Chrisitan pilgrims carry wooden crosses along the Via Dolorosa during the Good Friday procession on April 22, 2011 in Jerusalem, Israel. Thousands of Christians around the world will today mark Good Fiday when they commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In Jerusalem Christian pilgrims took part in processions along the route that Jesus is believed to have taken in his last days as he carried the cross. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Orthodox Christian pilgrims from Abkhazia walk along the Via Dolorosa (Way of Suffering), during the Good Friday procession in Jerusalem's old city on April 29, 2016. Thousands of pilgrims took part in processions along the route where, according to tradition, Jesus carried the cross during his last days. (Photo by Gali Tibbon/AFP Photo)

Medical workers wearing gear enter a residential area placed under the enhanced movement control order (EMCO) due to a drastic increase in the number of COVID-19 cases recorded in Sunway, outskirt of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Friday, July 2, 2021. Malaysia starts to further tighten movement curbs and impose a curfew in most areas in its richest state Selangor and parts of Kuala Lumpur, where coronavirus cases remain high despite a national lockdown last month. (Photo by Vincent Thian/AP Photo)

A woman has her hands painted with traditional henna as she attends Eid al-Adha prayers at historical Badshahi mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, June 17, 2024. Eid al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice, the most important Islamic holiday, marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim, Abraham to Christians and Jews, to sacrifice his son. During the holiday, which in most places lasts three days, Muslims slaughter goat, sheep or cattle, distribute part of the meat to the poor. (Photo by K.M. Chaudary/AP Photo)

One of the nine baby flamingos born at Bristol Zoo stands with the adults as they feed together on August 19, 2011 in Bristol, England. Nine flamingo chicks have hatched at Bristol Zoo Gardens in the last three months – the biggest number the Zoo has ever had. The chicks, which are Greater Flamingoes from Africa and southern Europe and range in age from four weeks to three months old, take the Zoo's total flock to 38 birds. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Geese fight during the annual Geese Fight Day in the northern Serbian village of Mokrin, some 160km (100 miles) from Belgrade February 22, 2015. Every year in the last week of February, goose fights are held in the northern Serbian village of Mokrin. Left alone, male geese, or ganders, are unlikely to fight each other, hence why females are brought along for whose affections the ganders then fight until one or the other gives up. (Photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters)

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.

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.