A Buddhist monk salvages a statue of a Buddhist deity from a monastery around the famous Swayambhunath stupa after it was damaged by Saturday's earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, Thursday, April 30, 2015. In mere seconds, Saturday's earthquake devastated a swathe of Nepal. Three of the seven World Heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley have been severely damaged, including Durbar Square with pagodas and temples dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, according to UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Participants ride horses, hold spears and wear historic armoured suits of the Middle Ages as they compete during the Saint George international knight tournament in Moscow, Russia, May 3, 2015. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

A police officer sings as a hearse drives along a street as part of a campaign sponsored by the Colombian police and a funerary home to raise awareness during the new coronavirus pandemic in Envigado, Antioquia, Colombia, on April 1, 2020. More than 20,000 cases of COVID-19 were registered in Latin America and the Caribbean by Wednesday, according to an AFP tally using information provided by national health authorities and the World Health Organization. (Photo by Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP Photo)

A model presents a creation during the 2018 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in New York City, New York, U.S., November 8, 2018. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

Attendee Ana Niebla arrives in costume as Princess Penny Wise for opening night of the pop culture festival Comic Con International in San Diego, California, U.S., July 17, 2019. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

A model presents a creation from the Blonds Fall 2020 collection during New York Fashion Week in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., February 9, 2020. (Photo by Caitlin Ochs/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.