Soma-Nomaoi is a festival that recreates a battle scene from more than 1,000 years ago. It is annually held for 4 days from July 22 to 25 in Haramachi City, Fukushima Prefecture, in the eastern part of Japan. In this historical event, 600 mounted samurai in traditional Japanese armor, with long swords at their side and ancestral flagstaffs streaming from their backs, ride across open fields. Soma-Nomaoi has been designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property.

Photo: A young woman (C) clad in samurai costume leads other local poeple as she rides her horse during a parade at the annual Soma Nomaoi festival in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, on July 28, 2012. The traditional full-scale festival kicked off for the first time after the accident of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant following the massive earthquake and the tsunami on March 11, 2011. (Photo by Toru Yamanaka/AFP Photo)

“A snapshot from mountaineer's life”. Have you ever wondered how does a mountaineer's day start? I will give you a hint: you wake up at 3 am, set the stove, wake up your partner, pretend it is warm, quickly consume a high-calorie breakfast, watch your friends slowly ascending the icy slopes of your dream summit with their tiny head torches glimmering against perfectly blue ice, and hope for the good weather. One would ask: why all this trouble? The answer is easy: for the love of the adventure and the unknown. Location: Chamonix, Haute Savoye, France. (Photo and caption by Kamil Tamiola/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

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“The Labor Day Parade (or West Indian Carnival), is an annual celebration held on American Labor Day (the first Monday in September), in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. Ms. Jessie Waddell and some of her West Indian friends started the Carnival in Harlem in the 1920s by staging costume parties in large enclosed places like the Savoy, Renaissance and Audubon Ballrooms due to the cold wintry weather of February. This is the usual time for the pre-Lenten celebrations held in most countries around the world. However, because of the very nature of Carnival, and the need to parade in costume to music, indoor confinement did not work well. The earliest known Carnival street parade was held on September 1, 1947. The Trinidad Carnival Pageant Committee was the founding force behind the parade, which was held in Harlem. The parade route was along Seventh Avenue, starting at 110th St.” – Wikipedia

Photo: A reveler looks on during the West Indian-American Day Parade September 5, 2011 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. More than 2 million spectators were expected to attend the celebration of Caribbean culture. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Galapagos – Rocking the Cradle: Four major ocean currents converge along the Galapagos archipelago, creating the conditions for an extraordinary diversity of animal life, April 25, 2016. The islands are home to at least 7,000 flora and fauna species, of which 97 percent of the reptiles, 80 percent of the land birds, 50 percent of the insects and 30 percent of the plants are endemic. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak for National Geographic/World Press Photo)

Carriers of the Great God Power brotherhood unload Virgen del Carmen statue after its journey on July 15, 2014 at Puerto de la Cruz dock on the Canary island of Tenerife, Spain. Since 1921, the statue of the Virgen del Carmen, patron saint of fishermen, has been carried with great fanfare annually as part of July Festivities to the Puerto de la Cruz dock where, at the end of its procession, it is hoisted aboard a decorated boat. Weather permitting, the boat carrying the statue, accompanied by a flotilla of other boats, makes a short journey along the island coast before returning to the harbour. In recent years, attendance at the event has numbered more than 35,000 people. (Photo by Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)

The proliferation of marijuana edibles for both medical and recreational purposes is giving rise to a cottage industry of baked goods, candies, infused oils, cookbooks and classes that promises a slow burn as more states legalize the practice and awareness spreads about the best ways to deliver the drug. Edibles and infused products such as snack bars, olive oils and tinctures popular with medical marijuana users have flourished into a gourmet market of chocolate truffles, whoopie pies and hard candies as Colorado and Washington legalized the recreational use of marijuana in the past year. Photo: In this Thursday, July 10, 2014, photo, Mike Fitzgerald, right, teaches behind a sample display of cannabis-infused products during a cooking class at the New England Grass Roots Institute in Quincy, Mass. (Photo by Michael Dwyer/AP Photo)

People cross Flagstaff Hill as the snow starts to fall, in Schenley Park, on their way to the Carnegie Mellon University campus, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. Yet another powerful storm bore down on the Northeast on Tuesday, with wind-whipped snow falling in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey as people grumbled and complained about a first day of spring that looked an awful lot like the last weeks of winter. (Photo by Darrell Sapp/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP Photo)

A rainbow is seen near a cloud south of Corvallis, Ore., Monday, May 19, 2014. (Photo by Andy Cripe/AP Photo/The Corvallis Gazette-Times)