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}} (version with blurb) or {{POTD}} (version without blurb). For instructions on how to make custom POTD layouts, see Wikipedia:Picture of the day.
January 25
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Hermann Schwarz (25 January 1843 – 30 November 1921) was a German mathematician, known for his work in complex analysis. Between 1867 and 1869, he worked at the University of Halle, then at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. From 1875, Schwarz worked at Göttingen University, dealing with the subjects of complex analysis, differential geometry, and the calculus of variations. In 1892, he became a member of the Berlin Academy of Science and a professor at the University of Berlin, where his students included Lipót Fejér, Paul Koebe and Ernst Zermelo. Schwarz's name is attached to many ideas in mathematics. This photograph of Schwarz, taken around 1890, is in the collection of the ETH Library. Photograph credit: Louis Zipfel; restored by Adam Cuerden
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January 24
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The redtoothed triggerfish (Odonus niger) is a tropical fish in the family Balistidae, the triggerfishes. It is native to the tropical Indo-Pacific area, including the Red Sea, the African east coast, the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands, across to southern Japan and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Redtoothed triggerfish are normally deep blue or purple with a light blue head. They are omnivorous and mostly opportunistic feeders, with crustaceans as their primary food source. They also feed on zooplankton and algae, and remains of cephalopods and fish have been found in their stomachs. This redtoothed triggerfish was photographed off the coast of Anilao in the Philippines. Photograph credit: Diego Delso
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January 23
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Amanda Smith (January 23, 1837 – February 24, 1915) was an American Methodist preacher and former slave who funded the former Amanda Smith Orphanage and Industrial Home for Abandoned and Destitute Colored Children in Harvey, Illinois. She was a leader in the Holiness movement, preaching the doctrine of entire sanctification throughout Methodist camp meetings across the world. This photograph of Smith was taken around 1885 and is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Photograph credit: T. B. Latchmore; restored by Adam Cuerden
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January 22
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Pouteria campechiana, also known as the canistel, is an evergreen tree native to southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It is cultivated in its native countries and has been introduced into several other countries, including Brazil, Taiwan, and the United States. The edible part of the tree is its fruit, which is colloquially known as an egg fruit. The ripe fruit is used in jam and marmalade, on pancakes, and in a milkshake known as "eggfruit nog". This picture shows a whole P. campechiana fruit. Photograph: Augustus Binu
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January 21
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Nohkalikai Falls is a 340-foot-tall (100 m) plunge waterfall located in the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya. It is the tallest plunge waterfall in India and is situated near Cherrapunji, one of the wettest places on Earth. Nohkalikai Falls are fed by the rainwater collected on the summit of a relatively small plateau. Below the falls is a plunge pool with water of an unusual shade of green. Photograph credit: Vikramjit Kakati
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January 20
The plum-headed parakeet (Psittacula cyanocephala) is a species of parakeet in the family Psittacidae. It is endemic to the Indian subcontinent, from the foothills of the Himalayas to southern India and Sri Lanka, and inhabits forests, open woodland, and sometimes city gardens. It is a predominantly green bird, with a length of 33 to 37 centimetres (13 to 14+1⁄2 in) and a weight of 55 to 85 grams (2 to 3 oz). The male has a red head which shades to purplish-blue on the back of the crown, nape and cheeks, while the female has a bluish-gray head. The plum-headed parakeet is a gregarious and noisy species with swift twisting flight and a range of raucous calls. It feeds on grains, fruits, flower petals, sometimes also raiding agricultural fields and orchards. It nests in holes, chiselled out by the pair, in tree trunks, and courtship includes bill rubbing and courtship feeding. These male and female plum-headed parakeets were photographed in Jim Corbett National Park, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Photograph credit: Giles Laurent
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January 19
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The Lingnan School was an art movement active in the late Qing dynasty and Republic of China that sought to modernize Chinese painting through borrowing from other artistic traditions. Established by the brothers Gao Jianfu and Gao Qifeng, together with Chen Shuren, the Lingnan School has been considered one of the major art movements of 20th-century Chinese painting. Stylistically, the Lingnan School was marked by a blending of traditional Chinese approaches and Western techniques, as mediated by Japanese understandings. These included matters of lighting and atmosphere, as well as depictions of subjects rarely found in earlier Chinese works. This 1916 work is by Gao Qifeng and is titled The Roar of the Tiger. Painting credit: Gao Qifeng
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January 18
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His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. It was released by Columbia Pictures on January 18, 1940. The plot centers on a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife, Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another man. Burns suggests they cover one more story together, getting themselves entangled in the case of murderer Earl Williams as Burns desperately tries to win back his wife. The screenplay was adapted from the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Film credit: Howard Hawks
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January 17
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Aglais io, commonly known as the European peacock, is a colourful butterfly in the family Nymphalidae, found in Europe and temperate Asia as far east as Japan. It is resident in much of its range, often wintering in buildings or trees, and therefore often appears quite early in spring. The butterfly lays its eggs in batches of up to 400 at a time, with caterpillars hatching after about a week. These are shiny black with six rows of barbed spikes and a series of white dots on each segment. At the end of this phase they form a chrysalis which is either grey, brown or green, and may have a blackish tinge. This A. io caterpillar on a stinging nettle was photographed in Ruggeller Riet, Liechtenstein. Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp
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January 16
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Narbonne Cathedral is a Catholic church located in the town of Narbonne, France. Dedicated to Saints Justus and Pastor, it was the cathedral of the Diocese of Narbonne until it was merged with the Diocese of Carcassonne under the Concordat of 1801. It is now a co-cathedral of the Diocese of Carcassonne–Narbonne, and was declared a minor basilica in 1886. The first church on the site was a small Constantinian structure that was erected in 313 and destroyed by fire in 441. A replacement building, erected in 445, fell into ruin and was eventually replaced in 890 by a Carolingian cathedral whose restored steeple remains on the site. Construction on the present Gothic building began in 1272, opening in 1286. It was gradually expanded until 1354, but its size was then limited by the location of the city walls and the rest of the building was never completed, the nave and transept being notably absent. This photograph shows the choir of Narbonne cathedral, looking towards the high altar in the background. Photograph credit: Diego Delso
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January 15
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The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned in the American city of Chicago in October 1871. The fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly 3.3 square miles (9 km2) of the city (including more than 17,000 structures), and left more than 100,000 residents homeless. It began in a neighborhood southwest of the city center and spread rapidly, amid a long period of hot, dry, windy weather. The fire leapt the south branch of the Chicago River and destroyed much of central Chicago before crossing the main stem of the river and consuming the Near North Side. This Currier and Ives lithograph, titled Chicago in Flames, shows an artist's rendering of the Great Chicago Fire, facing northeast across the Randolph Street Bridge, with thousands of people fleeing on foot and by carriage. Lithograph credit: Currier and Ives
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January 14
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The rainbow bee-eater (Merops ornatus) is a bird species in the family Meropidae, the bee-eaters. It is found during the summer in forested areas in most of southern Australia, excluding Tasmania, migrating to the north of the country as well as New Guinea and some of the southern islands of Indonesia in the winter. It inhabits open woodlands, beaches, dunes, cliffs, mangroves, and farmlands, and visits parks and private gardens. The rainbow bee-eater is a brilliantly coloured bird that grows between 23 and 28 centimetres (9.1 and 11.0 in) in length, including the elongated tail feathers, with a weight of 20 to 33 grams (0.71 to 1.16 oz). Its diet consists mostly of flying insects and especially bees, as implied by its name. Like all bee-eaters, it is a social bird; when not breeding, individuals roost together in large groups. This rainbow bee-eater perching on a twig was photographed in the Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve near Middle Point in the Northern Territory, Australia. Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp
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January 13
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Paxillus involutus, the common roll-rim, is a fungus that is widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere and has also been unintentionally introduced to Australia, New Zealand, and South America. The brownish fruit body grows up to 6 centimetres (2.4 in) high. It has a funnel-shaped cap up to 12 centimetres (5 in) wide, with a distinctive in-rolled rim and decurrent gills close to the stalk. Genetic testing suggests that the fungus may be a species complex rather than a single species. A common mushroom of deciduous and coniferous woods and grassy areas in late summer and autumn, P. involutus is symbiotic with the roots of many tree species, reducing the trees' intake of heavy metals and increasing their resistance to pathogens. Previously considered to be edible and eaten widely in Eastern and Central Europe, the mushroom has been found to be dangerously poisonous; the German mycologist Julius Schäffer died from ingesting it in 1944. It can trigger the immune system to attack red blood cells with potentially fatal complications, including acute renal and respiratory failure. This P. involutus mushroom was photographed on Golovec, a hill near Ljubljana, Slovenia. Photograph credit: Petar Milošević
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January 12
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Antonio de Ulloa (12 January 1716 – 3 July 1795) was a Spanish Navy officer. He spent much of his career in Spanish America, where he carried out important scientific work. As a scientist, Ulloa is regarded as one of the major figures of the Spanish Enlightenment. At the age of nineteen, Ulloa joined the French Geodesic Mission to the Equator, which established that the shape of the Earth is an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles, as predicted by Isaac Newton. Ulloa traveled throughout the territories of the Viceroyalty of Peru from 1736 to 1744, making many astronomical, natural, and social observations. He published the first detailed observations of platinum, later identified as a new chemical element. As a military officer, Ulloa achieved the rank of vice admiral. He also served the Spanish Empire as an administrator in the Viceroyalty of Peru and in Spanish Louisiana. This posthumous oil portrait of Ulloa was painted by Andrés Cortés in 1856. Originally in the Palacio de San Telmo, the painting was donated by Infanta Luisa Fernanda to the City Council of Seville in 1898, and now hangs in Seville City Hall. Painting credit: Andrés Cortés
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January 11
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An effusive eruption is a type of volcanic eruption in which lava steadily flows out of a volcano onto the ground. It is one of two major groupings of eruptions, the other being explosive. Effusive eruptions form lava flows and lava domes, each of which vary in shape, length, and width. Deep in the crust, gases are dissolved into the magma because of high pressures but, upon ascent and eruption, pressure drops rapidly, and these gases begin to exsolve out of the melt. A volcanic eruption is effusive when the erupting magma is volatile-poor, which suppresses fragmentation, creating oozing magma that spills out of the volcanic vent and out into the surrounding area. Effusive eruptions are most common in basaltic magma, but they also occur in intermediate and felsic magma, and occasionally in silicic magma as well. This video shows lava agitating and bubbling in an effusive eruption of Litli-Hrútur, near the volcano Fagradalsfjall in Iceland, in 2023. Video credit: Giles Laurent
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January 10
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The blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitis) is a species of Old World monkey native to Central and East Africa, ranging from the upper Congo River basin east to the East African Rift and south to northern Angola and Zambia and populations further south down to South Africa. The taxonomy of this species has been disputed and Sykes' monkey, the silver monkey and the golden monkey are often regarded as subspecies. The blue monkey is found in evergreen forests and montane bamboo forests, and lives largely in the forest canopy, coming to the ground infrequently. Its diet consists of fruits, figs, insects, leaves, twigs, and flowers and it lives in philopatric social systems where females stay in their natal groups, while males disperse once they reach adulthood. This photograph shows a blue monkey from the subspecies C. m. labiatus (sometimes called the Samango monkey), in Mount Sheba Nature Reserve, Mpumalanga, South Africa. Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp
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January 9
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Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found. Discovered on 25 March 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, Titan is the sixth ellipsoidal moon from Saturn. Frequently described as a planet-like moon, it is the second-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, after Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and it is larger by volume than the smallest planet, Mercury. Titan itself is primarily composed of water ice and rocky material. Its dense, opaque atmosphere meant that little was known of the surface features or conditions until the Cassini–Huygens mission in 2004. Although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been discovered, its surface is relatively smooth and few impact craters have been found. Owing to the existence of stable bodies of surface liquids and its thick nitrogen-based atmosphere, Titan has been cited as a possible host for microbial extraterrestrial life or, at least, as a prebiotic environment rich in complex organic chemistry. This mosaic of nine processed images was acquired during Cassini's first close flyby of Titan in 2004. Photograph credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute
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January 8
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A. J. Muste (January 8, 1885 – February 11, 1967) was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, the pacifist movement, the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement in the United States. Muste became involved in trade-union activity in 1919, when he led a 16-week-long textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1929, he organized the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, which became the American Workers Party in 1933. Muste resigned from the Workers Party in 1936 and left socialist politics to return to his roots as a Christian pacifist. In the 1960s, he was a leader in the movement against the Vietnam War. This photograph of Muste was taken by Bernard Gotfryd in Central Park, New York City, between 1965 and 1967. The image is part of a collection of Gotfryd's photographs in the Library of Congress. Photograph credit: Bernard Gotfryd; restored by Yann Forget
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January 7
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The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is a small, nonmigratory passerine bird in the tit family, Paridae. The species is native to North America, ranging from the northern United States to southern Canada and all the way up to Alaska and Yukon, living in deciduous and mixed forests. It has a distinct black cap on its head, a black bib underneath, and white cheeks. The black-capped chickadee has a white belly, buff sides, and grey wings, back, and tail. It is well known for its vocalizations, including its fee-bee song and its chick-a-dee-dee-dee call, from which it derives its name. The black-capped chickadee feeds primarily on insects and seeds, and is known for its ability to cache food for use during the winter. Its hippocampus grows during the caching season, and is believed to help it better remember its cache locations. It builds nests in tree cavities, with the nesting season starting in late April and lasting until late June. This foraging black-capped chickadee was photographed in Central Park, New York City. Photograph credit: Rhododendrites
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January 6
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On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol was attacked by a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump in an attempted self-coup, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. They sought to keep him in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of then president-elect Joe Biden. The attack was unsuccessful in preventing the certification of the election results. This photograph shows the crowd outside the Capitol during the attack. Photograph credit: Tyler Merbler
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January 5
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Chromodoris annae is a species of sea slug in the family Chromodorididae. It is found in the tropical central area of the Indo-Pacific region from Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines to the Marshall Islands, a region rich in biodiversity and rich in coral, mangroves and seagrasses. C. annae has an elongated body, reaching a maximum length of 5 centimetres (2.0 in), and is coloured in various shades of blue with black spots, its mantle edge and foot being bordered with white and orange-to-yellow lines. The sea slug's diet consists solely of Petrosaspongia, part of the Thorectidae family of sea sponges. It absorbs a noxious chemical from the sponge, storing it in its glands and using it to deter predation. C. annae is generally a docile species, but individuals have been occasionally sighted fighting each other. This C. annae sea slug was photographed in the diving resort of Anilao in Mabini, Batangas, in the Philippines. Photograph credit: Diego Delso
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January 4
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The Larsen Ice Shelf is a long ice shelf in the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is named after Norwegian explorer Carl Anton Larsen, who sailed along the ice front in 1893. Composed of a series of shelves along the coast, named with letters from A to G, since the mid-1990s the Larsen Ice Shelf has been disintegrating, with the collapse of Larsen B in 2002 being particularly dramatic. A large section of the Larsen C shelf broke away in July 2017 to form an iceberg known as A-68. The area of the whole Larsen Ice Shelf was formerly 33,000 square miles (85,000 km2), but today is only 26,000 square miles (67,000 km2). This late-2016 photograph shows the rift in Larsen C from the vantage point of NASA's DC-8 research aircraft, months before A-68 broke away. Photograph credit: NASA/John Sonntag
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January 3
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Portrait of Charles Marcotte (also known as Marcotte d'Argenteuil) is an 1810 oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, completed during the artist's first stay in Rome. It depicts the eponymous Charles Marcotte (1773-1864), who was a long-term friend and supporter of Ingres and commissioned the work initially as a gift for his mother. When the portrait was painted, Marcotte served as inspector general for waters and forests in Napoleonic Rome. In the painting, he stands against a plain grey-green background, leaning against a table draped with a red cloth. His stiff, starched white and yellow neck collar appears tight and restrictive. Marcotte did not like the final painting, finding it too stern, and it remained in his possession until his death. It is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., United States. Painting credit: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
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January 2
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The Pacific kingfisher (Todiramphus sacer) is a medium-sized bird in the kingfisher family, Alcedinidae. It belongs to the subfamily Halcyoninae, the tree kingfishers, and is found in the South Pacific islands, including American Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. The Pacific kingfisher was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin and was initially placed in the genus Alcedo, but since 1827 it has been placed in the genus Todiramphus. Formerly considered to be a subspecies of the collared kingfisher (T. chloris), a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2015 found that T. chloris was paraphyletic. The Pacific kingfisher perches almost motionless for long periods waiting for prey and its diet includes insects, worms, snails, shrimps, frogs, lizards, small fish and sometimes other small birds and eggs. This Pacific kingfisher was photographed in the Colo-i-Suva Forest Reserve, Fiji, perching with prey in its beak. Photograph credit: JJ Harrison
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January 1
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The World Clock, located in Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany, is a large world clock displaying the local time in 148 locations across the world. It consists of a 24-sided column, each side of which represents a time zone on Earth and is engraved with the names of various cities. A row of numbers, from 1 to 24, revolve around the outside of the clock during the day, indicating the local time in each time zone. Once per minute, an artistic sculptural rendering of the Solar System made of steel rings and spheres rotates above the clock. Including the sculpture, the World Clock is 10 metres (33 feet) high. It was erected in 1969 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, and was designed by Erich John, a lecturer at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. In July 2015, the German federal government declared the clock to be a historically and culturally significant monument. This long-exposure photograph shows the World Clock at night. Photograph credit: Diego Delso
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December 31
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The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) is one of the four extant species of lynx, wild cats in the family Felidae. The Iberian lynx is endemic to the Iberian Peninsula, in which it was once widespread, but it is now restricted to a small number of regions in Spain and Portugal, and is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Fossils suggest that the species has been present in Iberia since the end of the Early Pleistocene, around one million years ago. The Iberian lynx has a short bright yellowish to tawny coloured spotted fur. Its body is short with long legs and a short tail, and its head is small with tufted ears and a ruff (hairs under the neck). It preys foremost on the European rabbit for the bulk of its diet, supplemented by red-legged partridge, rodents, and to a smaller degree also on wild ungulates. The Iberian lynx marks its territory with its urine, scratch marks on the barks of trees, and scat. The home ranges of adults are stable over many years and both males and females reach sexual maturity at one year old, although they rarely start breeding until a territory becomes vacant. This wild female Iberian lynx was photographed in Almuradiel, in the province of Ciudad Real, Spain. Photograph credit: Diego Delso
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December 30
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The soprano saxophone is a small, high-pitched member of the saxophone family, invented in the 1840s by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax. It is a transposing instrument tuned in B-flat, an octave above the tenor saxophone (or, rarely, slightly smaller in C). The soprano is the smallest of the four saxophones in common use (the others being the alto, the tenor and the baritone), although there are smaller rare instruments such as the soprillo and the sopranino. Richard Strauss's Symphonia Domestica includes a C soprano among four different saxophones, and Maurice Ravel's Boléro features a solo for the soprano saxophone immediately following the tenor saxophone's solo. The soprano saxophone also features in some jazz music, with players including the 1930s virtuoso Sidney Bechet, the 1950s innovator Steve Lacy, and John Coltrane. This photograph shows a soprano saxophone manufactured by the Yamaha Corporation. Photograph credit: Yamaha Corporation
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December 29
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The red-tailed laughingthrush (Trochalopteron milnei) is a species of bird in the family Leiothrichidae, the laughingthrushes. It is found in the montane forests of Myanmar, Laos, southern China, and central Vietnam. These birds mainly inhabit the understorey of broadleaf evergreen forests, usually living at an elevation of 1,800 to 2,500 metres (5,900 to 8,200 ft) above sea level. The red-tailed laughingthrush has an overall length of about 26 to 28 centimetres (10 to 11 in) and a weight of about 66 to 93 grams (2.3 to 3.3 oz). It is dull ochrous-grey, with a bright rufous-chestnut crown and a blackish face, with whitish ear-coverts. The wings and tail are crimson, and the sexes are similar in appearance. The species feeds mainly on insects and small arthropods, but sometimes also takes berries and fruits. Its breeding season lasts from April to June, and it makes nests composed principally of grasses and bamboo leaves. This red-tailed laughingthrush was photographed in a nature reserve near Ngọc Linh, a mountain in central Vietnam. Photograph credit: JJ Harrison
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December 28
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Regeneration is a 1915 American silent biographical crime drama co-written and directed by Raoul Walsh. The film, which was the first full-length feature film directed by Walsh, stars Rockliffe Fellowes and Anna Q. Nilsson and was adapted for the screen by Carl Harbaugh and Walsh from the 1903 memoir My Mamie Rose, by Owen Frawley Kildare and the adapted 1908 play by Kildare and Walter Hackett. Film credit: Raoul Walsh;
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December 27
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Nuptse is a mountain in the Khumbu region of the Mahalangur Himal, a part of the Nepalese Himalayas. It lies 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) to the southwest of Mount Everest. The main peak, Nuptse I, with an elevation of 7,861 metres (25,791 ft), was first climbed in 1961 by Dennis Davis and Sherpa Tashi. This photograph shows Nuptse from the west, as viewed from Kala Patthar. Photograph credit: Vyacheslav Argenberg
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