Today I happened across something fitting for the centennial year of the beginning of the Great War: a collection of images from that war. But not just any old group of pictures. As the Telegraph puts it, “a former dustman has amassed one of the Britain’s best collections of First World War photographs after spending decades rescuing them from rubbish tips and bins.”

Saved by a garbageman, in more American words. Some of the collection is posted at the Telegraph web site. What I want to know is who – who – who would throw away pictures like these?

Here’s another collection of images, not quite as arresting, but interesting despite the annoying SEO headline, “These 22 Far Away Perspectives Of Famous Places Will Change The Way You See Them Forever.” No, they won’t.

The Stonehenge image well illustrates one of the stranger things about that site. Not that an ancient stone circle survives in Wiltshire, though it’s been reconstructed more than most people probably realize. What boggled my mind when visiting in 1983 was that a road goes right next to it. We drove there, and I expected to park beside the road and walk some distance. Nope – it’s right there. Convenient, but it doesn’t quite sit right.

The second picture of the Pantheon isn’t from far away, but never mind. I also visited that site in 1983, before the first McDonald’s opened in Italy, so this perspective didn’t exist for me to experience. I had to check: the first McDonald’s in that country opened near the Spanish Steps in 1986. More followed. The question that comes to mind, even now, is why do McDonald’s survive in Italy?

Then there’s the Mona Lisa. That’s not a new perspective for anyone who’s been to the Louvre. Even in November, the famed painting packed ’em in.

As for the Alamo, I’ve met people who expected it to be in the middle of nowhere. Or who felt that it should be “bigger.” Maybe because it looked that way when John Wayne died there.