With a presence in nearly every city and town across Iran, the paramilitary Basij volunteer corps has an ever-increasing influence on life in the Islamic Republic. Authorities created the Basij, which means mobilization in Persian, just after the country's 1979 Islamic Republic. It is part of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard. Photo: In this Thursday, August 22, 2013 photo, a female member of the Basij paramilitary militia aims a rifle as a trainer looks over her shoulder in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

Nestled among the cocoa plantations of western Ivory Coast is a gold mine that does not feature on any official maps. It is not run by an industrial mining company, nor does it pay taxes to the central government. The unlicensed mine is a key part of a lucrative business empire headed by the deputy commander of the West African nation's elite Republican Guard, United Nations investigators allege. Here: A gold prospector sits and eats close to a soldier at a gold mine near the village of Gamina, in western Ivory Coast, March 18, 2015. (Photo by Luc Gnago/Reuters)

A stone giant exhausted after his long travels decided to rest a while and drink from a pond far below. He lay down and started drinking from the crystal clear pond. So delicious was the water that he was unable to quench his thirst no matter how much he tried. Weeks have passed, months, years. The body of the stone giant became one with the hills and even his tongue has turned to water. This might seem like a fairy tale, yet you’ll be able to see this stone giant if you ever come to Wattens, Austria. He’s still there, guarding the entrance to Swarovski Kristallwelted, otherwise known as the Crystal Worlds. This is a one-of-a-kind theme park that was created by the people who first created Swarovski crystals.

“The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses. The Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc officially claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” in building a socialist state in East Germany. However, in practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period”. – Wikipedia

Photo: West Berlin policemen and East German Volkspolizei face each other across the border in Berlin, circa 1955. (Photo by Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A female participant armed with a bottle of ketchup attacks in the annual Vegetable Battle in Kreuzberg district near Oberbaumbruecke Bridge on August 28, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. The event pits Kreuzberg district residents againts Friedrichshain district residents for control of the Oberbaumbruecke, and the two sides pelt each other with rotten vegetables, other foods, ketchup, water guns and styrofoam bats until one side has pushed the other from the bridge. The event had originally been cancelled for today, but so many participants showed up anyway and began battling on the Kreuzberg side, where the situation escalated and began to threaten traffic, that police relented and let them later battle it out on the bridge. Kreuzberg claimed victory. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Workers collect fish inside an abandoned department store in Bangkok, Thailand January 13, 2015. Staff from Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) office were catching fish on Tuesday at the ground floor of the roofless New World department store that was closed down in 1997. Thousands of fish such as catfishes, fancy carps as well as black and red tilapias were released into the ground floor of the building, flooded with rainwater, as local vendors tried to control mosquitoes in the area, local media reported. BMA recently decided to remove the fish and release the water. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

Matador Marco Espinola, who emigrated from the Azores two years ago, challenges a bull during an Azorean “tourada a corda” (bullfight by rope) in Brampton, Ontario August 15, 2015. Bulls in a tourada a corda are held by a rope controlled by a team of men to make sure the animal does not cause injury. Bulls are never killed, in contrast with bullfighting in Spain. The Portuguese population in Canada, numbering 429,000 in the 2011 census, mainly centers around Toronto with immigrants from the nine islands of the mid-Atlantic Azores archipelago. (Photo by Chris Helgren/Reuters)

An injured boy who is undergoing surgery, after he was injured in what activists said was an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, rests inside a field hospital in the Douma neighborhood of Damascus, Syria December 5, 2015. Douma in Syria, an area controlled by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, has been shelled continuously for the past three years. The injured are taken to basements and shelters transformed into field hospitals run by medical staff who have stayed in the battered neighbourhood of Damascus. (Photo by Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)