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011). Photo: Graffiti of a crying baby on a wall, Chernobyl Power Plant, Chernobyl, Ukraine. (Photo by Hans Neleman/Getty Images)

Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal is an international mosaiculture competition held in Montréal, Canada. According to their website, mosaiculture “is a refined horticultural art that involves creating and mounting living artworks made primarily from plants with colourful foliage (generally annuals, and occasionally perennials).” The 2013 competition and exhibition opened June 22 and runs through September 29 at the Montréal Botanical Garden and features some 22,000 plant species and cultivars distributed throughout 10 exhibition greenhouses and 30 themed gardens.