Christie's employee Natalie McFarlane holds an armature model of King Kong used in the 1933 film at Christie's on November 19, 2009 in London. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

A Border Collie competes in the Flyball during The World Dog Games at Acer Arena on October 31, 2009 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

These pictures reveal the crumbling ruins of the famed Grand Orient Express, now hollowed-out and almost reduced to rubble. There are only a couple of the trains, launched in 1883, left in the world. This example stands dormant in Belgium, untouched from its last voyage in the winter of 2009. Rusty ceilings, moth-eaten seats and tattered floors capture its level of decay. A Rotterdam-based urban photographer Brian Romeijn managed to snap these pictures while exploring the area. (Photo by Brian Romeijn/IMP Features)

In this photo taken June 3, 2009, a female North Korean soldier looks out from behind a barbed-wire fence around a camp on the North Korean river banks across from Hekou, northeastern China's Liaoning province. North Korea's top court has convicted two U.S. journalists, and sentenced them to 12 years in labor prison, the country's state news agency reported Monday. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Undulatus asperatus (or alternately, asperatus) is a cloud formation, proposed in 2009 as a separate cloud classification by the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. If successful it will be the first cloud formation added since cirrus intortus in 1951 to the International Cloud Atlas of the World Meteorological Organization. The name translates approximately as “roughened or agitated waves”.

The world's biggest copy of the Mona Lisa is unveiled on October 28, 2009 in Wrexham, Wales The giant version of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece measures 17.5 metres across and is 50 times bigger than the original painting and was created by community groups in Wrexham and artist Katy Webster. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)