CHALLOCK, ENGLAND - MARCH 31: Tony Hall walks with his dog through an installation entitled 'Super Kingdom', which hangs in trees in King's Wood as part of the Stour Valley Arts project on March 31, 2011 in Challock, England. The works by artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson of 'London Fieldworks' consist of a series of interesting animal habitats, modelled on the palaces of Stalin, Ceauscescu and Mussolini, and offer nesting sites to many native and migrant species. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Bikers ride along the High Street as they take part in the Ride Of Respect to raise money for service veterans on April 3, 2011 in Wootton Bassett, England. The ride, which involved 10,000 bikers and started at Hullavington airfield, aims to honour the people of Wootton Bassett and to raise money for the Afghan Heroes charity.

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.

A tourist catches snowflakes on her tongue during snow fall in Times Square, Midtown, New York, on January 3, 2013. A major snowstorm producing blizzard-like conditions hammered the northeastern United States on Friday, causing more than 1,000 U.S. flight delays and cancellations, paralyzing road travel, and closing schools and government offices. (Photo by Darren Ornitz/Reuters)

Protesters clad in improvised protective gear prepare for a clash with police in central Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, January 20, 2014. After a night of vicious streets battles, anti-government protesters and police clashed anew Monday in the Ukrainian capital Kiev. (Photo by Evgeny Feldman/AP Photo)

In this photograph taken on July 10, 2012, a Pakistani worker pulls on a wire he will connect to a thick chain that will in turn be used to peel away a slab of the outer structure of a beached vessel in one of the 127 ship-breaking plots in Geddani, some 40Kms west of Karachi. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP Photo)