Girls dressed in traditional costumes run as men throw water on them as part of Easter celebrations during a presentation to the media in Mezokovesd, Hungary, April 13, 2017. (Photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters)

Aerobatic aircrafts fly during a performance at the Airshow Zhengzhou 2017 in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province on April 27, 2017. The 5-day air show kicked off in Zhengzhou on Thursday, aiming to build a general aviation gathering center for business and communications. (Photo by Li An/Xinhua via ZUMA Wire)

A Hindu priest waits to perform prayers next to Tejas, India's first locally-built Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), before its induction into the Indian Air Force at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Airport in Bengaluru, India, July 1, 2016. (Photo by Abhishek N. Chinnappa/Reuters)

Participants take part in the annual New Year' s Day Parade in central London, United Kingdom on January 1, 2018. Reports state that 8,000 performers representing the London boroughs and countries from across the globe are parading along the streets of London's West End on New Year’s Day. (Photo by Tolga Akmen/AFP Photo)

Performers are reflected in a displayed vehicle before going onto the stage during the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing, China, April 29, 2016. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

People protest at the Boston Free Speech Rally in Boston, USA on August 19. 2017. With the Boston Free Speech rally was closed to the media (despite the Boston Common being a public space), a lot of the media’s coverage centred on the tensions within the larger counter-protest. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Reuters)

With temperatures soaring and summer well underway, countless Americans will be spending their Independence Day weekend at the beach. Here we revisit some classic images from the turn-of-the-century to the 1930's of vacations by the sea, from Coney Island to Santa Monica.

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.