Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Archive

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is a black-and-white photograph taken by American landscape photographer Ansel Adams, late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941, from a shoulder of the highway US 84 / US 285, in the unincorporated community of Hernandez, New Mexico, United States. The photograph shows the Moon rising in a dominating black sky with low clouds above a collection of modest dwellings, a church and a cross-filled graveyard, with snow-covered mountains in the background. Adams captured a single image, with the sunset lighting the white crosses and buildings. Because Adams did not date the image, attempts have been made to determine a date from astronomical information in the photograph. It is one of Adams's most popular works.

Photograph credit: Ansel Adams

The little owl (Athene noctua) is a bird in the family Strigidae, the true owls. It inhabits much of the temperate and warmer parts of Europe, the Palearctic realm east to Korea, and North Africa. The species is mainly nocturnal and is found in a range of habitats, including farmland, woodland fringes, steppes and semi-deserts. It is around 22 centimetres (8.7 inches) long, and cryptically coloured. The little owl typically feeds on insects, earthworms, other invertebrates and small vertebrates. Males hold territories that they defend against intruders. It is a cavity nester, and a clutch of about four eggs is laid in spring. The female does the incubation and the male brings food to the nest, first for the female and later for the newly hatched young. As the chicks grow, both parents hunt and bring them food, and the chicks leave the nest at about seven weeks of age. This little owl was photographed in Zhabaiushkan, a wildlife sanctuary in Mangystau Region, Kazakhstan.

Photograph credit: Maksat Bisengaziev

Emily Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was a suffragette who fought for votes for women in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century. Davison grew up in a middle-class family and studied at Royal Holloway College, London, and St Hugh's College, Oxford, before taking jobs as a teacher and governess. A staunch feminist and passionate Christian, she deemed socialism to be a moral and political force for good. She became an officer of the Women's Social and Political Union and a chief steward during its marches. Her tactics included breaking windows, throwing stones, setting fire to postboxes, and, on three occasions, hiding overnight in the Palace of Westminster – including on the night of the 1911 census. Davison was arrested nine times, went on hunger strike seven times, and was force fed on forty-nine occasions. She died after being hit by King George V's horse Anmer at the 1913 Epsom Derby when she walked onto the track during the race. This studio portrait, showing Davison wearing her Hunger Strike Medal and Holloway brooch, was taken in the early 1910s.

Photograph credit: Andrew William Dron; restored by Adam Cuerden

The Australian Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. It meets at Parliament House in the national capital, Canberra. There are 76 senators, elected through single transferable vote in state-wide and territory-wide elections. Each of the six Australian states elects 12 senators, while the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory elect 2 each. The role of the Senate is defined in the constitution of Australia and it has almost equal powers to the lower house. In contrast to other countries with a Westminster system of government, the Australian Senate plays an active role in legislation, although in practice most legislation is initiated by the government, which controls the lower house. This photograph shows the chamber where the Senate meets.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison

Aluterus scriptus, commonly known as the scrawled filefish, is a marine fish in the filefish family, Monacanthidae. It has a circumtropical distribution, being found in the tropical waters of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific. It inhabits lagoons, coral and rocky reefs, seaweed fields, pinnacles, wrecks and also open water. Aluterus scriptus grows up to 1.1 metres (3 ft 7 in) in length and has an elongated elliptical body shape. Its coloration is olive-brown or grey depending on its surrounding environment, with irregular blue lines and spots distributed on the body mixed with some black spots mainly on the head. The species is omnivorous with a diet including small crustaceans, algae, gorgonians, sea anemones, tunicates, fire coral, seagrasses and hydrozoans. This A. scriptus fish was photographed in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

Veronica filiformis, commonly known as the slender speedwell among other names, is a species of flowering plant in the family Plantaginaceae. It is native to northern Turkey and the Caucasus, and is known in many other regions as an introduced species, for example in the United Kingdom, where it began as a rock garden plant and later became wild. Veronica filiformis is a rhizomatous perennial herb producing mats of hairy stems. It is self-sterile and rarely seeds, being spread by stolons. The petals are four-lobed and blueish with a white tip, around 8–10 mm in diameter, the top lobe being largest since it is actually a fusion of two lobes. At the center are two long, protruding stamens. Solitary flowers occur in leaf axils. They are on relatively long, slender stalks that arise from the leaf axils, and appear between April and July. This photograph of a V. filiformis flower was focus-stacked from 42 separate images.

Photograph credit: Reinhold Möller

The Nobel Prize in Physics is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to those who have made the most outstanding contributions to humanity through physics. It is widely regarded as the most prestigious award that a scientist can receive in that field. One of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded since 1901, when the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen was recognised for the discovery of X-rays. As of 2025, there have been 229 Nobel laureates in physics. The prize consists of a medal (whose obverse bears a profile of Nobel), a diploma, and a monetary award. This 1931 group photograph includes three Nobel laureates in physics in the front row – from left to right, Albert A. Michelson (1907), Albert Einstein (1921), and Robert Millikan (1923) – each of whom autographed the image. The photograph is in the collection of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution.

Photograph credit: unknown; scanned by the Smithsonian Institution; restored by Bammesk

The hooded mountain tanager (Buthraupis montana) is a bird in the tanager family, Thraupidae. The species is found in forest and woodland in the Andean highlands of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, at altitudes between 1,800 and 3,000 metres (5,900 and 9,800 ft). It is one of the largest tanagers, at 23 centimetres (9.1 in) and 96 grams (3.4 oz), and has a black head and thighs, a blue black and bright yellow belly, with red eyes. This hooded mountain tanager of the subspecies B. m. cucullata was photographed in Hacienda El Bosque, a wildlife reserve near Manizales, Colombia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Chester A. Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was the 21st president of the United States, serving from 1881 to 1885. He was a Republican from New York who previously served as the 20th vice president under President James A. Garfield. Assuming the presidency after Garfield's assassination, Arthur's presidency saw the largest expansion of the U.S. Navy, the end of the so-called "spoils system", and the implementation of harsher restrictions for migrants entering from abroad. Suffering from poor health, Arthur made only a limited effort to secure the Republican Party's nomination in 1884, and he retired at the end of his term. He has been described as one of the least memorable presidents in the history of the United States. This photograph by Abraham Bogardus shows Arthur around 1880.

Photograph credit: Abraham Bogardus; restored by Adam Cuerden

Agnes Booth (October 4, 1843 – January 2, 1910) was an Australian-born American actress and in-law of actors Junius Brutus Booth, Edwin Booth, and John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. She made her US debut in early 1858 as Agnes Land, performing with her sister Belle at Maguire's Opera House, San Francisco. In 1865 she moved to New York where she appeared at the Winter Garden Theatre. In 1867, she married Junius Brutus Booth Jr. and she performed as Agnes Booth thereafter. She played Belinda in the first American production of W. S. Gilbert's Engaged in 1879, as shown in this photograph by Abraham Bogardus.

Photograph credit: Abraham Bogardus; restored by Adam Cuerden

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 is a United States federal law that was passed by the 89th Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 3, 1965. The act formally removed de facto discrimination against people of various ethnicities from the country's immigration policy and created a system giving priority to various categories of people such as relatives of US citizens, skilled professionals, and refugees. Previous policy consisted of the National Origins Formula of the 1920s, whose aim was to preserve American homogeneity by promoting immigration from Western and Northern Europe, an approach which came under attack during the civil rights movement for being racially discriminatory. This photograph shows President Johnson officially signing the Immigration and Nationality Act in a ceremony on Liberty Island in New York City.

Photograph credit: Yoichi Okamoto

Epinephelus marginatus is a species of fish in the grouper family, Epinephelidae. It is found in coastal waters, primarily at the edges of the Atlantic Ocean – off western Africa and eastern South America – and also in the Indian Ocean around South Africa, Madagascar and Réunion, and throughout the Mediterranean. Epinephelus marginatus is a very large, oval-bodied and large-headed fish with a wide mouth which has a protruding lower jaw. It is typically 90 cm in length but some individuals grow up to 150 cm. The head and upper body are coloured dark reddish brown or greyish, usually with yellowish gold countershading on the ventral surfaces, while the base colour is marked by a vertical series of irregular pale-greenish-yellow, silvery-grey or whitish blotching. This E. marginatus individual was photographed off Cape Palos, Spain.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

Sarah Forbes Bonetta (c. 1843 – 1880), born Aina or Ina, was an African slave who later became a ward and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Believed to be a titled member of the Yewa, a clan of the West African Yoruba people, she was orphaned as a child during a war with the nearby kingdom of Dahomey and was later enslaved by Ghezo, the king of Dahomey. She was then given as a "gift" to Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy and was taken to England, where she became a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. On Victoria's orders, Bonetta married Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy Lagos philanthropist, in 1862. The couple moved back to Africa and had three children, including Lagos socialite Victoria Davies Randle. Bonetta died aged 37 on the Portuguese island of Madeira. This formal photograph, taken by the French photographer Camille Silvy in 1862, shows Bonetta and Davies at around the time of their marriage.

Photograph credit: Camille Silvy; restored by Adam Cuerden

Child labor in the United States was a common phenomenon across the economy in the 19th century, gradually declining in the early 20th century, with exceptions in the Southern textile and related industries and agriculture. Compulsory school laws and Northern state laws prohibiting work in mines and factories further reduced the phenomenon. A national law was passed in 1916, but it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918; a 1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s, an effort to pass a constitutional amendment failed, because of opposition from the South and from Catholics. Outside of farming, child labor was steadily declining in the 20th century, and the New Deal in 1938 finally ended child labor in factories and mines. Child labor has always been a factor in agriculture, and that continues into the 21st century. There has been a large rise in child labor in the 2020s amid a labor shortage due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and some states have proposed or enacted measures to loosen restrictions. This 1910 photograph by Lewis Hine shows ten-year-old Rose Biodo of Philadelphia carrying berries in a field in Browns Mills, New Jersey, four weeks into the school year.

Photograph credit: Lewis Hine

The tawny-bellied hermit (Phaethornis syrmatophorus) is a species in the hummingbird family, Trochilidae. It is found in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, where it inhabits the understory of humid montane forest and is also sometimes at forest edges and in dense secondary forest. In elevation it mostly ranges between 1,000 and 2,300 m. The tawny-bellied hermit is about 14 cm long and weighs 5 to 7 g. It has olive green upperparts, males also having reddish-orange uppertail coverts, whle the central tail feathers of both sexes are long and white and the rest are dark with bright orange ends. It has either an orange or dark brown chest, depending on subspecies. Similar to other hermit hummingbirds, it is a "trap-line" feeder, visiting a circuit of a wide variety of flowering plants for nectar, and it has a song which consists of high-pitched "tsi" calls. This tawny-bellied hermit was photographed at San Isidro Lodge near Cosanga, Napo Province, Ecuador.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel located on a mountain ridge in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, about 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level. Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it was built around 1450, likely as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti, and was abandoned roughly a century later. Notable structures include the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Three Windows, and Intihuatana, a ritual stone. Machu Picchu was designated a historic sanctuary by Peru in 1981, and a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983. It received more than 1.5 million visitors annually as of 2024, making it Peru's most visited tourist attraction. This photograph of Machu Picchu was taken in 1912 by Hiram Bingham III, the American explorer who rediscovered the citadel, and was published in the April 1913 edition of National Geographic. The image was taken after early clearing work, and shows the agricultural terraces, the central urban complex, and the steep peak of Huayna Picchu rising in the background.

Photograph credit: Hiram Bingham III

Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula CaSO₄·2H₂O. It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, drywall and blackboard or sidewalk chalk. The Mohs scale of mineral hardness defines gypsum as hardness value 2 based on scratch hardness comparison. Other forms of gypsum include the fine-grained, lightly-tinted alabaster, used for sculpture by many cultures in history, and the translucent crystals of selenite. This specimen of gypsum originates in Carresse-Cassaber, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.

Photograph credit: Didier Descouens

Voss is the seventeenth collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen. It had its runway show on 26 September 2000 at the Gatliff Road Warehouse in London, and was created for the Spring/Summer 2001 season of McQueen's eponymous fashion house. The collection draws on imagery of madness and the natural world to explore ideas of bodily perfection, interrogating who and what was beautiful. Voss features a large number of showpiece designs, including dresses made with razor clam shells, an antique Japanese screen, taxidermy hawks, and microscope slides. The collection's palette mainly comprises muted tones; common design flourishes included Orientalist and surrealist elements. This photograph shows the razor clam shell dress at the 2024 Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photograph credit: Rhododendrites

Verreaux's sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) is a medium-sized primate in one of the lemur families, the Indriidae. Critically Endangered, it lives in Madagascar and can be found in a variety of habitats from rainforest to dry deciduous forests of western Madagascar and the spiny thickets of the south. This photograph was taken near Réserve Peyrieras, Madagascar

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon is an 1816 biblical landscape painting by the British artist John Martin. It depicts an episode from the Book of Joshua, in which the Israelite leader Joshua comes to the assistance of the besieged city of Gibeon, appealing to God to halt the Sun in order to give his army more time to fight by daylight. Romantic in style, it was Martin's breakthrough picture, receiving praise both when it was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1816 at London's Somerset House, and when it appeared at the British Institution the following year. Since 2004, it has been in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Photograph credit: John Martin

Mary Terrell (September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, teacher and one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street High School—the first African-American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1895, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Colored Women's League of Washington. She helped found the National Association of Colored Women and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden

The Australian brushturkey (Alectura lathami) is a species of bird in the Megapode family, Megapodiidae. It is found in eastern Australia, from Far North Queensland to the South Coast region of New South Wales, as well as on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, where it is an introduced species. The Australian brushturkey inhabits wet forests, as well as drier scrubs and open areas, and lives in both mountainous and lowland areas. It is also common in urban environments including on domestic properties in the cities of Brisbane and Sydney. A black-feathered bird with a red head, the Australian brushturkey is typically a large bird, with a total length of around 60–75 cm and a wingspan of around 85 cm, although the subspecies A. l. purpureicollis from the northern Cape York Peninsula is somewhat smaller. The species is known for its mound-building, which is carried out by a dominant male and visited by a succession of local females, for mating and egg-laying. It uses a large nest on the ground made of leaves, other compostable material, and earth. This female Australian brushturkey was photographed in Crater Lakes National Park, Queensland.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Tadej Pogačar (born 21 September 1998) is a Slovenian professional road cyclist who currently rides for UAE Team Emirates XRG, a UCI WorldTeam based in the United Arab Emirates. His victories include four Tours de France (2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025), the 2024 Giro d'Italia, and nine monuments (the Tour of Flanders twice, Liège–Bastogne–Liège three times, and the Giro di Lombardia four times), as well as the men's road race at the UCI Road World Championships. Comfortable in time-trialing, one-day classic riding and grand-tour climbing, he has been compared to all-round cyclists such as Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault as one of the sport's greatest. This photograph shows Pogačar celebrating a stage victory in the 2022 Tour of Slovenia.

Photograph credit: Petar Milošević

The Freshman is a 1925 American silent comedy film that tells the story of a college freshman trying to become popular by joining the school football team. It was released on September 20, 1925, and stars Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict, and James Anderson. It remains one of Lloyd's most successful and enduring films. The film was written by John Grey, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan, and Ted Wilde. It was directed by Taylor and Fred C. Newmeyer. In 1990, The Freshman was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," added in the second year of voting and one of the first 50 films to receive the honor.

Film credit: Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor

Hamm (Westfalen) Hauptbahnhof is a railway station in the city of Hamm in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The station is one of the important InterCityExpress rail hubs in the eastern Ruhr area and is among the high-profile buildings of Hamm. The station opened in 1847 and was rebuilt in 1920. This photograph shows the interior of the station.

Photograph credit: A.Savin

The little pied cormorant (Microcarbo melanoleucos) is a species of waterbird in the cormorant family, Phalacrocoracidae. It is a common bird found around the coasts, islands, estuaries and inland waters of Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Timor-Leste and Indonesia, and around the islands of the south-western Pacific and the subantarctic. Measuring 56 to 58 centimetres (22 to 23 inches) in length with a short bill, it is usually black above and white below with a yellow bill and small crest, although a mostly black, white-throated form predominates in New Zealand. This little pied cormorant was photographed in Freycinet National Park in Tasmania, Australia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

The Battle of Antietam took place during the American Civil War on September 17, 1862, between Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union Major General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek. Part of the Maryland campaign, it was the first field army–level engagement in the Eastern theater of the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It remains the bloodiest day in American history, with a tally of 22,727 dead, wounded, or missing on both sides. Although the Union Army suffered heavier casualties than the Confederates, the battle was a major turning point in the Union's favor. This 1887 lithograph by Thure de Thulstrup depicts the charge of the Iron Brigade near the Dunker Church.

Illustration credit: Thure de Thulstrup; restored by Adam Cuerden

The Asaro Mudmen are a group of people in the Asaro River valley in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea who wear characteristic large decorative clay masks over their heads, accompanied by white body paint and long bamboo fingers. Likely inspired by traditional methods of obscuring faces during inter-tribal violence, researchers believe that the modern tradition of the Asaro Mudmen developed in the village of Komunive during the second half of the 20th century, first as a marker of village identity, and then as part of a significant tourism industry. Today, Mudmen imagery has become a cultural symbol for Asaro, the province, and to some extent the country as a whole. This Asaro Mudman carrying his clay mask on his shoulder was photographed in 2008 in the village of Kabiufa, part of the Asaro valley.

Photograph credit: Jialiang Gao

The 2024 Central European floods were a series of floods caused by a record heavy rainfall generated by Storm Boris, an extremely humid Genoa low. The flooding began in Austria and the Czech Republic, then spread to Poland, Romania and Slovakia, and then onwards to Germany and Hungary. The floods caused 28 fatalities and over 4 billion euros in damage. This photograph shows floodwater surrounding the Franciscan monastery in Kłodzko, Poland, on 15 September 2024.

Photograph credit: Jacek Halicki

Sclerophrys gutturalis, also known as the African common toad or the guttural toad, is a species of amphibian in the true toad family, Bufonidae. It is found in Africa in a region stretching from Kenya west to Angola and south to South Africa, and inhabits areas of forest, savanna and wetland. Males grow up to 90 millimetres (3.5 in) and females 120 millimetres (4.7 in) in length. The upper surface is buffish brown with variable irregular dark brown markings, while the underparts are pale and granular and the male has a dark throat. This photograph shows a S. gutturalis toad swimming in Lake Sibaya, South Africa.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp