The world we live in sure is a strange place. Through all of the discovery, triumph, struggle, strife, greed, glitz, glamour and gore there is plenty for Earth's inhabitants to digest; the one consistent thing that seems to come out of the craziness of it all it seems to be a wealth of compelling stories and images recording all of the ups and downs that both man and mother nature made. Sometimes if we don't have the stories, the images are left to tell the tale themselves. The winners of the World Press Photo of The Year Contest for 2007 seem to speak more than those proverbial thousands words and serve to effective transplant us to a time and place whether we wish they were there or are glad we were not.

Image credits: left, Tim Hetherington, UK, (Vanity Fair); right, Bold Hungwe, Zimbabwe (Independent)