The Great Pyramid of Cholula, in Puebla, Mexico, is the largest known pyramid in the world. Construction started in the 3rd century B.C. and the temple on top was added by Spanish colonisers in the 16th century. Behind it stands Popocatépetl, an active volcano and the second highest peak in Mexico.
At the Rolling Rock Steeplecase Race in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a woman partakes in a buffet that happens to be placed in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce. The June 1978 covered one of the last races-- the tradition ended in 1983 after almost 50 years.
In January 1982, National Geographic told the story of two Berlins-- east and west. In East Berlin, the Pioneer Palace was a massive youth sports complex that saw hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Here, kids dry their hair after swimming in the Palace's pool.
In North Carolina's Cherokee Indian Reservation, a man takes a break from working on trucks to play with his niece, Raven. National Geographic photographer Maggie Steber, who is one-quarter Cherokee, got to visit her ancestral lands for the first time while working on this story for the May 1995 issue.
In this picture from the February 1968 issue, a woman working in a power plant in the former Czechoslovakia insulates wires in a generator, which will go on to produce 50 million watts of power.
A research vessel in Hawaii follows behind spinner dolphins in this photo from the September 1992 issue.
In Wisconsin, a dense forest grows around a glacier-made lake. This picture appears in the August 1977 issue, in a story that tracked the Ice Age through the state of Wisconsin.
A bat dives down on a red-eyed tree frog in Barro Colorado Island, a wildlife preserve in Panama.
Highways crisscross Montreal, Quebec, in winter. The picture was published in May of 1967, as a part of a story about the city hosting the World Fair that year.
Dancers celebrate the arrival of spring in Trujillo, Peru. The style of dance is called marinera, a folk dance that uses handkerchiefs as props.
In this story from 1977, Dr. George Archibald keeps Tex, a female sandhill crane, company at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Sandhill cranes in Wisconsin were almost extinct after the Great Depression, when they were often hunted for food.
The eye of a humpback whale is surprisngly small given the size of the rest of the animal - roughly the same size as a cow's eye. They were once almost extinct, but protections have brought them back to ‘least concern‘ status, according to the IUCN.
Kids play in backyard pools in East Baltimore, Maryland. In this story, published in February 1975, writer Fred Kline called the city ‘mellow, antique, friendly.‘
National Geographic photographer Jean Shor changes film in her camera while a curious cow looks on. Jean and her husband Franc photographed scenes in Switzerland for a story that published in 1956.
In Hackensack, Minnesota, campers share a potluck dinner. Photographer William Albert Allard returned to his home state to document the rise of tourism in the early 1990s.
The cover story from August 1976 documented the hunt to find the place in Mexico where monarch butterflies spend the winter, before migrating north again in spring. In this photo, they're still sluggish from the cold, so they rest on any available surface-- including this researcher's hat.
In this unpublished photo from 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, and Vice President Spiro Agnew are among the hundreds of people watching the launch of Apollo 11 at Kennedy Space Centre.
A diver swims among silverside fish in a series of underwater caves off Grand Cayman, known as Devil's Grotto.
