Performers dressed as Pikachu, the popular animation Pokemon series character, perform in the Pikachu parade in Yokohama on August 7, 2016. Some 50 life-size Pikachu characters, the most famous from the Pokemon game, marched along the city’s waterfront street as visitors took mobile phone pictures and videos of them in scorching sunshine. Some participants said they attended the event to search for rare characters of Pokemon – a word short for “pocket monster” – for the megahit smartphone app, which was launched in several countries around the world last month. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

Two daredevil photographers have risked their lives to become the first people to capture the explosive moment fiery lava crashes into the sea – while in the water themselves. Fearless duo Nick Selway, 28, and pal CJ Kale, 35, brave baking hot 110F (43,3C) waters to snap the amazing images – standing just feet away from scalding heat and floating lava bombs. Using a simple protective casing around their cameras, and donning just swimming shorts and flippers, they bob up and down with the water as the surf washes over their heads. (Photo by Nick Selway/CJ Kale/Caters News Agency)

“A Hadaka Matsuri (“Naked Festival”) is a type of Japanese festival, or matsuri, in which participants wear a minimum amount of clothing; usually just a Japanese loincloth (called fundoshi), sometimes with a short happi coat, and rarely completely naked. Whatever the clothing, it is considered to be above vulgar, or everyday, undergarments, and on the level of holy Japanese shrine attire. Naked festivals are held in dozens of places throughout Japan every year, usually in the summer or winter. The most famous festival is held in Okayama, where the festival originated. Every year, over 9,000 men participate in this festival”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Japanese men wear loincloths as they splash about in freezing cold water during Saidaiji Naked Festival, at Saidaiji Temple on February 18, 2012 in Okayama, Japan. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)

Ahmad Sayed Rahman, a five-year-old Afghan boy who lost his right leg when he was hit by a bullet in the crossfire of a battle, dances with his prosthetic leg at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) hospital for war victims and the disabled, in Kabul on May 7, 2019. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

In 1949, LIFE magazine sent famed photographer Nina Leen to document the daily life of a sassy troupe of young women who had run off and joined the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, Fla. What developed was a portrait of a sisterhood formed over acrobatics that mixed high-flying wire acts with fashionable high-waisted shorts. Sarasota was once considered “the home of the American circus”. Here: an aerialist smoking while rehearsing for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, FL in 1949. (Photo By Nina Leen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

How sure are you of your geographical knowledge? Buzzfeed recently put Americans’ geographical knowledge to the test with a survey in which participants had to write in countries’ names on a blank European political map. Unfortunately, they didn’t fare too well, but some of their responses are hilarious (or hilariously mis-informed). But don’t be so quick to judge Americans – when Buzzfeed posted a similar survey testing Brits’ knowledge of the 50 United States, they also came up short. On the one hand, knowing a country’s states is different from knowing independent countries, but on the other, some U.S. states are larger than some European nations, and some U.S. states have larger economies than some European nations.

This undated image provided by World View shows World View capsule and balloon spacecraft that will rise to 100,000 feet above Earth for passengers to see the curvature of the planet and the blackness of space. Space tourism companies are employing designs including winged vehicles, vertical rockets with capsules and high-altitude balloons. While developers envision ultimately taking people to orbiting habitats, the moon or beyond, the immediate future involves short flights into or near the lowest reaches of space without going into orbit. (Photo by World View via AP Photo)

A Turkana man and a boy carrying a gun look on as a G3 battle rifle hangs from a structure used to dry fish at a fishing camp on the shores of Lake Turkana, some kilometres from Todonyang near the Kenya-Ethiopia border in northwestern Kenya October 12, 2013The Turkana are traditionally nomadic pastoralists, but they have seen the pasture that they need to feed their herds suffer from recurring droughts and many have turned to fishing. However, Lake Turkana is overfished, and scarcity of food and pastureland is fuelling long-standing conflict with Ethiopian indigenous Dhaasanac, who have seen grazing grounds squeezed by large-scale government agricultural schemes in southern Ethiopia. The Dhaasanac now venture ever deeper into Kenyan territory in search of fish and grass, clashing with neighbours. Fighting between the communities has a long history, but the conflict has become ever more fatal as automatic weapons from other regional conflicts seep into the area. While the Turkana region is short of basics like grass and ground-water, it contains other resources including oil reserves and massive, newly discovered underground aquifers. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)