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)

People are reflected in a shop window as they walk along a street in a shopping district in Tokyo, Japan June 25, 2015. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Competitors warm up backstage during the Arnold Classic Europe bodybuilding event in Madrid, Spain, September 25, 2015. (Photo by Susana Vera/Reuters)

A housewife whose family lives in a shanty cooks beside a road in Manila, Philippines May 25, 2016. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

A National Army of Colombia soldier, who was wounded by a mine, swims at a pool in Bello, municipality of Antioquia, March 25, 2015. (Photo by Fredy Builes/Reuters)

The moon rises behind the skyline and financial district in Toronto, November 25, 2015. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Reuters)

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.

How sure are you of your geographical knowledge? Buzzfeed recently put Americans’ geographical knowledge to the test with a survey in which participants had to write in countries’ names on a blank European political map. Unfortunately, they didn’t fare too well, but some of their responses are hilarious (or hilariously mis-informed). But don’t be so quick to judge Americans – when Buzzfeed posted a similar survey testing Brits’ knowledge of the 50 United States, they also came up short. On the one hand, knowing a country’s states is different from knowing independent countries, but on the other, some U.S. states are larger than some European nations, and some U.S. states have larger economies than some European nations.