A member of staff stands in front of a CRH high-speed train at Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station during its test run on May 11, 2011 in Shanghai, China. After 3 years construction, from April in 2008, with total investment estimated at 220.9 billion yuan (around 32.5 billion U.S. dollars), the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway begins a one-month trial operation. It is expected to start operation in June this year, with the travel time between the two cities reducing to five hours from the previous 10. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

A man dressed up as the Statue of Liberty walks in front of a new digital advertising screen in Times Square, New York, November 18, 2014. According to local media the screen is a full block long, 8 stories tall, is lit with 24 million LED pixels and has a higher resolution than most TV sets. The advertising rate is reported at $2.5 million USD for a four-week run making it one of the most expensive outdoor advertising spaces in the world. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

General view of Chilean Calbuco volcano from Puerto Montt, located at 1000 km southern Santiago de Chile, Chile, 22 April 2015. Due to the eruption of the volcano with a smoke column 20 km high, authorities declared a red alert and ordered the evacuation of around 1500 inhabitants of Ensenada, Alerce, Colonia Río Sur and Correntoso towns. (Photo by Alex Vidal Brecas/EPA)

With temperatures soaring and summer well underway, countless Americans will be spending their Independence Day weekend at the beach. Here we revisit some classic images from the turn-of-the-century to the 1930's of vacations by the sea, from Coney Island to Santa Monica.

A visitor takes a photograph from the North Star observation capsule onboard the cruise ship Quantum of the Seas which is currently docked at Southampton on October 31, 2014 in Southampton, England. Billed as the world's first smartship, Royal Caribbean's Quantum of the Seas is claimed to be the most high-tech cruise ship in the world, with high tech modifications such as virtual balconies in windowless rooms and features such as the first dodgem ride on water, and a skydiving simulator. The ship will shortly begin its voyage from Southampton, where it docked earlier this week, to New York before relocating to the Caribbean for the 2014-15 season. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

German photographer Martin Klimas, who you may remember from his exploding porcelain figure series, creates breathtaking photos of flowers exploding into a million beautiful pieces. To achieve this effect, he soaks the petals in liquid nitrogen to make them brittle and hits the flower with an air gun.

“These stunning ultra-high speed photos of water droplets were captured by photographer, Ronny Tertnes, 48, from Bergen, Norway. They show the water’s displacement as various liquids are being dropped in. Ronny, who works full time as an IT administrator, set up his camera and flash rigs to capture the exact moment a droplet hit the surface, sometimes causing several drops to collide into each other”. – TwoByTwoEditorial.co.uk. (Photo by Ronny Tertnes/TwoByTwoEditorial.co.uk)

Wearing his new prosthetic legs Hero gets a taste of shrubbery Wednesday, May 21, 2014, in Houston. The abandoned calf rescued from a Virginia farm a year ago and brought to Texas after it nearly died is getting permanent prosthetics to replace back hooves that had to be amputated because of frostbite. (Photo by Pat Sullivan/AP Photo)