Rescue workers stand near dead bodies washed ashore in Ton Sai Bay in Thailand's Phi Phi island in this December 28, 2004 file photo. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.15 quake off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed around 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries. (Photo by Luis Enrique Ascui/Reuters)

Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)

Family members watch on as a bride and groom leave their house to be married in West Mosul on November 3, 2017 in Mosul, Iraq. Five months after Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city was liberated from ISIL in a nine-month long battle, residents have returned to the destroyed city to rebuild their lives. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

In this February 27, 1984, file photo, singer Placido Domingo laughs with members of the Rockettes at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The singer and dancers met while rehearsing for Channel Thirteen's “Gala of Stars 1984”. Nine women in the opera world have told The Associated Press that they were sexually harassed by Domingo, one of the most celebrated and powerful men in opera. The women say the encounters took place over three decades, at venues that included opera companies where he held top managerial positions. (Photo by Steve Friedman/AP Photo/File)

“The telectroscope (also referred to as “electroscope”) was the first non-working prototype (i.e. conceptual model) of a television or videophone system. The term was used in the 19th century to describe science-based systems of distant seeing. The name and its concept came into being not long after the telephone was patented in 1876, and its original concept evolved from that of remote facsimile reproductions onto paper, into the live viewing of remote images”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Visitors to London wave to people they can see in New York as they peer through the Telectroscope situated by Tower Bridge on May 23, 2008 in London, England. The device named the Telectroscope provides a live visual link up between London and New York, to another Telectroscope by Brooklyn Bridge. (Photo by Cate Gillon/Getty Images)

From Manhattan and Brooklyn's trendiest neighborhoods to the far-flung edges of theouter boroughs, Will Ellis has spent the last three years photographing and researching the lost and lonely corners of the United States' most populous city. His photo book Abandoned NYC is packed with 150 color images of sixteen of New York's most beautiful and mysterious abandoned spaces, paired with detailed essays on the fascinating history of these forgotten sites. Here: Letchworth Village is located just an hour's drive from NYC in Thiells, NY. It was founded in 1912 to house the city's developmentally disabled as a ”state institution for the epileptic and feeble-minded”. (Photo by Will Ellis)

A new LED light fixture is secured to the side of a lift as crews replace existing street lights August 1, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The new energy-efficient fixtures are expected to reduce the city's annual electricity use by eight million kilowatt hours, saving about USD 400,000. The city estimates the LEDs will last about 15 years, nine years longer than the current lights. Funding for the project comes from federal energy conservation bonds and an American Recovery & Reinvestment Act grant. The city plans to replace all of its 50,000 streetlights after more funding is secured. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

A Thai security guard stands by a wall of sandbags in front of a factory at the Bangchan Industrial Estate area on the outskirts of the capitol city November 8, 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand. Over seven major industrial parks in Bangkok and, thousands of factories have been closed in the central Thai province of Ayutthaya and Nonthaburi with millions of tons of rice damaged. Across the country, the flooding which is now in its third month has affected 25 of Thailand's 64 provinces. Thailand is experiencing the worst flooding in over 50 years which has affected more than nine million people. Over 400 people have died in flood-related incidents since late July according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation. (Photo by Paula Bronstein /Getty Images)