An armoured vehicle surrounded by Chicago cops at the time of the American depression, 1933. (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Kieron Connolly’s new book of photographs of more than 100 once-busy and often elegant buildings gives an idea of how the world might look if humankind disappeared. Here: Bodie, Mono County, California. Gold was discovered at Bodie in 1859 (just after the initial California gold rush) and it went from mining camp to boomtown. Its decline began in 1880, when word spread of new boomtowns elsewhere. The Standard Consolidated Mine closed in 1913, and four years later the Bodie Railway was abandoned. By 1940 the population was down to 40. Today, Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay as a visitor attraction. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

All the drugery of dishwashing in this three-times -a day task, which comes to the house wife who does her own house work, has been eliminated by the new dish washer shown in the photograph on April 25, 1921. It is the invention of a Cincinnati school teacher, who sought to make things a bit more pleasant for his wife. Incedently, his idea was worth 12,00 to him, for a manufacturing concern thought so much of the “dish-washer” they purchased the rights and will seek to add a little joy to thousands of other housewives. With the aid of only hot water, dishes placed in a wire rack and set into the drum are made clean and spotless in two minutes. (Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Palestinians flee areas of Rafah amid renewed Israeli strikes, southern Gaza Strip, 28 May 2024. More than 36,000 Palestinians and over 1,400 Israelis have been killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), since Hamas militants launched an attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip on 07 October 2023, and the Israeli operations in Gaza and the West Bank which followed it. (Photo by Haitham Imad/EPA)

Passengers with their pet dogs take a pet-friendly train on the Jinyidong Line of the Jinhua Rail Transit on June 22, 2025 in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province of China. (Photo by Shi Bufa/VCG via Getty Images)

A young boy lifts heavy bricks as he works at brick factory around Kathmandu valley. (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)

An Israeli policeman prevents a Palestinian man from entering the compound which houses al-Aqsa mosque, known by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City September 28, 2015. (Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters)

Residents wearing masks rest in the shade near a graffiti of a dragon, Friday, May 27, 2022, in Beijing. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)