A member of a Thai buffalo racing team tries to control it before a sprint race during an annual buffalo racing festival in Chonburi, Thailand, Monday, October 6, 2025. (Photo by Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo)
A member of the Boi Bumba Garantido association performs during the Boi Bumba folklore festival at the Bumbodromo in Parintins, Amazonas State, Brazil, on June 28, 2024. Parintins is well-known internationally for its Boi Bumba folklore festival, which lasts for three days in late June and whose themes, costumes, and songs are based on indigenous cultures of the Amazon rainforest. (Photo by Michael Dantas/AFP Photo)
Spectators in colourful attire cheer as the pack of riders (peloton) cycles by during the 14th stage of the 111th edition of the Tour de France cycling race, 151,9 km between Pau and Saint-Lary-Soulan Pla d'Adet, in the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France, on July 13, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP Photo)
A festival-goer sings at Rock in Rio music festival while Brazilian rappers Veigh and Kayblack perform in Rio de Janeiro, Friday, September 13, 2024. (Photo by Hannah-Kathryn Valles/AP Photo)
While the lido was described as bringing “modernism to the masses” on the British coast it was just the latest example of a trend that had been developing since Victorian times – transforming seaside towns into resorts for leisure and entertainment. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the fashion was for local authorities to build great piers stretching from the promenade out into the sea. The Eastbourne Pier, pictured here in May 1931, was erected between 1866 and 1870 to an ingenious design by Eugenius Birch, which saw the structure sitting on special cups allowing the supporting struts to “move” in bad weather. Arranged on the pier's 1,000-foot length were kiosks, a theatre, a ballroom and a camera obscura. 1931. (Photo by Aerofilms Collection via “A History of Britain From Above”)
Riot police stand guard behind a fire as refinery workers hold a blockade of the oil depot of Douchy-Les-Mines to protest against the government's proposed labour reforms, on May 25, 2016. Refinery workers stepped up strikes that threaten to paralyse France weeks ahead of the Euro 2016 tournament as the government moved to break their blockades, escalating a three-month tug-of-war over labour reforms. (Photo by François L.O./AFP Photo)