Built for over a million people, the city of Ordos was designed to be the crowning glory of Inner Mongolia. Doomed to incompletion however, this futuristic metropolis now rises empty out of the deserts of northern China. Only 2% of its buildings were ever filled; the rest has largely been left to decay, abandoned mid-construction, earning Ordos the title of China's Ghost City.

Traffic lights feature illustrations of a homosexual couple in downtown Frankfurt Main, Germany, 18 July 2019. An annual gay pride parade will take place on 20 July 2019 in Frankfurt to commemorate Christopher Street Day (CSD). The event commemorates the riots that erupted following a police raid in 1969 at a gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. (Photo by Armando Babani/EPA/EFE)

A Palestinian child receives food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on February 20, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

A boy reacts as Palestinians wait to receive food amid shortages of food supplies, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on January 17, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

A British RAF Typhoon aircraft escorts a C130 transport plane on its way to Jordan for an airdrop of paratroopers from the U.K.'s 16th Air Assault Brigade as part of an exercise conducted jointly with Jordanian soldiers on Wednesday, June 23, 2021. (Photo by Petros Karadjias/AP Photo)

A relative mourns Palestinian Ahmad Saif, 23, who died as a result of injuries sustained on March 1, during clashes with Israeli soldiers following a demonstration, during his funeral in the West Bank village of Burqa, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (Photo by Majdi Mohammed/AP Photo)

A Palestinian boy carries dates from palm trees during harvest season in southern Gaza September 25, 2016. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Neutral athletes Mayya Doroshko and Tatiana Gayday compete in the women's duet technical preliminary of artistic swimming at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, Friday, July 18, 2025. (Photo by Vincent Thian/AP Photo)