Tangled Lake Shores, Lake Tengiz, Kazakhstan

In this sharp shot snapped from the International Space Station, we see the tangled shores of a Kazakhstan salt lake with a historic link to space exploration. In the winter of 1976, Lake Tengiz was the site of an all-hands-on-deck recovery operation when a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft crashed through the ice in sub-zero cold, stranding the crew underwater for 9 hours until they were rescued. That's certainly more action than is typical at this peaceful, wetland-like lake—watch the skies over Tengiz nowadays and you're more likely to see birds coming in for a landing, with more than 300 avian species (including 22 endangered ones) calling this Ramsar site home.