Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Archive

The titan beetle (Titanus giganteus) is a Neotropical species of longhorn beetle. It is one of the largest known beetles, as well as one of the largest known insects, at more than 170 millimetres (6.7 inches) in length. Adult titan beetles only live for a few weeks, and protect themselves from predators with their sharp spines and powerful jaws. The species is native to tropical rainforests throughout South America, primarily the Amazon rainforest, and is primarily found in old-growth forests with plenty of rotting wood, which serves as their principal food supply. Despite a broad distribution throughout South America, it is secretive and rarely seen due to its nocturnal habits and cryptic behavior. These three male titan beetles, collected in French Guiana, are in the collection of the Muséum de Toulouse in France.

Photograph credit: Didier Descouens

The 14th Dalai Lama (born 6 July 1935), also known by the spiritual name Tenzin Gyatso, is the incumbent Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism. He served as the resident spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet before the 1959 Tibetan uprising against the Chinese annexation of Tibet, when he escaped from Tibet to India. Subsequently, he led the Tibetan government-in-exile, represented by the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamshala, India. A belief central to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, as well as the institution of the Dalai Lama, is that he is a living bodhisattva, specifically an emanation of Avalokiteśvara (in Sanskrit) or Chenrezig (in Tibetan), the Bodhisattva of Compassion. This photograph of the Dalai Lama was taken in 2012.

Photograph credit: Christopher Michel

William Rankine (5 July 1820 – 24 December 1872) was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and Lord Kelvin, to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on its First Law. He developed the Rankine scale, a Fahrenheit-based equivalent to the Celsius-based Kelvin scale of temperature. This undated photograph of Rankine was taken by Thomas Annan.

Photograph credit: Thomas Annan; restored by Adam Cuerden

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features the 60-foot-tall (18 m) heads of four United States Presidents recommended by Borglum: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), chosen to represent the nation's birth, growth, development and preservation, respectively.

Photograph credit: Thomas Wolf

The slaty-crowned antpitta (Grallaricula nana) is a species of bird in the Antpitta family, Grallariidae. It has a disjunct distribution, inhabiting montane forest in the subtropical to temperate zone of northern South America. It is 10.5 to 11.5 cm (4.1 to 4.5 in) long and weighs 17.5 to 23 g (0.62 to 0.81 oz). This slaty-crowned antpitta of the subspecies G. n. occidentalis was photographed near Manizales, Colombia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

The Boeing–Saab T-7 Red Hawk is an American–Swedish transonic advanced jet trainer produced by Boeing with Saab. In September 2018, the United States Air Force (USAF) selected it for the T-X program to replace the Northrop T-38 Talon as the service's advanced jet trainer. It is named the Red Hawk as a tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, who painted their airplane's tails bright red, and to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, the first aircraft flown in combat by the 99th Fighter Squadron, the U.S. Army Air Force's first black fighter squadron. Its first flight took place in June 2023, and the first aircraft was delivered to the USAF in September 2023. This air-to-air photograph shows a T-7 Red Hawk on a test flight over Edwards Air Force Base in November 2023.

Photograph credit: Bryce Bennett

Trillium erectum, the red trillium, is a species of flowering plant in the family Melanthiaceae. It is a spring ephemeral plant whose life-cycle is synchronized with that of the forests in which it lives. It is native to the eastern United States and eastern Canada from northern Georgia to Quebec and New Brunswick. Like all trilliums, it has a whorl of three bracts (leaves) and a single trimerous flower with three sepals, three petals, two whorls of three stamens each, and three carpels (fused into a single ovary with three stigmas). It is a perennial plant that persists by means of an underground rhizome. Trillium erectum has carrion-scented flowers that produce fetid or putrid odors purported to attract carrion fly and beetle pollinators. This T. erectum flower was photographed in Stephen's Gulch Conservation Area in Ontario, Canada.

Photograph credit: The Cosmonaut

Boyd's forest dragon (Lophosaurus boydii) is a species of arboreal lizard in the family Agamidae. The species is native to rainforests and their margins in the Wet Tropics region of northern Queensland, Australia. It spends the majority of its time perched on the trunks of trees, usually at around head height. It is a sit-and-wait predator, catching prey that it spies from its perch. Its diet consists primarily of invertebrates, with earthworms making up a relatively high proportion. Small fruits and vertebrates are also occasionally consumed. This Boyd's forest dragon was photographed in Daintree National Park.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

The thousand-yard stare (also referred to as the two-thousand-yard stare) is the blank, unfocused gaze of people experiencing dissociation due to acute stress or traumatic events. The phrase was originally used to describe war combatants and the post-traumatic stress they exhibited but is now also used to refer to an unfocused gaze observed in people under any stressful situation, or in people with certain mental health conditions. The thousand-yard stare is sometimes described as an effect of shell shock or combat stress reaction, along with other mental health conditions. However, it is not a formal medical term. This painting by the war artist Thomas C. Lea III, titled Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare, popularized the term after it was published in Life in 1945. It depicts an unnamed US Marine at the Battle of Peleliu, which took place in 1944.

Painting credit: Thomas C. Lea III

Myosotis scorpioides, the water forget-me-not, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the borage family, Boraginaceae. It is native to Europe and Asia, but is widely distributed elsewhere, including much of North America, as an introduced species and sometimes a noxious weed. It is an erect to ascending plant of up to 70 cm, bearing small (8-12 mm) flowers that become blue when fully open and have yellow centers. It is usually found in damp or wet habitats, such as bogs, ponds, streams, ditches, fen and rivers. This focus-stacked photograph shows a water forget-me-not growing in Niitvälja bog, Estonia.

Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus

Whitehead's trogon (Harpactes whiteheadi) is a species of bird in the family Trogonidae. It is endemic to the island of Borneo, where it is an uncommon resident in primary mountain forest. One of Borneo's largest trogons, at 29 to 33 centimetres (11 to 13 inches) long, it is sexually dimorphic. The male is crimson on the head, nape, and underparts, with a black throat and grey chest; the rest of its upperparts are cinnamon-coloured. The female is similarly patterned, but cinnamon-brown where the male is scarlet. The species is primarily an insectivore, but also eats various plant materials, including fruits and seeds. Other than the timing of its breeding, typically between April and June, little is known about its breeding biology. It is classified as a near-threatened species, with population numbers thought to be declining and habitat loss a key threat. This male Whitehead's trogon was photographed perching on a branch near Mount Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

Atacamite is a copper halide mineral: a copper(II) chloride hydroxide with the chemical formula Cu₂Cl(OH)₃. It was first described in 1802 by Dmitri Alekseyevich Golitsyn from deposits in Chile's Atacama Desert, after which it is named. Atacamite is a comparatively rare mineral, formed from primary copper minerals in the oxidation or weathering zone of arid climates. It has also been reported as a volcanic sublimate from fumarole deposits, as sulfide alteration products in black smokers. This photograph shows a specimen of atacamite, on a malachite matrix, from the Mount Gunson Mines in South Australia. The picture was focus-stacked from 42 separate images.

Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus

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  1795 Turban Head eagle with original reverse
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  1797 Turban Head eagle with heraldic eagle reverse

The Turban Head eagle was a ten-dollar gold piece, or eagle, struck by the United States Mint from 1795 to 1804. The piece was designed by Robert Scot, and was the first in the eagle series, which continued until the Mint ceased striking gold coins for circulation in 1933. The common name is a misnomer; Liberty does not wear a turban but a cap, believed by some to be a pileus or Liberty cap: her hair twisting around the headgear makes it appear to be a turban. The number of stars on the obverse was initially intended to be equal to the number of states in the Union, but with the number at 16, that idea was abandoned in favor of using 13 stars in honor of the original states. The initial reverse, featuring an eagle with a wreath in its mouth, proved unpopular and was replaced by a heraldic eagle. Increases in the price of gold made it profitable for the coins to be melted down, and in 1804, President Thomas Jefferson ended coinage of eagles; the denomination was not struck again for circulation for more than 30 years. These Turban Head eagles are in the National Numismatic Collection at the National Museum of American History.

Coin design credit: United States Mint; photographed by Jaclyn Nash

The springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) is a medium-sized antelope found mainly in the dry areas of southern and southwestern Africa. A slender, long-legged bovid, it reaches 71 to 86 cm (28 to 34 in) at the shoulder and weighs between 27 and 42 kg (60 and 93 lb). Both sexes have a pair of long black horns that curve backwards, a white face, a dark stripe running from the eyes to the mouth, a light-brown coat with a reddish-brown stripe, and a white rump flap. Primarily browsing at dawn and dusk, it can live without drinking water for years, subsisting on succulent vegetation. Breeding peaks in the rainy season, when food is more abundant. A single calf is weaned at nearly six months of age and leaves its mother a few months later. Springbok herds in the Kalahari Desert and the semi-arid Karoo used to migrate in large numbers across the countryside. The springbok is the national animal of South Africa. This male springbok was photographed in Etosha National Park, Namibia.

Photograph credit: Yathin S Krishnappa

Geraldine Ulmar (June 23, 1862 – August 13, 1932) was an American soprano and actress known for her performances in Savoy operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. In 1879, she made her debut in Boston as Josephine in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore and soon joined the Boston Ideal Opera Company, where she remained as leading soprano for six years. From 1885 to 1886, Ulmar played Yum-Yum in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's first American production of The Mikado in New York. Over the next two years she played further Gilbert and Sullivan roles in New York, Germany and England. In London, she was the first to play the leading characters of Elsie Maynard in The Yeomen of the Guard (1888) and Gianetta in The Gondoliers (1889) before leaving D'Oyly Carte in 1890. She remained in Britain to play leading roles in other works, such as O Mimosa San in the musical comedy The Geisha. In 1904 she retired from the stage and taught singing. Ulmar was married to composer Ivan Caryll for a time. The photo shows Ulmar as Yum-Yum in New York in 1886.

Poster credit: Benjamin Joseph Falk; restored by Adam Cuerden

The Shah Mosque, officially known as the Imam Khomeini Mosque, is located on the south side of Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan, Iran. The mosque was commissioned by Abbas the Great to a design by the architect Ali Akbar Isfahani. Its construction began in 1611, during the Safavid Empire, and was completed c. 1630. The photograph shows the Persian blue tiling of the entrance iwan, looking up at the muqarnas above.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

The Cape Barren goose (Cereopsis novaehollandiae) is a species of goose endemic to southern Australia. It was first formally described by the English ornithologist John Latham in 1801. Adult Cape Barren geese are large birds, typically measuring 75 to 100 centimetres (30 to 39 inches) long and weighing between 3.7 to 5.2 kilograms (8.2 to 11.5 pounds), with males generally being larger than females. The plumage is mostly pale grey with a slight brown tint. The head is somewhat small in proportion to the body and mostly grey in colour, save for a pale whitish patch on the forehead and crown. Cape Barren geese are largely terrestrial, only occasionally swimming. They predominantly graze on grasses, sedges, legumes, herbs, and succulents. This group of Cape Barren geese in flight was photographed near Hanson Bay, on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

This famous design, by Roger Kastel, of a shark with a mouth filled with jagged teeth, rising towards an unsuspecting female swimmer, was completed in 1974. Its first appearance was as a book cover (illustrated as the image accompanying Today's Featured Article) with publication of the paperback edition of the novel by Peter Benchley, on January 1, 1975. Later that year, it formed the basis for one of the most iconic film posters in history (shown here) with the release of the movie on June 20, 1975. In 2014, the Review Board of the United States Copyright Office upheld the denial of a copyright for the artwork as there was no proper notice of copyright, since the only copyright notice in the paperback was that of Benchley's 1974 copyright of the text.

Illustration credit: Roger Kastel; courtesy of the Everett Collection; retouched by Crisco 1492

Dred Scott (c. 1799 – 1858) was an enslaved African American who, along with his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, unsuccessfully sued for the freedom of themselves and their two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, in the 1857 legal case Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Scotts claimed that they should be granted freedom because Dred had lived for four years in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal, and laws in those jurisdictions said that slave holders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Scott in a landmark decision that held the Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges that the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. The Dred Scott decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history, being widely denounced for its overt racism, judicial activism, poor legal reasoning, and crucial role in the events that led to the American Civil War four years later. The ruling was later superseded by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery, in 1865, followed by the Fourteenth Amendment, whose first section guaranteed birthright citizenship for "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof", in 1868. This posthumous oil-on-canvas portrait of Scott was painted by Louis Schultze, after an 1857 photograph by John H. Fitzgibbon, and now hangs in the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis.

Painting credit: Louis Schultze, after John H. Fitzgibbon

The Garni Temple is a classical colonnaded structure in the village of Garni, in central Armenia, around 30 km (19 mi) east of Yerevan. Built in the Ionic order, it is the best-known structure and symbol of pre-Christian Armenia. It has been described as the "easternmost building of the Greco-Roman world" and the only largely preserved Hellenistic building in the former Soviet Union. It is conventionally identified as a pagan temple built by King Tiridates I in the first century AD as a temple to the sun god Mihr (Mithra). It collapsed in a 1679 earthquake, but much of its fragments remained on the site. Renewed interest in the 19th century led to excavations in the early and mid-20th century. It was reconstructed in 1969–75, using the anastylosis technique. It is one of the main tourist attractions in Armenia and the central shrine of Hetanism (Armenian neopaganism). This aerial photograph shows the Garni Temple in the winter.

Photograph credit: Yerevantsi

Igor Stravinsky (17 June 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor, considered to be one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. He studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov until his death in 1908. Soon after, Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), the last of which caused a near-riot at its premiere in Paris. His compositional style varied greatly, being influenced at different times by Russian folklore, neoclassicism, and serialism. His ideas influenced Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Béla Bartók, and Pierre Boulez, who were all challenged to innovate beyond traditional tonality, rhythm, and form. This photograph of Stravinsky in the early 1920s is from the collection of the American photojournalist George Grantham Bain.

Photograph credit: Bain News Service; restored by MyCatIsAChonk

Sabella pavonina, commonly known as the peacock worm, is a species of marine polychaete worm in the family Sabellidae. It can be found along the coasts of western Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, in shallow, tidal waters with a bed of mud, sand or gravel. The worm is 10 to 25 centimetres (4 to 10 inches) in length, with its body divided into 100 to 600 small segments. The head has two fans of 8 to 45 feathery radioles arising from fleshy, semi-circular lobes. The body is mostly grey-green while the radioles are brown, red or purple with darker bands. This group of S. pavonina worms was photographed with a short-snouted seahorse in a protected marine natural area near Porto Cesareo, Italy.

Photograph credit: Romano Gianluca

Magna Carta (An Embroidery) is a 2015 work by English installation artist Cornelia Parker. The artwork is an embroidered representation of the complete text and images of an online encyclopedia article for Magna Carta, as it appeared in English Wikipedia on 15 June 2014, the 799th anniversary of the document. The hand-stitched embroidery is 1.5 metres (5') wide and nearly 13 metres (42') long. The embroidery formed part of an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta on 15 June 2015. It was displayed in the Entrance Hall of the British Library from 15 May to 24 July 2015.

Embroidery credit: Cornelia Parker; Scanned by British Library; edited by Bammesk

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The Challenger 2 is a third-generation British main battle tank. As of 2025, it is in service with the British Army, the Royal Army of Oman, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The tank was designed by Vickers Defence Systems in 1986 as an extensive redesign of the company's earlier Challenger 1. More than 400 Challenger 2 tanks were built between 1990 and 2002. This photograph, taken in 2014, shows a Challenger 2 tank firing a practice squash-head round at the Castlemartin Training Area in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

Photograph credit: Si Longworth

The grey-breasted mountain toucan (Andigena hypoglauca) is a near-threatened species of bird in the toucan family, Ramphastidae, and a member of the genus Andigena, the mountain toucans. Found in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, grey-breasted mountain toucans are 41 to 48 centimetres (16 to 19 inches) long and weigh 244 to 370 grams (8.6 to 13 ounces). The species inhabits wet temperate montane forest, including cloud, elfin, and secondary forest, generally between 2,200 and 3,650 metres (7,200 and 12,00 feet) in elevation. This grey-breasted mountain toucan of the subspecies A. h. hypoglauca was photographed perching on a branch in the mountains of the Cordillera Central near Manizales, Colombia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Auricularia auricula-judae, commonly known as the wood ear, the jelly ear, or historically the Jew's ear, is a species of fungus in the order Auriculariales. The basidiocarps (fruit bodies) are brown, gelatinous, and have a noticeably ear-like shape, normally up to 90 millimetres (3.5 inches) across and up to 3 millimetres (0.12 inches) thick. It is edible but not widely consumed, and has been used as a medicinal fungus by herbalists. It grows on wood, especially elder, and is widespread throughout Europe, but is not known to occur elsewhere. The specific epithet is derived from the belief that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an elder tree after his betrayal of Jesus. These A. auricula-judae basidiocarps were photographed on a log in the London Borough of Enfield.

Photograph credit: Stuart Phillips

Batalha Monastery is a Dominican convent in the municipality of Batalha in Portugal. Originally and officially known as the Monastery of Saint Mary of the Victory, it was erected in commemoration of the 1385 Battle of Aljubarrota and would serve as the burial church of the 15th-century Aviz dynasty of Portuguese royalty. It is one of the best and original examples of Late Flamboyant Gothic architecture in Portugal, intermingled with the Manueline style. The monastery is a historic and cultural monument and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. This photograph of the main facade of Batalha Monastery was taken in 2021.

Photograph credit: Joaquim Alves Gaspar

Lestes dryas is a species of damselfly in the family Lestidae, the spreadwings. Its common names include emerald spreadwing, scarce emerald damselfly, and robust spreadwing. This species is native to the Holarctic realm, especially northern parts of Eurasia and North America, and relictual in North Africa. It is about 35 to 42 millimetres (1.4 to 1.7 in) long, with the males generally longer than the females. The males have a wingspan of about 45 millimetres (1.8 in), and the females of about 47 millimetres (1.9 in). Both sexes of L. dryas have largely metallic green bodies with a bronze iridescence, with blue pruinescence developing as they age. This male emerald spreadwing was photographed in Kulna, Estonia.

Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus

Set design for Act III of the opera Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué, composed by Daniel Auber with a libretto by Eugène Scribe. Created for the première performance at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opera on 27 February 1833.

The opera concerns some aspects of the real-life assassination of Gustav III, King of Sweden. Its libretto was used as the original basis for Giuseppe Verdi's later Un ballo in maschera, though Italian censorship forced numerous changes to that version.

Set design credit: Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri; restored by Adam Cuerden