Wikipedia:Picture of the day/November 2014
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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 November 2014. Individual sections for each day on this page can be linked to with the day number as the anchor name (e.g. [[Wikipedia:Picture of the day/November 2014#1]] for November 1).
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
November 1
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A wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) in flight off the coast of the Tasman Peninsula. The wandering albatross is the largest of its genus, with an average wingspan ranging from 2.51 m to 3.5 m (8 ft 3 in – 11 ft 6 in). It feeds mostly on cephalopods, crustaceans, and small fish. Photograph: JJ Harrison
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November 2
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Griselda is an opera seria in three acts by the Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti. First performed in 1721, it is based on the story of Patient Griselda from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. The libretto is by Apostolo Zeno, with revisions by an anonymous author. This manuscript copy by Scarlatti, held at the British Library, is of act one, scene one. Manuscript: Alessandro Scarlatti
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November 3
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Henrik Freischlader (b. 1982) is a German blues guitarist and singer. He began his career in 1998, and established his own label, Cable Car Records, in 2009. Photograph: Stefan Krause
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November 4
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A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie is an oil painting on canvas completed by Albert Bierstadt in 1866 and now held by the Brooklyn Museum. Inspired by sketches of the Southern Rocky Mountains, it depicts Native American hunter/gatherers hunting deer in the foreground, as the Rockies tower above them; some are cast in sun, while others are covered in clouds. Mount Evans, depicted in the painting, was at the time unnamed; Bierstadt christened it Mount Rosalie, for his friend's wife Rosalie Osborne. Painting: Albert Bierstadt
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November 5
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Hadji Ali (c. 1887–92 – 1937) was a vaudeville performance artist, thought to be of Egyptian descent, who was famous for acts of controlled regurgitation. His best-known feats included water spouting, smoke swallowing, and nut and handkerchief swallowing followed by disgorgement in an order chosen by the audience. In this 1926 image, he is performing his water spouting at the Egyptian Legation. Photograph: National Photo Company; restoration: Centpacrr and Chris Woodrich |
November 6
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A cereal is a grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain, composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran. In their natural form (as in whole grain), they are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, oils, and protein, but when refined the remaining endosperm is mostly carbohydrate. Pictured here are oats and barley, together with some products made from them. Photograph: Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture
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November 7
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The North Africa series of US Silver Certificates was issued in November 1942 in denominations of 1, 5, and 10 US dollars. The notes were similar to standard circulating silver certificates, except for their bright yellow seals. They were circulated amongst US troops in Europe and North Africa during World War II, and intended to be demonetized should the American forces be defeated. Shown here is a $1 note, which depicts the first President of the United States, George Washington and carries the signatures of William Alexander Julian and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Banknote: Bureau of Engraving and Printing (image courtesy of the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History)
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Subpage 2
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The North Africa series of US Silver Certificates was issued in November 1942 in denominations of 1, 5, and 10 US dollars. The notes were similar to standard circulating silver certificates, except for their bright yellow seals. They were circulated amongst US troops in Europe and North Africa during World War II, and intended to be demonetized should the American forces be defeated. Shown here is a $5 note, which depicts former President of the United States Abraham Lincoln and carries the signatures of William Alexander Julian and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Banknote: Bureau of Engraving and Printing (image courtesy of the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History)
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Subpage 3
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The North Africa series of US Silver Certificates was issued in November 1942 in denominations of 1, 5, and 10 US dollars. The notes were similar to standard circulating silver certificates, except for their bright yellow seals. They were circulated amongst US troops in Europe and North Africa during World War II, and intended to be demonetized should the American forces be defeated. Shown here is a $10 note, which depicts former Treasury Secretary and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, and carries the engraved signatures of William Alexander Julian and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Banknote: Bureau of Engraving and Printing (image courtesy of the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History)
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November 8
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Haddon Hall is an English light opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Sydney Grundy. Set at the eponymous hall, which today is England's best preserved medieval manor house, the opera dramatises the legend of Dorothy Vernon's elopement with John Manners; although Vernon married Manners in the 1500s, Grundy and Sullivan moved the setting forward to the 17th century. After its 1892 premiere at the Savoy Theatre, Haddon Hall ran for 204 performances. It remained popular with stage troupes into the 1920s. This illustration, from the cover of the 1 October 1892 edition of The Illustrated London News, depicts a scene from Act II, Scene i: Dorothy Vernon steals away from Haddon Hall on a dark and stormy night. Illustration: M. Browne and Herbert Railton; restoration: Adam Cuerden
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November 9
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An 1872 poster for the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad, offering land for settlement in Iowa and Nebraska. At this point in their histories, both states were attempting to attract immigrants and increase their populations, a form of boosterism in which the company participated. The railroad offered farmers the chance to purchase land grant parcels on easy credit terms; this poster advertises low prices, with 10 years credit and 6 percent interest. Through such efforts, railroads facilitated and accelerated the peopling and development of the Great Plains. Poster: Burlington and Missouri River Railroad; restoration: Lise Broer
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November 10
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The marsh sandpiper (Tringa stagnatilis) is a small wader which breeds in open grassy steppe and taiga wetlands from easternmost Europe to central Asia. This migratory species generally winters in Africa and India, but some individuals – such as this one, photographed in Thailand – go to South East Asia or Australia. Photograph: JJ Harrison
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November 11
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Three stages of a common poppy flower (Papaver rhoeas): bud, flower and fruit (capsule). The species, which grows up to 70 centimetres (28 in) in height, has large showy flowers which measure 50 to 100 millimetres (2 to 4 in). The flower stem is usually covered with coarse hairs that are held at right angles to the surface. The later capsules are hairless, obovoid in shape, and less than twice as tall as they are wide, with a stigma at least as wide as the capsule. Poppies are soil seed bank plants which germinate when the soil is disturbed. After the extensive ground disturbance caused by the fighting in World War I, poppies bloomed in between the trench lines and no man's lands on the Western Front. They have since become commonly used in western countries on and before Remembrance Day each year, as a symbol of remembrance inspired by John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields". Photograph: Alvesgaspar
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November 12
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Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and currently the tallest man-made structure in the world, at 829.8 m (2,722 ft). It was designed to be the centerpiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development known as Downtown Dubai. Construction took over five years, and the skyscraper was officially opened in January 2010. Photograph: Donald Y Tong
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November 13
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Anatomical diagram of a giant scallop, a species in the family Pectinidae. Colors are close to those in an actual animal, though shown with greater than natural contrast for emphasis. Not shown are the left gill, the veins on the left side of the body, and the left shell or "valve". The hinge line corresponds to the animal's dorsal side, though when living it usually rests "sideways", on its right. The giant scallop is equilateral and very nearly equivalved (having left and right valves close to the same size and shape), though this is not true of all, or even most, members of its family. The scallop's nervous system is centered around the visceral ganglia, which constitute a kind of molluscan "brain". The head-to-tail longitudinal axis reaches from the anterior ear to the middle of the adductor muscle, making only a very small portion of the animal morphologically the "front" and the rest corresponding to its "back". The final loop of the intestine goes directly through the ventricle of the heart before it reaches its u-shaped terminus. Diagram: K.D. Schroeder
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November 14
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Maggie Roswell (b. 1952) is an American actress best known for her voice work on The Simpsons, which has earned her both an Emmy Award nomination and an Annie Award nomination. Roswell began acting professionally in the early 1970s, making her breakthrough in the 1980s with such films as Midnight Madness and Pretty in Pink. Since 1989 she has focused mostly on her work with the Simpsons franchise, but has also appeared in several unrelated films. Photograph: Tommy Collier
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November 15
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Portrait of Madame X is an oil painting on canvas completed by John Singer Sargent in 1884. Painted by request of the artist, it depicts a young socialite named Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau – a popular subject for artists who was praised for her beauty – wearing a black satin dress with jeweled straps. The painting was controversial when displayed at the 1884 Salon, and though Sargent defended himself by saying he had painted her "exactly as she was dressed, that nothing could be said of the canvas worse than had been said in print of her appearance", the artist moved to London shortly afterwards. Painting: John Singer Sargent
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November 16
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The noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) is a bird in the honeyeater family endemic to eastern and south-eastern Australia and feeds mostly nectar, fruit and insects. This highly vocal species has a large range of songs, calls, scoldings and alarms, lives in large groups, and is territorial. Populations have grown in numerous places along this miner's range, and as such there is now an overabundance. Photograph: JJ Harrison
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November 17
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The Cassini projection is a map projection first described by César-François Cassini de Thury in 1745. It is the transverse aspect of the equirectangular projection, in that the globe is first rotated so the central meridian becomes the "equator", and then the normal equirectangular projection is applied. The projection is not conformal. Due to the need for conformal projections in national mapping systems, this projection has been mostly superseded by the Transverse Mercator. Map: Strebe, using Geocart
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November 18
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Zoran Dragić (right) committing a personal foul on Carl English during a 2013 basketball game between Game Estudiantes and Unicaja Málaga. Personal fouls, defined as illegal personal contact with an opponent which affects gameplay, are the most common type of foul in basketball, but are not always considered unsportsmanlike. Photograph: Carlos Delgado
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November 19
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The Cave of the Crystals is a little-explored cave in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. Lying 300 metres (1,000 ft) below the surface and connected to the Naica Mine, the main chamber contains some of the largest crystals ever found. The largest of these gypsum formations is 12 m (40 ft) in length, 4 m (13 ft) in diameter and 55 tons in weight. Photograph: Alexander Van Driessche
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November 20
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The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, was completed in 537 as a Greek Orthodox church, serving in this capacity until 1204, when it became the main Roman Catholic cathedral of the Latin Empire. Consecrated again to the Orthodox faith in 1261, it became a mosque in 1453, following the fall of Constantinople. The architectural style of this former basilica, including its large dome, influenced the architecture of Ottoman mosques, including that of the Blue Mosque, which replaced the Hagia Sophia as the principal mosque of Istanbul in the early 1600s. In 1931 the mosque was closed to the public, secularized, and then reopened as a museum; it is now a common tourist destination. Photograph: Arild Vågen
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November 21
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The Spanish Wedding is an oil on panel painting by Marià Fortuny completed over a two-year period ending in 1870. It depicts the signing of a wedding contract in 18th century Spain and was influenced heavily by the works of Francisco Goya, whom the artist admired. It is currently exhibited at the National Art Museum of Catalonia. Painting: Marià Fortuny
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November 22
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Curculio occidentis, a species of weevil in the genus Curculio, atop an acorn. Commonly known as acorn weevils or nut weevils, members of this genus infest oaks and hickories. Photograph: Ryan Kaldari
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November 23
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The musk duck (Biziura lobata) is a duck native to southern Australia and the only extant member of its genus. Named for the peculiar musky odour that it gives off during breeding season, this duck is highly aquatic, preferring deep, still lakes and wetlands with areas of both open water and reed beds. The musk duck feeds primarily on water beetles, yabbies, water snails, and freshwater shellfish, supplemented with a variety of aquatic plants and a few fish. Photograph: JJ Harrison
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November 24
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Arundhati Roy (b. 1961) is an Indian author and political activist who won the 1997 Man Booker Prize with her debut novel The God of Small Things. Born in Shillong, Meghalaya, Roy wrote several screenplays in the late 1980s after meeting (and later marrying) director Pradip Krishen. She wrote The God of Small Things over a four-year period ending in 1996; it was published the following year and received positive international reviews, although in India the work was controversial. She has continued to write essays and articles, but has yet to publish another novel. Photograph: Augustus Binu
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November 25
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An Iranian astrolabe, handmade from brass by Jacopo Koushan in 2013. Astrolabes are elaborate inclinometers used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers from classical antiquity, through the Islamic Golden Age and European Middle Ages, until the Renaissance. These could be used for a variety of purposes, including predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; determining local time given local latitude; surveying; triangulation; calculating the qibla; and finding the times for salat. Photograph: Masoud Safarniya
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November 26
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The Heart of the Andes is an oil painting on canvas completed by the American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church in 1859. It shows an idealized view of the Andes, which Church visited in 1853 and 1857. When it was first exhibited, the painting was a popular success, viewed by more than 12,000 people in a little less than a month. Poetry and music were written about it, and the painting was ultimately sold for $10,000 – at that time the highest price ever paid for a work by a living American artist. The Heart of the Andes was bequeathed by the owner, Margaret Dows, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art upon her death in 1909. Painting: Frederic Edwin Church
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November 27
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The Mark IV tank was introduced by the British in May 1917 to fight in World War I. The "female" version, as pictured here, was armed with five machine guns. Production of the Mark IV ceased at the end of the War in 1918. A small number served briefly with other combatants afterwards. This Mark IV tank, on display in Ashford, Kent, was presented to the town after the end of World War I. The engine was removed to install an electricity substation inside it, though this substation was subsequently removed; the tank's interior is now empty. Photograph: Peter Trimming
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November 28
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The orbicular batfish (Platax orbicularis) is a batfish endemic to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It has a thin, disc-shaped body, and male can grow up to 50 centimetres (20 in) in length. In the wild, the orbicular batfish lives in brackish or marine waters, usually around reefs, at depths from 5 to 30 metres (20 to 100 ft). It is also a popular aquarium fish, although captive specimens generally do not grow as long as wild ones. Photograph: Alexander Vasenin
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November 29
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A Crow man on horseback on snow-covered ground, probably in the Pryor Mountains of Montana, as photographed by Edward S. Curtis c. 1908. The Crow had adapted horses by 1740, using them as pack animals (replacing dogs) and also to hunt bison more effectively. Soon they were known as horse breeders and dealers. Photograph: Edward S. Curtis; restoration: Keraunoscopia
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November 30
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The Battle of Franklin was fought on November 30, 1864, at Franklin, Tennessee, as part of the Franklin–Nashville Campaign of the American Civil War. It was one of the worst disasters of the war for the Confederate States Army. Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee conducted numerous frontal assaults against fortified positions occupied by the Union forces under Maj. Gen. John Schofield, but was unable to break through or to prevent Schofield from a planned, orderly withdrawal to Nashville. The Confederate forces lost 1,750 men, with another 3,800 wounded; the Union forces, meanwhile, lost 189 with another 1,033 wounded. Although many Union soldiers were captured, they were recovered when Union forces reentered Franklin on December 18. The Army of Tennessee had been routed at the Battle of Nashville several days earlier. Lithograph: Kurz and Allison; restoration: Adam Cuerden
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