People move on a tractor through a flooded street amid severe flooding in Feni, Bangladesh, on August 25, 2024. (Photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

A woman wearing a burqa begs on a street in Mazar-i-Sharif on December 22, 2021. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)

In this September 1, 2015 photo, street artists Jenaro de Rosenzweig, left, and Alejandro Revilla pose for a portrait behind a restaurant's window covered with a mural by artist Francisco Munoz, signed with his artist's name below, in the Roma Norte neighborhood of Mexico City. Rosenzweig and Revilla founded the “Street Art Chilango” cooperative in March 2013, which is filling neighborhoods with public art by local street artists. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

This August 28, 2017 photo shows eight-year-old Indian girl Bharti performing a balancing act on a rope during a street show in Batala, India. Travelling Indian performers, who earn a meagre income from putting on shows on the streets, often scout areas to gather a large street audience who then give money on a collection plate at the end of the show. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

The eighth annual Nipponbashi Street Festa stamped Osaka March 20, 2012 (Nipponbashi is Osaka’s geek district – much like Akihabara is for Tokyo). Cosplayers turned up in colourful outfits, dressing as characters from their favourite manga, anime, and video games. The street was closed to cars, and otaku flooded the streets, snapping pics, cosplaying, and hanging out.

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.

“The Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by the Lockheed Skunk Works. Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was responsible for many of the design's innovative concepts. During reconnaissance missions the SR-71 operated at high speeds and altitudes to allow it to outrace threats. If a surface-to-air missile launch was detected, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and outrun the missile”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A U.S. Air Force SR-71A, also known as the “Blackbird”, is put through it's paces during a test flight over Beale Air Force Base in California. The aircraft is a strategic reconnaissance plane by Lockheed and is the world's fastest and highest flying operational aircraft. (Photo by Getty Images)

Humanoid robots compete in a group match of the 20th RoboCup in Leipzig, Germany, June 30, 2016. About 3,500 participants from 45 countries and regions compete in the robot world championship until 04 July. (Photo by Sebastian Willnow/EPA)