A rider demonstrates Lighting artist Bruce Munro latest installation “Star-Turn” at a one-night event in front of the Holburne Museum on December 21, 2011 in Bath, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

International artist Yvette Mattern shows her stunning laser rainbow projection, Global Rainbow, on March 1, 2012 in Whitley Bay, England. The light installation celebrates the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad in the north-east of England. The Global Rainbow has previously lit up the skies of Germany, France and the United States. The projection will shine along the North Tyneside coastline for 4 days, before moving to other locations in the UK. (Photo by Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)

A man walks beside a “Wrinkles Of The City” creation near the Berlin cathedral in Berlin April 19, 2013. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

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.

On August 31, 2011, a puppy was rescued from a garbage bag in Central Florida. She was afflicted by a condition dubbed “swimmer puppy syndrome”, formally, pectus excavatum. It's rare in puppies, but when it happens it causes them to lie flat on their chests with their legs perpetually splayed out. It's usually a symptom of serious neurological problems that most puppies cannot survive. Veterinarians recommended putting her to sleep... (Photo by Flyin Fur Pet Photography)

A woman reacts as she joins around a thousand New Year swimmers, many in costume, braved freezing conditions in the River Forth in front of the Forth Rail Bridge during the annual Loony Dook Swim on January 1, 2013 in South Queensferry, Scotland. Thousands of people gathered last night to see in the New Year at Hogmanay celebrations in towns and cities across Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell)