Palestinians inspect the damage caused by Israeli attacks in Gaza City on January 9, 2025. (Photo by APAImages/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A Palestinian woman flashes a V-sign towards Israeli troops during an army raid in the Tulkarem refugee camp, West Bank, Wednesday, January 17, 2024. An Israeli airstrike killed four Palestinians during a raid in the West Bank. The military says it targeted a group of militants who had opened fire and were throwing explosives at Israeli soldiers in the Tulkarem refugee camp. The Palestinian Health Ministry says four people were killed. (Photo by Nasser Nasser/AP Photo)

A man rides a motorcycle on a flooded street following heavy rains in Sanaa, Yemen on April 22, 2024. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

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”)

A woman feeds cats at Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, on August 28, 2024. (Photo by Ahmed Saad/Reuters)

In this photo taken Wednesday, April 30, 2014, a dragonfly sits on the nose of a Gharial, rare crocodile-like creatures, in the River Chambal near Bhopepura village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The narrow 250-mile stretch of the Chambal is a place of crocodiles and jackals, of river dolphins and the occasional wolf. Hundreds of species of birds, storks, geese, babblers, larks, falcons and so many more, nest along the river. Endangered birds lay small speckled eggs in tiny pits they dig in the sandbars. Gharials, rare crocodile-like creatures that look like they swaggered out of the Mesozoic Era, are commonplace here and nowhere else. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

People jump into a swimming pool seeking relief from the summer heat, in Sanaa, Yemen on August 7, 2025. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

People attend the 49th annual New York City Gay Pride Parade in New York, New York, USA on 24 June 2018. (Photo by Erik Pendzich/Rex Features/Shutterstock)