“Sixteen pilot whales died when they became stranded at Pittenweem, near St Andrews, on Sunday morning, Forth Coastguard said.

The mammals were part of a group of 26, of which 10 were refloated and returned to sea by vets and more than 50 volunteers from the emergency services and British Divers Marine Life Rescue. The whales were kept cool and hydrated with wet blankets and sheets on the shore”. – WalesOnline

Photo: Emergency service personnel walk near beached whales as they continue in their rescue attempt to save a large number of pilot whales who have beached on September 1, 2012 in Pittenweem, Scotland. A number of whales have died after being stranded on the east coast of Scotland between Anstruther and Pittenweem. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell)

“A Double Eagle is a gold coin of the United States with a denomination of $20. (Its gold content of 0.9675 troy oz was worth $20 at the then official price of $20.67/oz). The coins are made from a 90% gold (0.900 fine = 21.6 kt) and 10% copper alloy”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A “Double Eagle” gold twenty dollar coin is displayed above a catalogue picture showing the reverse side of the coin at Goldsmith's Hall on March 2, 2012 in London, England. Nearly half a million of these coins were originally minted in the midst of the Great Depression in the US. Only 13 are known today after the rest were melted down before they ever left the US Mint, sacrificed as part of a strategy to stabalise the American economy. In 2002 a Double Eagle sold at auction for $7.6 million. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

From house breaking in Johannesburg to hippos on the loose in Tbilisi to rioters attacking a policewoman in Burundi, Reuters photographers tell the story behind some of the most iconic pictures of the year. Here: Protesters drag a female police officer accused of shooting a protester in the Buterere neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi, May 12, 2015. Goran Tomasevic: Protesters started throwing stones at a group of police, who then started to run away. The policewoman in the photo, Medikintos Inabeza, 33, got left behind and then some protesters started to push her, saying that she had shot a female protestor in the stomach with an AK47 rifle. I didn't see anything of that. There were 5 or 10 protesters pushing the policewoman at first, then others came and joined in. Up to 20 or 30 protesters were surrounding her at one point. The protesters kicked and beat her very badly; I also saw a couple of knives. I thought they were going to kill her... (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A woman cries while sitting on a road amid the destroyed city of Natori, Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan March 13, 2011, after a massive earthquake and tsunami. Five years on from the tsunami that triggered meltdowns at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, the page is anything but turned. A magnitude 9 earthquake and towering tsunami on March 11, 2011 killed nearly 16,000 people along Japan's northeastern coast and left more than 2,500 missing. The 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami swept away everything in its path, including houses, ships, cars and farm buildings. (Photo by Asahi Shimbun/Reuters)

A man tries to photograph the interior of the driver's cab belonging to Eurostar's new Siemens e320 train at St Pancras station in central London, November 13, 2014. Eurostar, the company that runs passenger trains through the Channel tunnel between London and Paris, said it would buy seven additional e320 trains from Siemens for about 300 million pounds ($473 million). The company placed an order for 10 new trains in 2010, the first of which is due to enter commercial service next year, enabling the company to add new routes. (Photo by Andrew Winning/Reuters)

“The Zulu are the largest South African ethnic group, with an estimated 10–11 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique. Their language, Zulu, is a Bantu language; more specifically, part of the Nguni subgroup. The Zulu Kingdom played a major role in South African history during the 19th and 20th centuries. Under apartheid, Zulu people were classed as third-class citizens and suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination. They remain today the most numerous ethnic group in South Africa, and now have equal rights along with all other citizens”. – Wikipedia.

Photo: A Zulu woman playing the piano while a group of others sit and listen (to put it briefly, Englishmen scoff over Zulu). South Africa, circa 1925. (Photo by General Photographic Agency)

A miner with a donkey makes his way through the low and narrow tunnel leading out of a coal mine in Choa Saidan Shah in Punjab province, April 29, 2014. Workers at this mine in Choa Saidan Shah dig coal with pick axes, break it up and load it onto donkeys to be transported to the surface. Employed by private contractors, a team of four workers can dig about a ton of coal a day, for which they earn around $10 to be split between them. The coalmine is in the heart of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous and richest province, but the labourers mostly come from the poorer neighbouring region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. (Photo by Sara Farid/Reuters)

Women sing and dance as children gather in the background during the so-called parade of children's troops in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia, May 14, 2015. About 500 children aged from 4 to 10, members of youth military patriotic clubs, honor guards and paratroopers took part in the event, which was organized under the guidance of Commander of Southern Military District Colonel-General Alexander Galkin and was held to honor World War Two veterans and mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, according to local media. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)