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Picture of the day archives

2004: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2005: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2006: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2007: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2008: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2009: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2010: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2011: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2012: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2013: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2014: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2015: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2016: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2017: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2018: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2019: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2020: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2021: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2022: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2023: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2024: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2025: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2026: January February March April May June July August September October November December

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


August 22

Dua Lipa

Dua Lipa (born 22 August 1995) is a singer, songwriter and actress with British, Albanian and Kosovan nationalities. After a career as a model, she began a music career, signing with Warner Records in 2014. Her debut album, Dua Lipa (2017), peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart and spawned the singles "Be the One", "IDGAF", and the UK number-one single "New Rules". Her second album, Future Nostalgia (2020), became her first UK number-one album and peaked in the top-three in the US. It contained singles "Don't Start Now" (another UK number one, which also ranked in the top five on the United States year-end chart of 2020), "Physical", "Break My Heart", and "Levitating". Lipa subsequently scored her third and fourth UK number-one singles with the 2021 Elton John duet "Cold Heart (Pnau remix)" and "Dance the Night" from Barbie the Album, the soundtrack of the film Barbie (2023), wherein she also made her acting debut. Her third studio album is Radical Optimism (2024), which again topped the UK Albums Chart and was preceded by the UK top-ten singles "Houdini", "Training Season", and "Illusion". Lipa's accolades include seven Brit Awards and three Grammy Awards. This photograph shows Lipa performing at the 2016 SWR3 New Pop Festival in Baden-Baden, Germany.

Photograph credit: Harald Krichel

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August 21

Sarcophyton glaucum

Sarcophyton glaucum, also known as toadstool leather coral or rough leather coral, is a species of soft coral in the family Alcyoniidae, found from the Red Sea to the western Pacific Ocean. Like other members of Alcyoniidae, it does not have a hard exoskeleton. They are sedentary and taxonomically identified by calcareous sclerites on their exoskeletons, and feature polyps with eight tentacles. Sarcophyton corals build monospecific colonies, typically found in a range of intertidal, subtidal, and near-shore reef flat habitats. Individual S. glaucum corals grow up to 80 centimetres (31 in), usually on reef flats, in lagoons, or on seaward slopes. This S. glaucum coral formation was photographed in the Red Sea off the coast of Ras Katy, near Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso


August 20

Hallelujah is a 1929 American pre-Code musical film distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), directed by King Vidor, and starring Daniel L. Haynes and Nina Mae McKinney. Filmed in Tennessee and Arkansas, and chronicling the troubled quest of the sharecropper Zeke Johnson (Haynes) and his relationship with the seductive Chick (McKinney), Hallelujah was one of the first films with an all–African-American cast produced by a major studio. Released on August 20, 1929, Hallelujah was Vidor's first sound film, and combined sound recorded on location with sound recorded post-production in Hollywood. It was intended for a general audience, and was considered so risky a venture that MGM required Vidor to invest his own salary in the production. He expressed an interest in "showing the Southern Negro as he is" and attempted to present a relatively non-stereotyped view of African-American life, though the film has been criticized for prejudice and stereotyping. Hallelujah entered the public domain in 2025.

Film credit: King Vidor


August 19

Saint-Gaudens double eagle

The Saint-Gaudens double eagle is a twenty-dollar coin, or double eagle, produced by the United States Mint from 1907 to 1933. The gold coin is named after Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who designed the obverse and reverse. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt sought to beautify American coinage, and proposed Saint-Gaudens as an artist capable of the task. Although he had poor experiences with the Mint and its chief engraver, Charles E. Barber, Saint-Gaudens accepted Roosevelt's call. The work was subject to considerable delays, due to technical difficulties as well as Saint-Gaudens's declining health. Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, after designing the eagle and the double eagle, but before the designs were finalized for production. After several versions of the design for the double eagle proved too difficult to strike, Barber modified Saint-Gaudens's design, lowering the relief so that the coin could be struck with only one blow. When the coins were finally released, they proved controversial as they lacked the words "In God We Trust", and Congress intervened to require the motto's inclusion. The coin was minted, primarily for use in international trade, until 1933. The 1933 double eagle is among the most valuable of U.S. coins, with the sole example presently known to be in private hands selling in 2021 for $18.9 million. This photograph shows the obverse (left) and reverse (right) of the high-relief version of the 1907 Saint-Gaudens double eagle.

Coin design credit: United States Mint; photographed by Heritage Auctions


August 18

The Colonel

The Colonel is a farce in three acts by F. C. Burnand, premiered in 1881, based on Jean François Bayard's 1844 play Le mari à la campagne. The story concerns the efforts of two aesthetic impostors to gain control of a family fortune by converting a man's wife and mother-in-law to follow aestheticism. The man is so unhappy that he seeks the company of a widow in town. His friend, an American colonel, intervenes to persuade the wife to return to conventional behavior and obey her husband to restore domestic harmony, and the colonel marries the widow himself. The Colonel's initial run was at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, for 550 performances, while simultaneously a second company was touring the British provinces with the play. In October 1881, it received a command performance before Queen Victoria, the first play to do so since the death of Prince Albert in 1861. It transferred to the Imperial Theatre in 1883 and then to the new Prince of Wales Theatre in 1884. In July 1887, there was a revival at the Comedy Theatre. This cabinet card depicts Rowland Buckstone as Basil Giorgione (left) and Cissy Grahame as Nellie Forrester (right) reprising their roles in the 1887 revival of The Colonel. The sepia photographic print measures 14.6 cm × 9.9 cm (5.7 in × 3.9 in) and is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Photograph credit: London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company; restored by Adam Cuerden


August 17

Little corella

The little corella (Cacatua sanguinea) is a white bird species in the cockatoo family, Cacatuidae. It is native to mainland Australia, in a broad arc from eastern South Australia through Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory around to coastal Western Australia. The species is also native to southern New Guinea and has been introduced to Tasmania. Its habitat includes savanna, shrubs and grasses as well as urban settings. It grows to a length between 35 and 41 centimetres (14 and 16 in), with a mass between 370 and 630 grams (13 and 22 oz). This little corella of the subspecies C. s. gymnopsis was photographed perching on a tree branch near the Murray River in Paisley, South Australia, across the river from Blanchetown.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp


August 16

Charles Roscoe Savage

Charles Roscoe Savage (August 16, 1832 – February 4, 1909) was a British-born landscape and portrait photographer most notable for his images of the American West. Savage converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in his youth while living in England. He served a mission in Switzerland and eventually moved to the United States. In America he became interested in photography and began taking portraits for hire in the East. He traveled to Salt Lake City with his family and opened up his Art Bazar where he sold many of his photographs. Savage concentrated his photographic efforts primarily on family portraits, landscapes, and documentary views. His work includes an 1869 series of photographs of the linking of the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory, Utah. This self-portrait of Savage was taken in the 1880s.

Photograph credit: Charles Roscoe Savage; restored by Adam Cuerden


August 15

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was an American feminist, writer and lecturer. She grew up in poverty in New England. After the break-up of her marriage in 1888, she moved to Pasadena, California, where she became involved with feminist organizations and began writing poetry and short stories on feminism. This included "The Yellow Wallpaper", which was published in The New England Magazine in 1892 and is the all-time bestselling title published by the Feminist Press. Inspired by Gilman's own experience, it describes a woman who descends into madness while trapped in a room by her husband. She went on to become a lecturer, touring locations across the United States. This photographic portrait of Gilman was taken by Charles Fletcher Lummis in around 1900.

Photograph: Charles Fletcher Lummis; restored by Adam Cuerden


August 14

Arctocephalus forsteri

Arctocephalus forsteri, sometimes called the Australasian fur seal or the New Zealand fur seal, is a species of fur seal in the family Otariidae, the eared seals. It is found mainly around southern Australia and New Zealand, in coastal waters and on offshore islands. The male of this species has an average mass of around 126 kilograms (278 lb) and a length of 2 metres (6 ft 7 in), while females are typically between 30 and 50 kilograms (66 and 110 lb), with a length of up to 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in). Arctocephalus forsteri has a deeper and longer dive than any other fur seal, with males being able to descend to 380 metres and stay underwater for 15 minutes. It has a diet which includes cephalopods, fish, and birds, and makes use of vocalisations and olfactory recognition for communication. The population of the species has been significantly reduced by human activity, and it is protected by legislation in both Australia and New Zealand. This female A. forsteri seal with a suckling pup was photographed at Admiral's Arch on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp


August 13

Naba Kailash Mandir

Naba Kailash Mandir is a Hindu temple in Kalna City, West Bengal, India. The temple structure consists of 108 smaller temples, each with a height of around 6 metres (20 feet) and width of around 3 metres (9.5 feet), arranged in two concentric circles. The site is dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva. The inner circle has a circumference of about 102 metres (336 feet), and the outer circle has a circumference of about 220 metres (710 feet). The temples are built on low raised base-altars. This aerial photograph of Naba Kailash Mandir was taken in 2020.

Photograph credit: Sudipta Maulik


August 12

Hypericum androsaemum

Hypericum androsaemum, commonly known as the shrubby St. John's wort, tutsan or sweet-amber, is a flowering plant in the family Hypericaceae. It is native to Western Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, but has been introduced elsewhere, including Australia and New Zealand. In these countries, it is often considered a noxious weed. Hypericum androsaemum is found in damp and shady areas at a great range of elevations, from low-lying regions up to 1,800 metres (5,900 feet) in elevation. It requires heavy rainfall, typically greater than 750 millimetres (30 inches) of annual precipitation. Hypericum androsaemum is a small bushy shrub, reaching 30 to 70 centimetres (0.98 to 2.30 feet) tall, with many stems which remain upright and erect, and oval-shaped leaves along its stems. It has yellow flowers, five petals and, uniquely among Hypericum, its berries, which ripen by late summer, turn from red to black and remain soft and fleshy even after ripening. Its seeds germinate in the fall and it flowers when it is between 18 and 24 months old, typically from late spring to early summer. This photograph, showing two ripe H. androsaemum berries, was focus-stacked from 23 separate images.

Photograph credit: Dominicus Johannes Bergsma

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August 11

Graceful pitta

The graceful pitta (Erythropitta venusta) is a species of bird in the family Pittidae. It occurs on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist montane forests. The graceful pitta has a length of around 18 cm (7.1 in) in length. It is a predominantly black bird with reddish undertones, the bottom of its wings featuring vivid blue stripes while the lower breast and abdomen are crimson. It has a call which has been described as resembling a high-pitched train whistle which remains at a consistent pitch. The graceful pitta is very rare and is at risk and vulnerable. Although it has been legally protected from hunting since 1931, it is threatened by habitat loss as a result of deforestation. This graceful pitta was photographed in tropical rainforest at Sumatra's Barisan Mountains.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison

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August 10

Cover art for the 2018 video game Celeste

Celeste is a 2018 platform game developed and published by the indie studio Maddy Makes Games. The player controls Madeline, a young woman with anxiety and depression who aims to climb Celeste Mountain. During her climb, she encounters several characters, including Badeline, a personification of her self-doubt who attempts to stop her from climbing the mountain. Development of Celeste began in August 2015, when game developers Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry participated in a game jam, where they created Celeste for the PICO-8. It was released as a full game on January 25, 2018, for Linux, macOS, the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 4, and Windows, before being released on the Xbox One the following day, and on Google Stadia in July 2020. This cover art for Celeste depicts, from left to right, the characters Badeline, Oshiro, Madeline, Granny, and Theo.

Cover art credit: Maddy Makes Games

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August 9

The Bank is a silent slapstick comedy that was Charlie Chaplin's tenth film for Essanay Films. Directed and written by Chaplin, the film was released on August 9, 1915. In a review for Variety, Sime Silverman called it "the most legitimate comedy film Chaplin has played in many a long day, perhaps since he's been in pictures".

Film credit: Charlie Chaplin

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August 8

Cognac

Cognac is a type of brandy named after the commune of Cognac in western France. Cognac production falls under French appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) designation, which stipulates that it must be grown in a specific wine-growing region in the departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime. The AOC also mandates that particular grapes (of which St. Émilion is the most common) be used, and that the drink be twice distilled in copper pot stills and aged at least two years in oak barrels from designated surrounding areas of France. Close to 200 cognac producers exist, of which the largest producers are Courvoisier, Hennessy, Martell and Rémy Martin. This photograph shows cognac in a snifter, a glass with a large tapered bowl and a short stem that allows the drinker to enjoy the aroma by placing their hand underneath the bowl and warming the cognac.

Photograph credit: Didier Descouens

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August 7

Map

The map (Araschnia levana) is a butterfly of the family Nymphalidae. It is found from Spain through Europe and east through the Palearctic to Central Asia and the Russian Far East to Korea and Japan. The map exhibits seasonal dimorphism which means it has two different forms, depending on whether its larva grows in the summer or the winter. The summer form (prorsa) has black wings, while the winter form (levana) – adapted for diapause – has red wings. Before the butterfly was fully understood, these were thought to be two different species. The eggs are laid in long strings, one on top of the other, on the underside of stinging nettles, the larval food plant. It is thought that these strings of eggs mimic the flowers of the nettles, thereby evading predators. This map, in the prorsa form, was photographed in the Piatra Craiului Mountains, Romania.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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August 6

Nader Shah

Nader Shah Afshar (6 August 1698 or 22 October 1688 – 20 June 1747) was the founder of the Afsharid dynasty of Iran and one of the most powerful rulers in Iranian history, ruling as shah of Iran from 1736 to 1747, when he was assassinated during a rebellion. He fought numerous campaigns throughout the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and South Asia, emerging victorious from the battles of Herat, Mihmandust, Murche-Khort, Kirkuk, Yeghevārd, Khyber Pass, Karnal, and Kars. He has been described as "the last great Asiatic military conqueror", and his victories during his campaigns briefly made him West Asia's most powerful sovereign, ruling over what was arguably the most powerful empire in the world. Nader also changed the Iranian coinage system, minting silver coins, called Naderi, that were equal to the Mughal rupee. This silver coin was minted in Dagestan and is dated 1741–1742.

Coin design credit: unknown; photographed by American Numismatic Society


August 5

Carmen Miranda

Carmen Miranda (9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955) was a Portuguese-born Brazilian singer, dancer, and actress. Nicknamed "the Brazilian Bombshell", she was known for her signature fruit hat outfit that she wore in her American films. Despite being stereotyped, Miranda's performances popularized Brazilian music and increased public awareness of Latin culture. In 1941, Miranda was the first Latin American star to be invited to leave her hand and footprints in the courtyard of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and was the first South American honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She died in Beverly Hills, California, and is buried at the Cemitério de São João Batista in Rio de Janeiro. This photograph depicts Miranda in a scene from the 1941 film Week-End in Havana.

Photograph credit: 20th Century Fox; restored by Adam Cuerden


August 4

The Cheat

The Cheat is a 1923 American silent drama film produced by Famous Players–Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is a remake of Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film The Cheat, using the same script by Hector Turnbull and Jeanie MacPherson. The remake stars Pola Negri and was directed by George Fitzmaurice, and tells the story of Carmelita De Cordoba, a beautiful young South American woman who has been betrothed by her stern father to Don Pablo, whom she despises, and then meets and falls in love with Dudley Drake, a New York City broker. With no known prints of The Cheat remaining, it is considered a lost film, although there is an extant version in novel form, written in the same year as the film by Russell Holman, a Paramount Pictures employee. This color lithograph poster was produced in 1923 by Paramount to promote The Cheat, and depicts Negri as Carmelita with Charles de Rochefort as Claude Mace, an art swindler masquerading as the East Indian prince Rao-Singh.

Poster credit: Paramount Pictures; restored by Ezarate


August 3

Indochinese green magpie

The Indochinese green magpie (Cissa hypoleuca) is a small colorful bird native to the forests of China and southern Asia, through to Vietnam. It is nonmigratory and is found at altitudes up to 1,500 metres (4,900 feet), preferring moist forests and tree canopies within the tropical and subtropical regions, where its plumage provides camouflage. The Indochinese green magpie is approximately 35 centimetres (14 inches) in length, with a green upper body and an underbelly either yellow or green in colour. It features a black band that goes from its bill over the crimson eyes to the back of their head. It is a songbird, with vocalisations including noisy chattering, rasping notes, screeches, and a ringing whistle. This Indochinese green magpie of the subspecies C. h. hypoleuca was photographed in Đà Lạt, Vietnam.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison


August 2

Lamium purpureum

Lamium purpureum, commonly known as the red dead-nettle, among other names, is an annual herbaceous flowering plant. Native to Eurasia, it can also be found in North America, and frequently occurs in meadows, forest edges, roadsides and gardens. It grows with square stems to a height of 5 to 20 centimetres (2 to 8 inches), and occasionally up to 40 centimetres (16 inches). The leaves have fine hairs, are green at the bottom and shade to purplish at the top, while the zygomorphic flowers are bright reddish purple. The pollen is crimson red in colour and thus very noticeable on the heads of the bees that visit its flowers. The plant contains various oils and is characterized by its high contents of germacrene D. Young plants have edible tops and leaves, which are used in salads and stir fries as a spring vegetable. The plant has also been used for many years in folk medicine and herbal remedies. This L. purpureum inflorescence was photographed in Tutermaa, Estonia. The picture was focus-stacked from 101 separate images.

Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus


August 1

Field ration

A field ration is a type of prepackaged military ration designed to be easily and quickly prepared and consumed on the battlefield, in combat, at the front line, or where eating facilities are otherwise unavailable. Field rations are primarily used by military forces, though they are also sometimes distributed to civilians as part of humanitarian aid and emergency management. They consist principally of dried and nonperishable foods, including among others preserved and nonperishable precooked meat, vegetables, grains and rice, dehydrated soup, side dishes, desserts and drinks. They took their modern form from the 19th century onwards, with the invention of airtight food preservation, canned food, and pasteurization. Field rations are designed with a long shelf life and can be eaten at any temperature, but they are heated or cooked where possible. This photograph shows the arranged contents of an Einmannpackung Typ 1 field ration issued to the German Bundeswehr in 1974, on display at the Museum of Hamburg History in Hamburg, Germany. It includes, from left to right and top to bottom: an instant-rice ready meal, scrambled eggs with ham and spaghetti, hardtack, a condiment, semi-sweet chocolate, and coffee creamer; liverwurst, strawberry jam, melted cheese, four water-purification tablets, and salt; tea-extract powder, a damp towel, coffee extract, orange drink powder, a matchbook, refined sugar, and spearmint chewing gum.

Photograph credit: Sergej Medvedev


July 31

Dendrelaphis punctulatus

Dendrelaphis punctulatus, also known as the Australian tree snake or the common tree snake, is a species of non-venomous snake in the family Colubridae. The species is native to many parts of Australia, especially in the northern and eastern coastal areas, and to Papua New Guinea. It is found at altitudes from sea level to 500 metres (1,600 feet), in a variety of habitats including bushland, river banks, forests and rainforest edges, heathland and grassy areas, especially near water. It is an agile snake, with a very slender body and tail, and is also a strong swimmer, using the water for hunting and avoiding predation. Its dorsal body colour varies from golden yellow, bright green or olive-green to black or sometimes even blue, while its back is typically dark in colour. In a study, D. punctulatus snakes had an average snout–vent length of 101 centimetres (40 inches), with males slightly shorter at 93 centimetres (37 inches). This D. punctulatus snake was photographed by the Daintree River, near Daintree in rural northern Queensland, Australia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp


July 30

A Peculiar Family

A Peculiar Family is an 1865 comedy musical play by the English writer William Brough featuring music by Thomas German Reed. The play starred German Reed, his wife Priscilla, and John Parry. It premiered in 1865 at the German Reeds' London theatre, the Royal Gallery of Illustration, and is part of a multi-decade series known as the German Reed Entertainments. The play is set in a French coastal hotel and features the eponymous family: Barnaby Bounce, his sister, Cherry, two of his nephews and a grandfather, along with a German detective named Herr Von Doppelslich, the French landlady and a countess. The story involves a mix-up over a white hat worn by Barnaby and the hat's owner, who is being pursued by Von Doppelslich. This poster for A Peculiar Family was designed by Robert Jacob Hamerton.

Poster credit: Robert Jacob Hamerton; restored by Adam Cuerden


July 29

Clara Bow

Clara Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) was an American actress who rose to stardom during the silent film era of the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" in 1929. Her appearance in the 1927 film It brought her global fame and the nickname "It girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and has been described as its leading sex symbol. She appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including hits such as Mantrap (1926), It (1927), and Wings (1927). She was named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929, and second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930. Two years after marrying the actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. This studio photograph of Bow was taken in 1932.

Photograph credit: Harold Dean Carsey; restored by Yann Forget


July 28

Grey-headed kingfisher

The grey-headed kingfisher (Halcyon leucocephala) is a species of bird in the kingfisher family, Alcedinidae. It is found across large parts of Africa and southern Arabia – from Mauritania through Senegal and the Gambia, east to Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, Oman and Saudia Arabia, and south through to South Africa. It is also found in islands off the African coast such as the Cape Verde islands and Zanzibar. The grey-headed kingfisher is around 21 centimetres (8.3 inches) in length, with the two sexes being similar in size and appearance. The adult of the nominate subspecies H. l. leucocephala has a pale grey head, black mantle and back, bright blue rump, wings and tail, and chestnut underparts. The beak is long, red and sharp. Its song features a succession of notes, ascending, descending and then ascending again, becoming increasingly strident, while the warning call is a series of sharp notes. The bird's habitat consists of scrub and woodland and it moves either solitary or in pairs, often near water; however, unlike most kingfishers it is not aquatic. It nests in holes in steep riverbanks and is aggressively protective of its nest by repeated dive-bombing of foraging monitor lizards. This grey-headed kingfisher perching on a twig was photographed in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.

Photograph credit: Giles Laurent


July 27

Liberty Leading the People

Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting of the Romantic era by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 that toppled King Charles X. A bare-breasted "woman of the people" with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept and Goddess of Liberty, accompanied by a young boy brandishing a pistol in each hand, leads a group of various people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen while holding aloft the flag of the French Revolution—the tricolour, which again became France's national flag after these events—in one hand, and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne. The painting is displayed in the Louvre in Paris.

Painting credit: Eugène Delacroix; photographed Shonagon


July 26

Cytoplasmic streaming is a biological process in which cytoplasm flows inside a cell, driven by forces from the cytoskeleton. It is usually observed in large plant and animal cells, as well as amoebae, fungi, and slime moulds. It is likely that its function is, at least in part, to speed up the transport of molecules and organelles around the cell. The process was first discovered by the Italian scientist Bonaventura Corti in 1774, within the algae genera Nitella and Chara. While its mechanism is not fully understood, what is clearly visible in plant cells which exhibit cytoplasmic streaming is the motion of the chloroplasts moving with the cytoplasmic flow. This motion results from fluid being entrained by moving motor molecules of the plant cell. This video, taken through a microscope, shows cytoplasmic streaming occurring in an onion epidermal cell.

Video credit: Heiti Paves


July 25

Hudson Yards

Hudson Yards is a 28-acre (11-hectare) real-estate development located in Hudson Yards, a neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is situated on the waterfront of the Hudson River, on a platform built over the West Side Yard, a storage depot for the Long Island Rail Road. Related Companies and Oxford Properties are the primary developers and major equity partners in the project, with the master plan designed by the architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox. Construction began in 2012 and the first phase opened in 2019, with completion of the second phase expected by 2032. Major office tenants in the development include Warner Bros. Discovery, L'Oréal, and Wells Fargo among others. This photograph shows the skyscrapers of Hudson Yards, viewed across the Hudson River from Weehawken, New Jersey, in 2021.

Photograph credit: Tony Jin


July 24

Emperor angelfish

The emperor angelfish (Pomacanthus imperator) is a species in the marine angelfish family, Pomacanthidae. It is a reef-associated fish, native to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, from the Red Sea to Hawaii and the Austral Islands. Adults are found in areas where there is a rich growth of corals on clear lagoon, channel, or seaward reefs, at depths between 1 and 100 metres (3 and 330 feet) The emperor angelfish shows a marked difference between the juveniles and the adults. The juveniles have a dark blue body which is marked with concentric curving lines, alternating between pale blue and white, while adults are striped with blue and yellow horizontal stripes, a light blue face with a dark blue mask over the eyes and a yellow caudal fin. It can attain a maximum total length of around 40 centimetres (16 inches). This adult emperor angelfish was photographed in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso


Picture of the day archives and future dates

2004: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2005: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2006: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2007: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2008: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2009: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2010: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2011: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2012: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2013: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2014: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2015: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2016: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2017: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2018: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2019: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2020: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2021: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2022: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2023: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2024: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2025: January February March April May June July August September October November December
2026: January February March April May June July August September October November December