A man walks near a boat which has capsized due to strong winds in Istanbul on November 30, 2021. Strong winds continue to blow across Istanbul where the Bosphorus strait is temporarily closed to boat traffic. Four people were killed and dozens injured on Monday in Istanbul, which was hit by high winds. (Photo by Yasin Akgul/AFP Photo)

Student of Meiji University Yuki Hou licks a screen of Taste the TV (TTTV), a prototype lickable TV screen that can imitate the flavours of various foods, during its demonstration at the university in Tokyo, Japan, December 22, 2021. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

It has become tradition in Wigan in Greater Manchester, United Kingdom for residents to go out on the town in fancy dress for Boxing Day on Sunday, December 26, 2021. Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide. (Photo by Joel Goodman/London News Pictures)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)

“Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian-born, naturalized French, later naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1934 and a naturalized US citizen in 1945. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Composer Igor Stravinsky (right) and impresario Sergei Diaghilev in Seville during their Ballets Russes collaboration. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1921

“MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on roll-off (RORO) car and passenger ferry owned by Townsend Thoresen. She was one of three ships commissioned by the company to operate on the Dover–Calais route across the English Channel. The ferry capsized on the night of 6 March 1987, moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, killing 193 passengers and crew. This was the deadliest maritime disaster involving a British ship in peacetime since the sinking of the Iolaire in 1919”. – Wikipedia

Photo: The wreck of the Herald of Free Enterprise, which capsized near Zeebrugge on the 6th of March 1987. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1987

Members of the Edo Firemanship Preservation Association balance on top of bamboo ladders during a demonstration at the New Year's fire review held by the Tokyo Fire Department in Tokyo, Japan, 06 January 2016. Some 2,800 firefighters perform various emergency rescue and firefighting demonstrations in an effort to promote the prevention of fire and disaster in the annual event. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ota/EPA)

Drastic inequality is by no means new in New York. Jacob A. Riis was called a muckraker after he chose to spotlight the city’s poverty at the turn of the 20th century by photographing it. Here: Sweatshop in Hester Street, 1889-1890. (Photo by Jacob A. Riis/Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roger William Riis)