Yingluck Shinawatra speaks with members of Parliament as the Thai parliament officially elected her as the country's first female Prime Minister August 5, 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand. In the lower house, 296 of the legislature's 500 members voted for Yingluck. Three members voted against and 197 abstained.Thai's cast their ballots back on July 3, 2011. Yingluck Shinawatra, is the younger sister of fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup. This is Thailand's 4th election on 7 years as the country continues on a bumpy road to democracy.
(Photo by Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)

A woman at Foyles bookshop looks at a copy of J. K. Rowling's latest novel “The Casual Vacancy” which has gone on sale today starting at 8:00 am on September 27, 2012 in London, England. “The Casual Vacancy” is J. K. Rowling's first book aimed at an adult readership and is centered on a parish council election in a small West Country town. (Photo by Oli Scarf)

Chinese security stands near a Long March 2F rocket carrying Tiangong-1, China's first unmanned space module, stands at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 28, 2011 in Jiuquan, Gansu Province of China. Tiangong-1,a small unmanned space lab, will be launched at 21:19 (Beijing time) on September 29, 2011, and will attempt a docking procedure with a Shenzhou 8 spacecraft later in the mission. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

A view of the screen of a ZaZZZ vending machine that contains cannabis flower, hemp-oil energy drinks, and other merchandise at Seattle Caregivers, a medical marijuana dispensary, in Seattle, Washington February 3, 2015. Vending machines selling medical marijuana opened for business in Seattle on Tuesday, in what the company providing them billed as a first-in-the-state innovation that it expects to expand to other cities and states where pot is legal as medicine. (Photo by David Ryder/Reuters)

The second of six C-17 Globemaster III airlifters for the United Arab Emirates Air Force and Air Defence is being assembled at the Boeing assembly facility on May 10, 2011 in Long Beach, California. The UAE will take delivery of three more C-17s this year and two in 2012 as it modernizes its airlift capabilities. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Michael Olivant, a Times reader, saw a chance to contribute when a Dalmatian pelican landed on his wife’s head at Lake Kerkini in northern Greece in the first decade of February 2025. (Photo by Michael Olivant/The Times)

Senior hurricane forecaster Dr. Jack Beven studies computer models as he tracks Tropical Storm Arlene at the National Hurricane Center on June 29, 2011 in Miami, Florida. Arlene is the first named storm of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season and is moving at 8 mph, packing sustained winds of 50 mph as it heads towards the east-central coast of Mexico. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Hello Kitty and Jen Lyons of Mrs. Bella's Dolls attend The First Ever Hello Kitty Beauty Hotel Suite presented by Sephora at Maison 140 on December 10, 2011 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for Sephora)