Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Archive
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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}}
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March 15
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Gateway Generating Station is a combined-cycle natural-gas-fired power station in Contra Costa County, California, on the southern shore of the San Joaquin River in Antioch. Commissioned in 2009, and owned and operated by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the facility includes two gas turbines paired with heat recovery steam generators that power a steam turbine, seen on the left in this photograph, and an air-cooled condenser system, seen on the right. The facility has a peak capacity of 580 megawatts. Photograph credit: JPxG
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March 14
Haliotis clathrata, the lovely abalone, is a species of sea snail in the abalone family. It has a shell whose shape forms a logarithmic spiral. The species occurs in the western Pacific Ocean, on the coasts of Australia and the islands and mainland of Southeast Asia, as well as islands in the Indian Ocean such as Madagascar and Mauritius, and stretches of the East African coast. Clockwise from top left, this picture shows an empty H. clathrata shell in dorsal, lateral, ventral, front and back views. The shell is 3.2 centimetres (1.3 inches) in length, and was found in the Philippines. Photograph credit: H. Zell
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March 13
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Iris Calderhead (1889–1966) was a suffragist and organizer in the National Woman's Party. She became involved in the women's suffrage movement in 1915 after meeting Doris Stevens and Lucy Burns, leaders of the Congressional Union, in New York City. She spent the next several years traveling around the US, mobilizing support for a federal constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's right to vote. She was arrested twice in 1917, first for displaying a banner during a visit by President Woodrow Wilson and then for picketing the White House. The Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women's right to vote in the United States in 1919, but Calderhead's activism continued as she campaigned for the same rights internationally. Photograph credit: Unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden
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March 12
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The Fugger family was a German upper-bourgeois family based in Augsburg that was a prominent group of European merchants and bankers who controlled much of the European economy in the 16th century and accumulated enormous wealth. This ten-ducat gold coin was struck by the family in 1621 for the County of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn, which they ruled from 1536 to 1806. Coin design credit: County of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn; photographed by the National Numismatic Collection
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March 11
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The rufous-collared sparrow (Zonotrichia capensis), also known as the Andean sparrow, is a species of New World sparrow found in a wide range of habitats, often near humans, from the extreme south-east of Mexico to Tierra del Fuego and the Caribbean. This sparrow of the subspecies Z. c. costaricensis was photographed in the Mount Totumas cloud forest in Panama. Photograph credit: Charles James Sharp
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March 10
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Thérèse is an opera in two acts by Jules Massenet to a French-language libretto by Jules Claretie. Set during the French Revolution, the plot concerns Thérèse, who is torn between duty and affection, between her husband André Thorel, a Girondist, and her lover, the nobleman Armand de Clerval. Although she had decided to follow her lover into exile, when her husband is being led to execution she shouts Vive le roi! (Long live the king!) amid the frenzied crowd and is dragged to her husband's side and marched to the guillotine. The opera first performed in Monte Carlo in 1907, and is among Massenet's lesser-known works. This poster was produced for the 1907 Paris premiere of Thérèse at the Opéra-Comique, and features the mezzo-soprano Lucy Arbell in the title role. Poster credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden
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March 9
Social grooming among primates plays a significant role in animal consolation behavior in which individuals engage in establishing and maintaining alliances through dominance hierarchies. It cements pre-existing coalitions, and is used for reconciliation after conflicts. Primates groom socially in moments of boredom as well, and the act has been shown to reduce tension and stress. This video clip depicts Japanese macaques grooming each other at the Jigokudani Monkey Park in Japan. Photograph credit: Frank Schulenburg
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March 8
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Marguerite Durand (1864–1936) was a French stage actress, journalist, and a leading suffragette. In 1888, she gave up her career in the theatre to marry an up-and-coming young lawyer, Georges Laguerre. A friend and follower of the politically ambitious army general Georges Ernest Boulanger, her husband introduced her to the world of radical populist politics and involved her in writing pamphlets for the Boulangist movement. Her newspaper, La Fronde, was founded in 1897 to pick up where Hubertine Auclert's La Citoyenne left off. She had a pet lion, and her collected papers are now housed in the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. This photograph of Durand was taken in 1910. Photograph credit: Agence Rol; restored by Adam Cuerden
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March 7
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Hudson Yards is a 28-acre (11 ha) real estate development in the Hudson Yards area of Manhattan, New York City, between the Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen neighborhoods. The development sits on a platform built over the West Side Yard, a storage facility for Long Island Rail Road trains. The first of its two phases, opened in 2019, comprises a public green space and eight structures that contain residences, a hotel, office buildings, a mall, and a cultural facility. The second phase, on which construction had not started as of 2021[update], will include residential space, an office building, and a school. Photograph credit: Rhododendrites
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March 6
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The double-barred finch (Stizoptera bichenovii) is a small passerine bird in the family Estrildidae, found in dry savannah, dry grassland and shrubland habitats in northern and eastern Australia. Feeding on seeds, it is highly gregarious, and nests among grasses or in bushes or low trees. This double-barred finch was photographed in Glen Davis, New South Wales. Photograph credit: JJ Harrison
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March 5
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The Soyuz programme is a human spaceflight programme initiated by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. The Soyuz spacecraft was originally part of a Moon landing project intended to put a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon. It is the third Soviet human spaceflight programme after the Vostok (1961–1963) and Voskhod (1964–1965) programmes. It is now the responsibility of the Russian Roscosmos space agency, and between the retirement of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011 and the launch of Crew Dragon in 2020, it served as the only vehicle for human spaceflight to the International Space Station. This picture shows the launch of the Soyuz TMA-13 mission at Gagarin's Start launchpad of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 12 October 2008. Photograph credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls; retouched by Lošmi
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March 4
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Margaret D. Foster (March 4, 1895 – November 5, 1970) was an American chemist. In 1918, she became the first female chemist to work for the United States Geological Survey, developing ways to detect minerals within naturally occurring bodies of water, and was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, developing new techniques of quantitative analysis for the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. This photograph depicts Foster working with chemicals in a laboratory in 1919. Photograph credit: National Photo Company; restored by Adam Cuerden
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March 3
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The scarlet dragonfly (Crocothemis erythraea) is a species of dragonfly in the family Libellulidae, commonly found in southern Europe and throughout Africa. Individuals can reach a length of 33 to 44 millimetres (1.3 to 1.7 inches), and have a flattened and rather broad abdomen. Adult males have a bright scarlet-red, widened abdomen, with small amber patches at the bases of the hindwings, while females and immature dragonflies are yellow-brown with a conspicuous pale stripe along the top of the thorax. This female scarlet dragonfly was photographed in Bulgaria. Photograph credit: Charles James Sharp
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March 2
Haboku sansui (Broken Ink Landscape) is a splashed-ink landscape painting on a hanging scroll, made by the Japanese artist and Zen Buddhist monk Sesshū Tōyō in 1495, during the Muromachi period. It was presented by Sesshū to his pupil Josui Sōen, who wanted a physical demonstration that he had studied under Sesshū. Sōen travelled with the scroll to his home in Kamakura, stopping in Kyoto, where six Zen monks added poems to it. The work is designated a National Treasure of Japan, and is held by the Tokyo National Museum. Painting credit: Sesshū Tōyō
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March 1
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Blackness Castle is a fortress located on the south shore of the Firth of Forth near Blackness, Scotland. Built by Sir George Crichton in the 1440s, the castle passed to King James II of Scotland in 1453. During its more than 500 years as Crown property, the castle has served as a prison, artillery fortification, and ammunition depot. The castle is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, in the care of Historic Environment Scotland. Photograph credit: Andrew Shiva
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February 28
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Elliot See (July 23, 1927 – February 28, 1966) was an American engineer, United States Naval Aviator, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. Selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 2 in 1962, See was the prime command pilot for what would have been his first space flight, Gemini 9. He was killed in 1966, along with his Gemini 9 crewmate Charles Bassett, when their jet aircraft crashed at the McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, where they were about to undergo two weeks of space-rendezvous simulator training. This photograph depicts See participating in water-egress training in 1965 as a backup crew member for Gemini 5. Photograph credit: NASA
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February 27
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Phyllidia elegans is a species of sea slug, a nudibranch in the family Phyllidiidae. It occurs in shallow water in the Red Sea and the tropical Indo-Pacific region. Photograph credit: Rickard Zerpe
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February 26
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The Moscow Metro is a rapid-transit system serving Moscow, the capital of Russia, and the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy and Kotelniki in Moscow Oblast. Opened in 1935, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union. This photograph shows the central hall of Elektrozavodskaya, a station on the Arbatsko–Pokrovskaya line. The station was built as part of the third stage of the Moscow Metro and opened in 1944, and is known for its architectural decoration, including rows of inset electric lights on the ceiling and marble bas-reliefs on the walls. Photograph credit: Alexander Savin
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February 25
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Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 is an 1888 oil-on-canvas painting by the Belgian artist James Ensor. The work, satirising Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem celebrated on Palm Sunday, is considered Ensor's most famous composition and a precursor to Expressionism. The picture is in the collection of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. Painting credit: James Ensor
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February 24
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Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390–1447), was an English prince, soldier, and literary patron. He was a benefactor and protector of the University of Oxford, donating more than 280 manuscripts, and his name lives on in Duke Humfrey's Library, part of the university's Bodleian Library, the interior of which is shown in this photograph. The possession of such a library did much to stimulate new learning. Photograph credit: David Iliff
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February 23
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The horse is a domesticated hoofed animal belonging to the subspecies Equus ferus caballus, part of the odd-toed ungulate order of mammals. Having been domesticated since at least 4000 to 3500 BC, horses now interact with humans in a wide variety of sporting competitions and non-competitive recreational pursuits, as well as in working activities such as police work, agriculture, entertainment, and therapy. Horses were historically used in warfare. This picture shows a diagram of the skeletal system of the horse, which has an average of 205 bones. A significant difference between the horse skeleton and that of a human is the lack of a collarbone – the horse's forelimbs are attached to the spinal column by a powerful set of muscles, tendons, and ligaments that attach the shoulder blade to the torso. The horse's leg bones are also proportioned differently from those of a human. The lower leg bones of a horse correspond to the bones of the human hand or foot. A horse has no muscles in its legs below the knees and hocks, only skin, hair, bone, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and the assorted specialized tissues that make up the hoof. Diagram credit: Wilfredo Rodríguez
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February 22
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Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory disease responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This scanning electron micrograph shows SARS-CoV-2 virions (gold) emerging from the surface of cells cultured in a laboratory. The virus particles depicted were isolated from a patient in the United States. Photograph credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
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February 21
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The Birth of the Milky Way, also known as The Origin of the Milky Way, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, produced between 1636 and 1638 and featuring the Greco-Roman myth of the origin of the Milky Way. The painting depicts Hera (Juno), spilling her breast milk, the infant Heracles (Hercules) and Zeus (Jupiter) in the background. Hera/Juno's face is modelled on Rubens's wife, Hélène Fourment. The carriage is pulled by peacocks, a bird which the ancient Greeks and Romans considered sacred to the goddess. The painting was a part of the commission from Philip IV of Spain to decorate Torre de la Parada. It is now held at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Painting credit: Peter Paul Rubens
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February 20
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The Indus River is a 3,180-kilometre (1,980 mi) transboundary and trans-Himalayan river that rises in western Tibet before flowing northwest through the regions of Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan in Kashmir. The river then bends sharply to the left after the Nanga Parbat massif, flows generally southwest through Pakistan, and empties into the Arabian Sea near the port city of Karachi. The Indus has a total drainage-basin area exceeding 1,165,000 km2 (450,000 sq mi). Its estimated annual flow is around 243 km3 (58 cu mi), making it one of the fifty largest rivers in the world by discharge. This photograph shows the Indus valley near the city of Leh, a capital of Ladakh in Indian-administered Kashmir. Photograph credit: KennyOMG
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February 19
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Django Reinhardt (1910–1953) was a Belgian-born Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe, and has been hailed as one of its most significant exponents. This photograph of Reinhardt was taken in the jazz club Aquarium in New York around November 1946. Photograph credit: William P. Gottlieb; restored by Adam Cuerden
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February 18
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The northern giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) is native to North Africa. The northern giraffe has two horn-like protuberances known as ossicones on their foreheads. These are longer and larger than those of the southern giraffes, although bull northern giraffes have a third cylindrical ossicone in the center of the head just above the eyes which range in length between 3 inches (8 cm) and 5 inches (10 cm). This individual was photographed at Zoo d'Amnéville in northeastern France. Photograph credit: Stefan Krause
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February 17
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Wells Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset, commenced around 1175 on the site of a late-Roman mausoleum and an 8th-century abbey church. The cathedral has been described by the historian John Harvey as Europe's first truly Gothic structure, lacking the Romanesque work that survives in many other cathedrals. It is the seat of the bishop of Bath and Wells. This photograph depicts the interior of Wells Cathedral's chapter house, built by unknown architects between 1275 and 1310 in the Geometric style of Decorated Gothic architecture. Photograph credit: David Iliff
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February 16
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Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) was an Italian composer best known for his thirty-nine operas. This 1821 lithograph by the French artist Paul Delaroche is entitled Il signor Tambourossini, which is a portmanteau of Rossini's name with tambour (French for 'drum'), caricaturing Rossini's European reputation at the time as a creator of noise. The illustration depicts "Tambourossini" in Oriental dress and playing a trumpet and a bass drum, accompanied by a screeching magpie, and assisted by King Midas, with ass's ears. Both are seen trampling on sheet music and violins, while Apollo, the god of music, flees in the background. Lithograph credit: Paul Delaroche; restored by Adam Cuerden
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February 15
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Osteospermum is a genus of flowering plants in Calenduleae, one of the smaller tribes of the family Asteraceae, which includes sunflowers and daisies. The plants are also known as daisybushes and African daisies. The genus is closely related to the Chrysanthemoides. This photograph depicts a cultivar of Osteospermum known as 'Pink Whirls', which has flowers featuring spoon-shaped petals. Photograph credit: Jon Sullivan
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February 14
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Historical coats of arms of the U.S. states date back to the admission of the first states to the Union. The historical coat of arms of Oregon shown here was illustrated by Henry Mitchell and published by Louis Prang in 1876 in The State Arms of the Union. Below the American eagle, the upper panel represents commerce, depicting mountains, an elk, a covered wagon, and the Pacific Ocean; in the ocean, a British man-of-war is departing and an American steamer is arriving, symbolizing the end of British rule in the Oregon Country. The lower panel shows a sheaf, a plow, and a pickaxe, symbolizing agriculture and mining. Illustration credit: Henry Mitchell; restored by Andrew Shiva
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