While the lido was described as bringing “modernism to the masses” on the British coast it was just the latest example of a trend that had been developing since Victorian times – transforming seaside towns into resorts for leisure and entertainment. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the fashion was for local authorities to build great piers stretching from the promenade out into the sea. The Eastbourne Pier, pictured here in May 1931, was erected between 1866 and 1870 to an ingenious design by Eugenius Birch, which saw the structure sitting on special cups allowing the supporting struts to “move” in bad weather. Arranged on the pier's 1,000-foot length were kiosks, a theatre, a ballroom and a camera obscura. 1931. (Photo by Aerofilms Collection via “A History of Britain From Above”)

A boy sits on the back of a crocodile on May 19, 2018 at a pond in Bazoule in Burkina Faso, a village which happily shares its local pond with “sacred” crocodiles. Crocodiles may be one of the deadliest hunters in the animal kingdom, but in a small village in Burkina Faso it is not unusual to see someone sitting atop one of the fearsome reptiles. According to local legend, the startling relationship with the predators dates back to at least the 15 th century. The village was in the grip of an agonising drought until the crocodiles led women to a hidden pond where the population could slake their thirst. (Photo by Olympia de Maismont/AFP Photo)

Students training to be flight attendants hold books on their heads, chopsticks in their mouths, and papers in between their knees, as they take part in a standing posture practice at a vocational school in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, China May 4, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

An Iraqi woman and foreigners use pair of compact discs as a filter to watch the partial solar eclipse in war-torn Baghdad, 29 March 2006. Without access to proper equipment to protect their eyes from the sun's rays, eclipse watchers in Iraq used makeshift filters. The moon blotted out the sun over northwest Africa early Wednesday, turning day into night in a total solar eclipse as it swept a shadowy path from the outer tip of Brazil to the steppes of Mongolia. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/AFP Photo)

A rider holds on as a bull tries to throw him during the Bull Ride Spectacular on the first day of the 2014 Deni Ute Muster at the Play on the Plains Festival grounds on October 3, 2014 in Deniliquin, Australia. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

A performer practices her mermaid swim next to a shark in an aquarium after graduating from a mermaid workshop in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China December 16, 2016. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man holds a chicken before he performs the Kaparot ritual, where white chickens are slaughtered as a symbolic gesture of atonement, ahead of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement in Bnei Brak, Israel in Bnei Brak October 9, 2016. (Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Rohingya refugee sisters Nur Kaida (R) and Ruhana hug each other at their shelter at the Palongkhali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh December 21, 2017. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)