The ghost town of Bodie, California.

The Horseshoe Bend as seen in Arizona

The Golden Gate Bridge by night, with part of downtown San Francisco visible in the background at far left

The Point Reyes Lighthouse is a lighthouse in the Gulf of the Farallones on Point Reyes in Marin County, California. Built in 1870 as a twin of the Cape Mendocino Light, the Point Reyes Lighthouse was automated in 1975 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the Moon near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera.

An animated cartoon of a galloping horse. This animation was created by rotoscoping Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering 19th century photos. The animation consists of 8 drawings, which are "looped", i.e. repeated over and over.

Photo: NASA

On January 28, 1986, a ruptured O-ring in the right solid rocket booster caused the Space Shuttle Challenger to explode soon after launch. This photograph shows the main engines and solid rocket booster exhaust plumes entwined around a ball of gas from the external tank. Because shuttle launches had become almost routine after fifty successful missions, those watching the shuttle launch in person and on television found the sight of the break up especially shocking and difficult to believe until NASA confirmed the accident.

Front entrance of Grauman's Chinese Theatre facing Hollywood Blvd.

West Mitten Butte Monument Valley, view northeastward from Arizona to Utah.

The Lockheed SR-71, commonly known as the "Blackbird", was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3 strategic reconnaissance aircraft that flew from 1964–98. The SR-71 was one of the first aircraft to be shaped to have an extremely low radar signature. The aircraft flew so fast and so high that if the pilot detected a surface-to-air missile launch, the standard evasive action was simply to accelerate. During its entire operational life, more than 3,000 missiles were fired at the aircraft, yet no SR-71 was ever shot down.

Photo: United States government

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) was an actor-turned- politician who served as the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, and moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1937. As an actor, he appeared in over 50 films and served as president of the Screen Actors Guild. He turned to politics in the mid-1960s, winning the 1966 and 1970 gubernatorial elections. He failed in his presidential bids in 1968 and 1976, but finally won both the Republican nomination and election in 1980 and again in 1984.

Photo credit: JaGa

The New River Gorge Bridge in Fayetteville, West Virginia, United States, is a steel arch bridge that crosses the New River. It opened in 1977 and is the longest and highest steel arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere at 3,030 feet (920 m) long and 876 feet (267 m) high. It is home to the annual Bridge Day, an event in which the bridge is closed to vehicles and participants are allowed to BASE jump to the valley floor below.

Photo credit: Carol M. Highsmith

Randy's Donuts is a donut (doughnut) shop in Inglewood, California, known throughout the United States for its novelty architecture, consisting of a 32.5-foot (9.9 m) diameter donut on the roof of an otherwise ordinary drive-through bakery. Randy's was built in 1953, decades after the heyday of such architecture in Southern California, which saw the construction of a number of buildings in the shape of the products they sold. Randy's is one of five remaining locations of the Big Donut chain, each of which features the distinctive giant donut, but Randy's remains the most well-known.