The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. ...

The Leshan Giant Buddha, a 71-metre tall stone statue, is carved out of a cliff face in the southern part of Sichuan province in China. (Photo by Suchet Suwanmongkol/500px)

A pedestrian reacts as she caught a gust of wind while walking down the famed “Kokusai-dori” street, a tourist spot, in Naha in the main Okinawa island, southern Japan, Thursday, June 1, 2023, as a tropical storm was approaching. (Photo by Hiro Komae/AP Photo)

Two race pigs jump over an obstacle during a rural festivity in reference to Maria Ascension in San Bernardino, Switzerland on Monday, August 15 2016. (Photo by Samuel Golay/Keystone/TI-Press via AP Photo)

Olena Korzeniuk, a 15-year-old girl poses on the stairs during a bid to set the national record for the longest hair on a child in Kiev, Ukraine on March 12, 2019. During a ceremony, the experts of the National Register of Records found the blonde hair of the Ukrainian Rapunzel to be 2.35m (6.5ft) long. (Photo by Tarasov/Ukrinform/Barcroft Images)

Frank A. Rinehart, a commercial photographer in Omaha, Nebraska, was commissioned to photograph the 1898 Indian Congress, part of the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition. More than five hundred Native Americans from thirty-five tribes attended the conference, providing the gifted photographer and artist an opportunity to create a stunning visual document of Native American life and culture at the dawn of the 20th century. Photo: Little Bird, Arapahoe, 1899. (Photo by Frank A. Rinehart)

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev as he bids the last farewell to his wife Raisa Gorbacheva during the funeral ceremony in Moscow, Russia, 23 September 1999 (reissued 30 August 2022). According to a Moscow Central Clinical Hospital statement, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has died at the age of 91. As a supporter of the de-Stalinization programs of his predecessor Nikita Khrushchev, Gorbachev initiated numerous reforms during his tenure. He signed a nuclear arms treaty with the United States and withdrew the Soviet Union from the Soviet-Afghan war. His policies created freedom of speech and press, and decentralized fiscal policy planning and execution to increase efficiency. Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union, overseeing Russia’s transition from one party rule to fragile democracy. (Photo by Sergey Chirikov/EPA/EFE)

An attendee takes a selfie at KCON USA, billed as the world's largest Korean culture convention and music festival, in Los Angeles, California on August 11, 2018. K-pop acts sing or rap in Korean, often with snippets of English. On the Web, where K-pop fandom thrives, many music videos include subtitles. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)