Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Archive
|
These featured pictures, as scheduled below, appeared as the picture of the day (POTD) on the English Wikipedia's Main Page in the last 30 days.
You can add an automatically updating POTD template to your user page using {{Pic of the day}} (version with blurb) or {{POTD}} (version without blurb). For instructions on how to make custom POTD layouts, see Wikipedia:Picture of the day.Purge server cache
April 21
|
Selimiye Mosque is a mosque in North Nicosia in the de facto state of Northern Cyprus, and the principal Islamic place of worship on the island of Cyprus. It was constructed as a Christian church known as the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, which was built on the site of an earlier Byzantine church, and was consecrated in 1326. It was converted to a mosque in 1570, following the 50-day siege of Nicosia, when the area became part of the Ottoman Empire. A pair of minarets and other Islamic features were added at that time. Photograph credit: Alexander Savin
Recently featured:
|
April 20
.jpg)
|
Urban agriculture, urban farming, or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around urban areas. Urban agriculture can reflect varying levels of economic and social development. It may be a social movement for sustainable communities, where organic growers, "foodies", and "locavores" form social networks founded on a shared ethos of nature and community holism. For others, food security, nutrition, and income generation are key motivations for the practice. In both scenarios, more direct access to fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat products through urban agriculture can improve food security and food safety. This photograph depicts urban agriculture in the form of a roof garden at Essex Crossing in Manhattan, New York City. Among the plants grown are tomatoes, chili peppers, lettuce, herbs, carrots and beetroots. Photograph credit: Rhododendrites
Recently featured:
|
April 19
_underside_Bulgaria.jpg)
|
The Balkan fritillary (Boloria graeca) is a butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. It is found in the southern central Alps and the mid- to high-altitude Balkans. This Balkan fritillary of the subspecies B. g. balcanica was photographed in Yastrebets, in the Rila Mountains of Bulgaria, in 2017. Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp |
April 18
|
|
B-515, sometimes known as U-434 after her pennant number, is a Tango-class submarine that served in the Soviet Navy and later the Russian Navy. Built in 1976 in Nizhny Novgorod, the submarine remained in active service until 2001. She was used for hunting, espionage, and patrol purposes, operated by a 78-man crew. Now docked in Hamburg, Germany, she is open to the public as a museum ship. This 2020 photograph shows a panorama of B-515's interior. Photograph credit: Tim Rademacher
Recently featured:
|
April 17
|
|
The orange is a fruit of various citrus species in the family Rutaceae, primarily the cultivar Citrus × sinensis, also known as the sweet orange to distinguish it from C. × aurantium, the bitter orange. The sweet orange is a hybrid between the pomelo (C. maxima) and the mandarin (C. reticulata), with the pomelo being the chloroplast genome and maternal line. The orange originated in a region encompassing south China, northeast India, and Myanmar, and the earliest mention of the sweet orange found in Chinese literature dates from 314 BC. The sweet orange reproduces asexually (apomixis through nucellar embryony); varieties of sweet orange arise through mutations. The whole genome has been sequenced. This photograph, depicting a whole orange, a halved orange, and a peeled orange segment, was focus-stacked from eleven images. Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus
Recently featured:
|
April 16
|
BASF is a European multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world. The group comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries and operates six integrated production sites and 390 other production sites in Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas and Africa. This panoramic photograph, taken in January 2023, shows the northern part of BASF's headquarters in Ludwigshafen, Germany, as seen from the east bank of the Rhine. Photograph credit: Norbert Nagel
Recently featured:
|
April 15
|
Leonhard Euler (15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology, and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis and infinitesimal calculus. Euler introduced much of modern mathematical notation and terminology, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and music theory. This pastel-on-paper portrait of Euler was painted by the Swiss painter Jakob Emanuel Handmann in 1753, and is now in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Basel. Painting credit: Jakob Emanuel Handmann; image retouched by Bammesk
Recently featured:
|
April 14
-_Alessandro_Bianconi.png)
|
|
C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is a long-period comet from the Oort cloud that was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility in March 2022. The comet has a bright green glow around its nucleus, due to the effect of sunlight on diatomic carbon and cyanogen. Its comet nucleus is estimated to be about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) in size, rotating every 8.5 to 8.7 hours. Its tails of dust and gas extended for millions of kilometres and, during January 2023, an anti-tail was also visible. The comet reached perihelion on 12 January 2023, at a distance of 1.11 AU (166 million km; 103 million mi), and its closest approach to Earth was on 1 February 2023, at a distance of 0.28 AU (42 million km; 26 million mi). The comet reached magnitude 5 during this approach, and was visible with the naked eye under moonless dark skies. This photograph of C/2022 E3 (ZTF), released by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, was taken on 27 January 2023. Photograph credit: Alessandro Bianconi
Recently featured:
|
April 13
|
|
Spiti is a high-altitude cold desert in the Western Himalayas in India. "Spiti" means "the middle land", between Tibet and India. The region is above the tree line, with only shrubs and a few scattered stunted trees. In the upper valley, the braided Spiti River flows in narrow channels in a very wide river bed, as seen in this photograph, taken just above Kaza, the largest town in Spiti. In the lower valley, the river meanders through gorges 10 to 130 metres (33 to 427 ft) deep that it has cut in the sedimentary deposits. The Moravian geologist Ferdinand Stoliczka discovered a major geological formation near the village of Mud in the 1860s, and identified a number of layers or successions. The people of Spiti follow Tibetan Buddhism, and their culture is similar to those of neighbouring Tibet and Ladakh. The region is known for adventure tourism, trekking and mountaineering. Photograph credit: Timothy A. Gonsalves
Recently featured:
|
April 12
,_Madeira,_Portugal,_2019-05-31,_DD_45.jpg)
|
Hermodice carunculata, the bearded fireworm, is a type of marine bristleworm belonging to the Amphinomidae family, native to the tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. They are usually 15 centimetres (6 inches) in average length, but can reach up to 30 centimetres (12 inches). This bearded fireworm was photographed in the Garajau Marine Nature Reserve in Madeira, Portugal. Photograph credit: Diego Delso
Recently featured:
|
April 11
|
An oriental rug is a heavy textile made for a variety of utilitarian and symbolic purposes and originating from a region known as the Rug Belt, which stretches from Morocco across North Africa, the Middle East, and into Central Asia and northern India. The rugs can be pile-woven or flat-woven without pile, using various materials such as silk, wool, cotton, jute and animal hair. The origin of the oriental rug is unknown, although it is likely to have developed from earlier floor coverings made of felt. This French poster, titled "A La Place Clichy" and produced around 1891 to advertise oriental rugs, features a lithograph by the Swiss artist Eugène Grasset. Illustration credit: Eugène Grasset; restored by Adam Cuerden
Recently featured:
|
April 10
|
|
Project Mercury was the first human-spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. It was one of the first projects of NASA, which was created as a response to the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the first satellite in Earth orbit. The program's goals were to orbit a crewed spacecraft around Earth, investigate the pilot's ability to function in space, and to recover both pilot and spacecraft safely. The Soviet Union won the race to put the first human into orbit when Yuri Gagarin traveled in Vostok 1 in 1961, while the US launched its first astronaut on a suborbital flight in the same year, and achieved crewed orbital flight in 1962 when John Glenn made three orbits around the Earth. The Mercury project's missions were followed by millions on radio and television around the world, and it laid the groundwork for Project Gemini, which carried two astronauts in each capsule and perfected space docking maneuvers essential for crewed lunar landings in the subsequent Apollo program, announced a few weeks after the first crewed Mercury flight. This NASA illustration compares the relative sizes and launch positions of the spacecraft and rockets of Project Mercury (small) with those of Gemini (medium) and Apollo (large). Illustration credit: Davis Paul Meltzer
Recently featured:
|
April 9
|
The Church of the Redeemer is a church of the Anglican Church of Canada in Toronto, Canada, located at the intersection of Bloor Street and Avenue Road. Dedicated to Christ the Redeemer, the church was founded in 1871, when the area was still on the fringe of the city. The Gothic Revival building opened in 1879. The 20th-century high-rise buildings behind the church in this photograph are 21 Avenue Road (blue-gray, 1971) and 150 Bloor Street West (yellow-brown, 1981). Photograph credit: Maksim Sokolov
Recently featured:
|
April 8
.jpg)
|
|
SpaceX CRS-8 was a Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station that launched on April 8, 2016, at 20:43 UTC. It was the twenty-third flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, the tenth flight of a Dragon cargo spacecraft, and the eighth operational mission contracted to SpaceX by NASA under the Commercial Resupply Services program. After boosting the payload on its orbital trajectory, the rocket's first stage re-entered the denser layers of the atmosphere and landed vertically on the ocean landing platform Of Course I Still Love You nine minutes after liftoff (as pictured in this photograph), thus achieving a long-sought-after milestone in the SpaceX reusable launch system development program. Photograph credit: SpaceX
Recently featured:
|
April 7
|
The Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John is an oil painting by the Dutch artist Hendrick ter Brugghen, probably painted around 1625 as an altarpiece for a Catholic clandestine church likely located in Utrecht in the Calvinist Dutch United Provinces. The scene is taken from the account of the crucifixion of Jesus in the Gospel of John, and depicts Jesus being mourned by his mother Mary and John the Apostle. At the base of the cross are bones, traditionally identified as those of Adam. The scene is set in an atmosphere of deep dusk with stars visible in the background. The painting was not known until it was discovered in a bombed-out church in South Hackney, London, in 1956. Initially unrecognized, it was identified before an appearance at Sotheby's later that year. It was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it now hangs. Painting credit: Hendrick ter Brugghen
Recently featured:
|
April 6
|
|
Landscape Arch is a natural rock arch in Arches National Park in the U.S. state of Utah. With a length of 290.1 feet (88.4 m), it is the longest natural arch in the park and the United States, and the fifth-longest in the world. Landscape Arch was named by Frank Beckwith, who explored the area in the winter of 1933–34 as the leader of a scientific expedition. Photograph credit: Thomas Wolf
Recently featured:
|
April 5
|
Campanula cervicaria, also known as the bristly bellflower, is a species of flowering plant in the bellflower family, Campanulaceae. Native to Scandinavia and central Europe, C. cervicaria has also become naturalised in parts of the U.S. state of Minnesota. Its natural habitat is woodland edges, hillside meadows, dry meadows and banks, and it also flourishes where soil has been disturbed, for example after slash-and-burn or forest clearance. The plant has a hairy stem, with light blue flowers about 1 to 2 centimetres (0.4 to 0.8 in) long and grouped together. This C. cervicaria flower was photographed in Keila, Estonia. Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus
Recently featured:
|
April 4
|
The Boeing F-15EX Eagle II is an American multirole all-weather strike fighter manufactured by Boeing Defense, Space & Security. Derived from the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle and first conceived in 2018, the F-15EX is not expected to survive against modern air defenses by 2028, but has the capability to perform homeland and airbase defense, enforce no-fly zones against limited air defenses, and deploy standoff munitions. The aircraft made its maiden flight in February 2021, and as of 2023 has a total planned fleet size of up to 104. This F-15EX, from the United States Air Force's 40th Flight Test Squadron, was photographed flying over northern California during an aerial-refueling operation in May 2021. Photograph credit: Ethan Wagner
Recently featured:
|
April 3
|
The Galle Lighthouse is an onshore lighthouse in Galle, Sri Lanka. The oldest light station in the country, it is operated and maintained by the Sri Lanka Ports Authority. The first lighthouse in the area was built by the British in 1848 using cast-iron plates, but was destroyed by fire in 1936. The current 26.5-metre-high (87 ft) concrete lighthouse was built in 1939, around 100 metres (300 ft) from the original. This photograph of the Galle Lighthouse was taken in January 2020. Photograph credit: Alexander Savin
Recently featured:
|
April 2
|
The palm cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus) is a bird in the family Cacatuidae native to New Guinea, the Aru Islands, and Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. It has a very large black beak and prominent red cheek patches. This individual was photographed near Lockhart River in Queensland. Photograph credit: JJ Harrison
Recently featured:
|
April 1
|
Richard Gerstl (1883–1908) was an Austrian painter and draughtsman known for his expressive and psychologically insightful portraits, his lack of critical acclaim during his lifetime, and his affair with the composer Arnold Schoenberg's wife. At the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Gerstl studied under the notoriously opinionated and difficult Christian Griepenkerl. He began to reject the style of the Vienna Secession and what he felt was "pretentious" art. For the summers of 1900 and 1901, Gerstl studied under the guidance of Simon Hollósy in Nagybánya. Inspired by the more liberal leanings of Heinrich Lefler, Gerstl once again attempted formal education. His refusal to participate in a procession in honor of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria further ostracized him and led to his departure; he felt that taking part in such an event was "unworthy of an artist". Gerstl painted this oil-on-canvas laughing self-portrait in an Expressionist style in the year of his death by suicide. The painting is now housed in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. Painting credit: Richard Gerstl
Recently featured:
|
March 31
.jpg)
|
Jessica Meir (born 1977) is an American-Swedish NASA astronaut, marine biologist, and physiologist. She was previously an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, following postdoctoral research in comparative physiology at the University of British Columbia. She has studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica, and the physiology of bar-headed geese, which are able to migrate over the Himalayas. Meir launched on September 25, 2019, to the International Space Station onboard Soyuz MS-15, where she served as a flight engineer during Expedition 61 and Expedition 62. On October 18, 2019, Meir and Christina Koch became the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk. Photograph credit: Robert Markowitz
Recently featured:
|
March 30
The Papiermark is the name given to the German currency from 4 August 1914, when the link between the Goldmark and gold was abandoned. In particular, the name is used for the banknotes issued during the period of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic in 1922 and especially 1923. During this period, the Papiermark was also issued by the Free City of Danzig. The last of five series of the Danzig mark was the 1923 inflation issue, which consisted of denominations of 1 million to 10 billion issued from August to October 1923. The Danzig mark was replaced on 22 October 1923 by the Danzig gulden. This set of Danzig banknotes, in denominations of 100, 500 and 1000 mark, was issued in 1922. These banknotes are part of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. Banknote design credit: Free City of Danzig; scanned by Andrew Shiva
Recently featured:
|
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
March 29
|
Marian Anderson (1897–1993) was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals, in major concert and recital venues between 1925 and 1965. Anderson was an important figure in the struggle for African-American artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, after being prohibited from performing for an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt arranged for Anderson to perform in an open-air concert on Easter Sunday on the Lincoln Memorial steps in the capital which was broadcast to a radio audience of millions and was featured in a documentary film. In 1955, Anderson became the first African-American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. She worked as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United States Department of State, giving concerts all over the world. She participated in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, singing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Anderson was awarded the first Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the Congressional Gold Medal in 1977, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, the National Medal of Arts in 1986, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991. This portrait photograph of Anderson in a formal gown was taken in 1940. Photograph credit: Carl Van Vechten; restored by Adam Cuerden
Recently featured:
|
March 28
_-_Archivio_Storico_Ricordi_FOTO000794_-_Restoration.jpg)
|
Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–1886) was an Italian composer. Born in Paderno Fasolaro (now Paderno Ponchielli) near Cremona, then Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old. He is best known for his operas, most notably La Gioconda, the third and most successful version of which debuted at La Scala in Milan on 28 March 1880. The Dance of the Hours from that opera is widely known thanks in part to its use in Walt Disney's Fantasia in 1940 and in Allan Sherman's novelty song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh". In 1881, Ponchielli was appointed the maestro di cappella of Bergamo Cathedral and a professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where his pupils included Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, Emilio Pizzi, and Giovanni Tebaldini. He was married to the soprano Teresina Brambilla and died at the age of 51 in Milan. This formal photographic portrait of Ponchielli was taken in Milan and is in the archives of the music publisher Casa Ricordi. Photograph credit: Icilio Calzolari; restored by Adam Cuerden
Recently featured:
|
March 27
|
|
The Fortune Teller is an operetta in three acts composed by Victor Herbert, with a libretto by Harry B. Smith. After a brief tryout in Toronto, it premiered on Broadway on September 26, 1898, at Wallack's Theatre and ran for 40 performances. The star Alice Nielsen and many of the original company traveled to London, where the piece opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre on April 9, 1901, running for 88 performances. This 1905 poster for The Fortune Teller, depicting eight members of the women's drum corps, was presumably produced for a touring or repertoire production by Nielsen's company. Poster credit: United States Lithograph Company; restored by Adam Cuerden
Recently featured:
|
March 26
|
|
Somapura Mahavihara is a Buddhist vihara (monastery) at Paharpur in Badalgachhi, Bangladesh. Built during the reign of the second Pala king Dharmapala (circa 781 to 821), it was one of five great Mahaviharas of the period. It is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the country and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. This aerial photograph, depicting the structure of the central shrine of Somapura Mahavihara, was taken in 2021. Photograph credit: Md. Ahsanul Haque Nayem
Recently featured:
|
March 25
|
The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish master Jan van Eyck, painted around 1434–1436. Originally on panel, the work was transferred to canvas in the 19th century. It is thought to have been the left (inner) wing of a triptych, although there have been no sightings of the other wings since before 1817. The painting depicts the biblical scene of the Annunciation, in which the Archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will bear the son of God. The inscription shows his words: AVE GRA PLENA ('Hail, full of grace'). She modestly draws back and responds, ECCE ANCILLA DNI ('Behold the handmaiden of the Lord'); these words appear upside down. The Annunciation is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Painting credit: Jan van Eyck
Recently featured:
|
March 24
_and_Carl_Ferdinand_Cori_-_restoration1.jpg)
|
Gerty Cori (1896–1957) was a Czech-American biochemist. She was the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for her significant role in the "discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen". Born in Prague, Cori grew up at a time when women were marginalized in science and allowed few educational opportunities, but she nonetheless gained admittance to medical school. With her husband Carl Ferdinand Cori and the Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay, she received the Nobel Prize in 1947. This photograph from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, taken in the same year, shows Cori and her husband working in their laboratory. Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Bammesk
Recently featured:
|
March 23
|
The Tomb of Mian Ghulam Kalhoro is a religious shrine situated in Hyderabad, Pakistan, and the oldest building in the city. It is the burial place of Mian Ghulam Shah Kalhoro, who died in 1772 and is believed to be the founder of Hyderabad, and the second-most important figure in the province of Sindh after Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. The domed shrine is built inside a rectangular fort, and its interior is decorated with gildings, arc-shaped windows, and tiles. This exterior view of the tomb was photographed in 2020. Photograph credit: Alexander Savin
Recently featured:
|
Picture of the day archives and future dates