The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Fossilized whale bones are on display outside the Wati El Hitan Fossils and Climate Change Museum, a UNESCO natural World Heritage site, on the opening day, in the Fayoum oasis, Egypt, Thursday, January 14, 2016. Egypt has cut the ribbon on the Middle East's first fossil museum housing the world's largest intact skeleton of a "walking whale" in an attempt to attract much-needed tourists driven off by recent militant attacks. The construction of the much-hyped Fossils and Climate Change Museum was covered a 2 billion euros (2. 17 billion dollars) grant from Italy, according to Italian Ambassador Maurizio Massari. Its centerpiece is an intact, 37-million-year-old and 20-meter-long skeleton of a legged form of whale that testifies to how modern-day whales evolved from land mammals. The sand-colored, dome-shaped museum is barely discernible in the breathtaking desert landscape that stretches all around. (Photo by Thomas Hartwell/AP Photo)

An aerial view shows a sinkhole 3.5 km (2 miles) to the east of Solikamsk-2 mine in Perm region, November 20, 2014. Shares in Russia's Uralkali, the world's top potash producer, fell sharply for a second day on Wednesday after a mine accident that could reduce global supplies and push up prices of the crop nutrient worldwide. Uralkali shares have fallen 28 percent since Tuesday when it suspended work at its Solikamsk-2 mine, which accounts for a fifth of the company's output and 3.5 percent of global capacity, following an inflow of water. A sinkhole, stretching 30 by 40 metres (yards), found at an abandoned mine 3.5 km (2 miles) to the east, increased concern about the future of the mine because an inflow of water and the resulting sinkhole in 2006 forced another Uralkali operation to shut permanently. (Photo by Reuters/Press service of Uralkali company)

A protester sits on a chair surrounded by others after storming the Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office, demanding he resign after president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country amid economic crisis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Wednesday, July 13, 2022. (Photo by Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo)

American actress Anne Hathaway is seen at a film set for the AppleTV+ series, “WeCrashed” on June 11, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Pacific Coast News)

A woman with a sign that reads in Portuguese “Being woman without Temer”, stands next to a police barricade during a protest against the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. In response to the assault, Brazil's interim President Michel Temer said that the country will set up a specialized group to fight violence against women. (Photo by Andre Penner/AP Photo)

In this photo taken on Saturday, April 29, 2017, a candle is lit in a roadside shrine as the sun sets across a nearby lake of Pineia in the village of Souli, in the Peloponnese region of southern Greece. Made of iron sheeting, stone, wood, concrete or marble, tens of thousands of such shrines punctuate Greece’s roadside scenery, a common sight in a country that has one of the European Union’s worst road fatality rates. (Photo by Petros Giannakouris/AP Photo)

Clashes break out in the stands during the Euro 2016 Group B soccer match between England and Russia, at the Velodrome stadium in Marseille, France, Saturday, June 11, 2016. (Photo by Thanassis Stavrakis/AP Photo)