A “Federahannes”, a jester figure from Rottweil, participates in the “Narrensprung” (jester jump) parade in Rottweil, southern Germany, Monday, February 27, 2016. About 4000 jesters paraded through the city among thousands of spectators. The Rottweil Narrensprung is the highlight of the Swabian-Alemannic Fastnacht and one of the traditional pre-Lenten carnival parades in southwestern Germany. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

In 1949, LIFE magazine sent famed photographer Nina Leen to document the daily life of a sassy troupe of young women who had run off and joined the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, Fla. What developed was a portrait of a sisterhood formed over acrobatics that mixed high-flying wire acts with fashionable high-waisted shorts. Sarasota was once considered “the home of the American circus”. Here: an aerialist smoking while rehearsing for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, FL in 1949. (Photo By Nina Leen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

In this March 22, 1975 file photo, a refugee clutches a baby as a government helicopter gunship carries them away near Tuy Hoa, Vietnam, 235 miles northeast of Saigon. They were among thousands fleeing from Communist advances. AP Photographer Nick Ut will be retiring from the AP in March 2017 after 51 years of taking photographs from the front lines of the Vietnam War to the red carpets of Hollywood. (Photo by Nick Ut/AP Photo)

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.

Wedges of an orange generate enough current and electrical juice – 3.5 volts – to power an LED. The fruit’s citric acid helps electrons flow from galvanized nails to copper wire in this 14-hour exposure. This image was published in September’s Visions of Earth, a trio of photos that appear in each issue of National Geographic. (Photo by Caleb Charland/National Geographic)

An Indian Sikh Nihang, or warrior, performs Gatka martial arts skills during a procession at the Golden Temple in Amritsar on January 6, 2014, as part of birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Gobind Singh. The birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh guru, is marked on January 6. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

Nine year old girl Barsati reacts while walking on a tightrope in Mumbai on February 11, 2014. Barsati, and her younger brother Rajababu, (4) earn an average of around 2000 rupees (32 dollars) per day from pedestrians and tourists performing various acts on the tightrope near the city's iconic landmark Gateway of India. (Photo by Indranil Mukherjee/AFP Photo)