Dallas Seavey has become the youngest winner ever of the “Last Great Race,” the Iditarod dog-sled mush across Alaska.

“I had five lead dogs on this team, and I had to have every single one of them to do their parts of the race,” Seavey said, reported the Associated Press, shortly after crossing the finish line in Nome.

Seavey, who turned 25 on March 4, the day the race officially started, travelled for nine grueling days, four hours, 29 minutes and 26 seconds with nine dogs pulling his sled to the finish line approximately 7:29 p.m. Tuesday. After 1,000 miles from the starting point in Anchorage, Seavey and his dogs were exhausted.

“It’s just now hitting me,” said Seavey, according to Reuters. “About four miles ago, I just crashed.”

The ice, combined with the frigid temperatures and windy conditions, forced many mushers to slow down. But Seavey’s dog, Guinness, who acted as a lead dog for short time, kept trudging through the Alaskan wilderness.

Musher Dallas Seavey of Willow, Alaska, runs his dogs down Front Street to the finish line, winning the 40th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome, Alaska March 13, 2012. Seavey, competing against both his father and grandfather, won the race on Tuesday, becoming the youngest musher crowned champion of the storied Alaska event. (Reuters / Oscar Edwin Avellaneda-Cruz)

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Festivals and parades across the world marked St Patrick’s Day to pay tribute to Saint Patrick who brought Christianity to Ireland. In Central Dublin, an estimated 500,000 people gathered on Saturday for the St Patrick’s Day parade. Bands from Britain, the United States and Russia joined Irish volunteers in the two-hour procession through Ireland’s capital city, reported the Associated Press. Dublin City went even greener for the festival with all venues turned to green lights to create a citywide illumination for the duration of the Festival from 16 March -19 March.

Street performers leap as they make their way down O’Connell Street in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin. Police estimate a half-million spectators lined the route of the parade, the biggest of more than 50 across Ireland. (Shawn Pogatchnik/Associated Press)

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A naked protest against the dependence on fossil fuels by riding bikes across San Francisco was held during the “World Naked Bike Ride” on March 10. According to the organisers, it aims to defend the right of cyclists to ride on the streets in safety. It also claims to “Celebrate free-body culture, bicycling as an alternative to cars and a generally greener way of living.”

A naked cyclist holds his bicycle up during the “World Naked Bike Ride” on Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue March 10, 2012. The event aims to defend the right of cyclists to ride on the streets in safety, according to organisers. (Reuters)

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Purim is celebrated on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar every year by the Jewish community all over the world. It tells the story of how Jews survived a plot by the anti-semitic Haman, the prime minister of ancient Persia, present-day Iran, to kill them. Purim is the remembrance of the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from Haman’s plot “to destroy, kill and annihilate all Jews, young and old, infants and women, in a single day,” according to the Chabad.org.

Jews mobilised and killed several of their enemies on the 13th day of Adar and they rested and celebrated on the 14th day. Purim falls on 8 March, 2012.

Israeli youths take part in an annual Zombie Walk procession ahead of the Jewish holiday of Purim, in Tel Aviv March 6, 2012. (Reuters)

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The Holi festival of colors is a riotous celebration of the coming of spring and falls on the day after the full moon in the Hindu month of Phalguna (early March) every year.

In addition to celebrating spring, Holi commemorates various events in Hindu mythology and is a time of disregarding social norms and indulging in general merrymaking. During Holi, Hindus attend a public bonfire, spray friends and family with colored powders and water, and generally go a bit wild in the streets.

According to one tradition which has its roots in Hindu mythology, men from Lord Krishna’s village of Nandgaon are beaten by the women of Barsana, home of Lord Krishna’s lover Radha. It is said that Lord Krisna’s relatives used to tease Radha and her friends, and were beaten by them in return. Even to this day, marriage between men and women from the two villages are discouraged. (Photography by Kevin Frayer/Associated Press, Reuters)

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Born in the city of Ishinomaki, Yuko Sugimoto lost her husband and child when the 9.0 magnitude earthquake completely destroyed the place. The photograph, which was taken on March 13, 2011, showed Sugimoto looking in the direction of the kindergarten where her 4-year-old son Raito used to go. The kindergarten was partly submerged and surrounded by piles of debris.

It was only when she found her husband that both began the hunt for their lost child. They found their child the very next day. He and some other children had been rescued by the military from the roof of the kindergarten the morning after the tsunami.

It has been a year since the devastating earthquake and although much of the debris in the region has been removed by restoration operations, life for Sugimoto and her family has still not returned to normal. The house they built four years ago was submerged nearly upto its second floor and they lost most of their belongings. What remains is a 31-year-mortgage of around 25 million yen ($310,000) they still have to pay.

A woman looks at the damage caused by a tsunami and an earthquake in Ishimaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, after the magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck the area March 13, 2011. (Reuters)

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A visitor looks at an elephant made of snow and ice at the Central Botanical Garden during winter in Minsk, February 12, 2012. REUTERS/Julia Darashkevich. (Reuters)

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In the 12 days leading up to Fat Tuesday, about one million people took to the streets of New Orleans, bringing an estimated $300 million in direct and indirect economic impact. The bulk of visitors poured into the French Quarter and across the Big Easy over the weekend to revel in parades led by mythic royalty. The weather was even more cause for celebration: Mid 70s with partly cloudy skies. Over the four-day weekend there was drinking, dancing, and King Cake eating. The streets were flooded with flamboyant costumes, frivolous floats, and frolicking late night flesh-flashers.

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Thousands of Hindu devotees from across India and Pakistan on Monday celebrated the festival of Mahashivaratri with traditional religious fervor as chants of “bam bam bole” and “har har mahadev” reverberated in the air. Devotees from all over the country observed a fast and thronged Shiva temples to worship Lord Shiva. The festival is celebrated in the honor of Hindu God Shiva, one of the Trinity of Gods – the Creator, the Destroyer and the Preserver – who are intrinsic to Hindu mythology.

Pakistani Hindus too celebrated Mahashivratri after a gap of six years when a group of Indian pilgrims joined the festivities at the Katas Raj temple in Chakwal district in the Punjab province in Pakistan.

Hindu devotees pour milk over Shivling (a symbol of Lord Shiva) inside a temple during the Mahashivratri festival in the northern Indian city of Allahabad Feb. 20, 2012. (Reuters)

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About 3,000 Baekseok University students create the shape of a drop of blood at a ski resort in Pyeong Chang, South Korea. The Korean National Red Cross and the faculty arranged the event as part of a campaign to encourage blood donation. They plan to seek a listing for the “World’s largest blood drop” by Guinness World Records. (Shin Jun-hee/Yonhap/Associated Press)