One of the large set-pieces of the year was the 1, 000-vessel river pageant, which was watched by an estimated one million people along the banks of the Thames.
As many as 1, 500 residents of the northern Illinois city of Marseilles were evacuated after seven barges broke free from a towing vessel and struck a dam on the Illinois River.
Boarding a vessel on the Nile is to peel back millennia and slow down to river speed as ancient temples, oxcarts and palm trees pass by, unaltered since Pharaohs ruled the roost.