People carry the body of a man they uncovered from under the rubble of houses destroyed by Saudi airstrikes in the old city of Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, June 12, 2015. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

A dancer from the Trisha Brown Dance Company performs during “Roof Piece” above the High Line park June 9, 2011 in New York City. Roof Piece (1971) consists of nine dancers performing improvised movement signals to each other in a chain on various rooftops overlooking the city. This presentation marked the first full performance of the piece since 1973. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A Chinese man made up like “Wutu” which means tiger in ancient time, dances during an annual exorcism ceremony of the local Tu ethnic minority group at Nianduhu Village on December 31, 2004 in Tongren County, northwest of China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

On July 7, Chinese archaeologists from the Academy of Social Sciences announced that they have reconstituted a 5,300-year-old Mongolion pottery statue found at a relic site in North China, according to Xinhua news agency.

“Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, birth name Yuri Irsenovich Kim (according to Soviet records) (16 February 1941/2 – 17 December 2011), was the supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). He was the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party since 1948, Chairman of the the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth-largest standing army in the world”. – Wikipedia

Photo: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il inspects a military unit in North Korea. (Photo by Korean Central Television/Yonhap)

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.