“MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on roll-off (RORO) car and passenger ferry owned by Townsend Thoresen. She was one of three ships commissioned by the company to operate on the Dover–Calais route across the English Channel. The ferry capsized on the night of 6 March 1987, moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, killing 193 passengers and crew. This was the deadliest maritime disaster involving a British ship in peacetime since the sinking of the Iolaire in 1919”. – Wikipedia

Photo: The wreck of the Herald of Free Enterprise, which capsized near Zeebrugge on the 6th of March 1987. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1987

Houthi followers perform the traditional Baraa dance ahead of a demonstration against the Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen's capital Sanaa August 24, 2015. The nothern-based Houthis, a Shi'ite Muslim group, took control of Sanaa last September. Arab countries intervened in the conflict in March to halt a Houthi advance into the south which caused the Saudi-backed government to flee to Riyadh from its refuge in the southern port of Aden. (Photo by Khaled Abdullah/Reuters)

A farmer waits for customers at a wholesale vegetable market in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh state, India, Sunday, July 25, 2021. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)

Street musicians with their faces covered with animal masks play to earn some money in central Vienna, Austria, November 8, 2015. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

A youth poses while holding two fishes before his face in Iraq's southern port city of al-Faw, 90 kilometres south of Basra near the Shatt al-Arab and the Gulf, on May 18, 2020. In Iraq, a national lockdown to halt the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has found some unexpected fans: local businesses who no longer have to compete with Turkish, Iranian or Chinese imports. Those countries, as well as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait, typically flood Iraqi markets with inexpensive products at prices local producers can't compete with. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

Montegut fire chief Toby Henry walks back to his fire truck in the rain as firefighters cut through trees on the road in Bourg, Louisiana as Hurricane Ida passes on August 29, 2021. Hurricane Ida struck the coast of Louisiana on August 29 as a powerful Category 4 storm, 16 years to the day after deadly Hurricane Katrina devastated the southern US city of New Orleans. “Extremely dangerous Category 4 Hurricane Ida makes landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana”, the National Hurricane Center wrote in an advisory. (Photo by Mark Felix/AFP Photo)

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.

“Nicholas II (Russian: Николай II, Николай Александрович Романов, tr. Nikolay II, Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov) (18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church. Nicholas II, his wife, his son, his four daughters, the family's medical doctor, the Tsar's valet, the Empress' lady-in-waiting and the family's cook were murdered in the same room by the Bolsheviks on the night of 16/17 July 1918”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918) with his wife. (Photo by W. & D. Downey/Getty Images). Circa 1900