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)

Liu Yang, China's first female astronaut, waves during a departure ceremony at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, on June 16, 2012. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters via The Atlantic)

Female North Korean soldiers parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of a truce in the 1950-1953 Korean War at Kim Il-sung Square, in Pyongyang. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

“William Hope (1863 – 8 March 1933) was a pioneer of so-called “spirit photography” (spirit photography is a type of photography whose primary attempt is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities, especially in ghost hunting). Based in Crewe, England, he was a member of the well known spiritualists group, the Crewe Circle”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Couple with a young female spirit.

Female Kurdish Peshmerga take part their graduation ceremony at a police academy in Zakho district of the Dohuk Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan province, Iraq March 30, 2016. (Photo by Ari Jalal/Reuters)

Anfisa, a twelve-year-old female chimpanzee, picks its nose at the Royev Ruchey Zoo in a suburb of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia on October 18, 2017. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Afghan female police cadets are seen during their graduation ceremony at Sivas Police Vocational Center Directorate in Sivas, Turkey on March 13, 2018. (Photo by Serhat Zafer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

These macro images by Alejandro Santillana are being showcased in the Insects Unlocked project at the University of Texas at Austin. Here: A female sweat bee. (Photo by Alejandro Santillana/Insects Unlocked/Cover Images)