Wikipedia:Picture of the day/January 2016

The Church of St. John at Kaneo is a Macedonian Orthodox church situated on the cliff overlooking Kaneo Beach, on Lake Ohrid in the city of Ohrid, Macedonia. It is unknown when the church was constructed, but documents detailing the church property suggest that it was built before 1447. The church is dedicated to John of Patmos, the writer of the Book of Revelation.

Photograph: Diego Delso

An Igorot man in traditional costume, photographed in Banaue, Philippines.

Photograph: Uwe Aranas

The Grimsel Pass is a mountain pass in Switzerland which crosses the Bernese Alps at an elevation of 2,164 metres (7,100 ft). It connects the Haslital, the upper valley of the river Aare, with the upper valley of the Rhone. A 38-kilometre (24 mi) paved road between Gletsch and Meiringen follows the pass; owing to high snowfall, this road is generally closed between October and May.

Photograph: Heinrich Pniok

SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm was one of the first ocean-going battleships of the Imperial German Navy. Named for Prince-elector Friedrich Wilhelm, she was the fourth pre-dreadnought of the Brandenburg class. She was completed in 1893 at a cost of 11.23 million marks. She served as the flagship of the Imperial fleet from her commissioning in 1894 until 1900. In 1910, she was sold to the Ottoman Empire; she served the empire until the second year of World War I, when she was sunk off the Dardanelles.

Lithograph: Hugo Graf; restoration: Adam Cuerden

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, an oil painting on oak panel completed by Rembrandt in 1630. It depicts the Abrahamic prophet Jeremiah as he laments the destruction of Jerusalem.

In the Biblical narrative, Jeremiah was called to prophetic ministry about one year after King Josiah of Judah turned the nation toward repentance for idolatry. Though still a young man, Jeremiah was appointed to reveal the sins of the people and the coming consequences. His message was ignored and Jeremiah faced years of persecution. Ultimately, during the reign of King Zedekiah, Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians.

Painting: Rembrandt

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. Sickly as a child, Roosevelt overcame his health problems by embracing a strenuous lifestyle, becoming a published author, rancher, and Republican mayoral candidate by his late twenties. In the Spanish–American War, Roosevelt rose to national fame through his service with the Rough Riders. In 1898 he was elected governor of New York, and two years later he was made William McKinley's running mate in the election of 1900. When the latter was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt—then aged 42—became the youngest United States President in history, promoting conservation and expanding the Navy.

Photograph: Pach Brothers; restoration: Chris Woodrich

The Bonne projection is a pseudoconical equal-area map projection named after Rigobert Bonne (1727–1795). In the projection, parallels of latitude are concentric circular arcs, and the scale is true along these arcs. Shapes along the central meridian and the standard parallel are not distorted.

Map: Strebe, using Geocart

Dale D. Myers (1922–2015) was an American aerospace engineer and Deputy Administrator of NASA between October 6, 1986 and May 13, 1989. Myers became interested in aviation and engineering after meeting Charles Lindbergh at age five, and during World War II he helped develop several aircraft, including the North American F-82 Twin Mustang. He began his affiliation with NASA in 1964, working on the Apollo, Space Shuttle, and Skylab.

Photograph: NASA; restoration: Chris Woodrich

A Lantern of the Dead in Sarlat-la-Canéda, Dordogne, France. Such small stone towers are found chiefly in the centre and west of France. They are often thought to have indicated cemeteries through lights exhibited at the top of the structures.

Photograph: Jebulon

A male Scelophysa trimeni feeding on Arctotis decurrens in Port Nolloth, South Africa. This species of scarab beetle is found exclusively in South Africa. Males are covered in minute sky-blue scales while the scales of the females are sienna brown. Both are important pollinators in the region, especially for Mesembryanthemum and some daisy species.

Photograph: Julia W

The grey heron (Ardea cinerea) is a long-legged predatory wading bird of the heron family, Ardeidae, native throughout temperate Europe and Asia and also parts of Africa. It is resident in much of its range, but some populations from the more northern parts migrate southwards in autumn. A bird of wetland areas, it can be seen around lakes, rivers, ponds, marshes and on the sea coast. It feeds mostly on aquatic creatures which it catches after standing stationary beside or in the water or stalking its prey through the shallows.

Photograph: JJ Harrison

The Bara Imambara is an imambara complex in Lucknow, India. Built by Asaf-ud-Daula, Nawab of Awadh, in 1785, the building reflects a maturation of ornamented Mughal design (as seen in the Badshahi Mosque).

Photograph: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

Mercury is the smallest and closest to the Sun of the eight planets in the Solar System. It has no known natural satellites. The planet is named after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger to the gods.

Photograph: NASA/APL/CIS; edit: Jjron

Springtime is an 1872 painting by Claude Monet. It depicts his first wife, Camille Doncieux, seated serenely beneath a canopy of lilacs. The painting is presently held by the Walters Art Museum.

Painting: Claude Monet

Longleat is an English stately home and the seat of the Marquesses of Bath. Built in the 16th century by Sir John Thynne and was designed by Robert Smythson, it is a leading and early example of the Elizabethan prodigy house. The house is set in 1,000 acres (400 ha) of parkland landscaped by Capability Brown, with 4,000 acres (1,600 ha) of let farmland and 4,000 acres (1,600 ha) of woodland, which includes a Center Parcs holiday village. It was the first stately home to open to the public, and also claims the first safari park outside Africa.

Photograph: W. Lloyd MacKenzie

Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) was an American former professional boxer, generally considered among the greatest heavyweights in the history of the sport. A controversial and polarizing figure during his early career, Ali is now highly regarded for the skills he displayed in the ring plus the values he exemplified outside of it: religious freedom, racial justice and the triumph of principle over expedience. Ali remains the only three-time lineal world heavyweight champion, having won the title in 1964, 1974, and 1978.

Photograph: Ira Rosenberg; restoration: Chris Woodrich

Young Woman Drawing, a portrait completed by the Neoclassicist painter Marie-Denise Villers (1774–1821) in 1801. It has been argued that this painting, which is now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a self-portrait.

Painting: Marie-Denise Villers

The Pacific golden plover (Pluvialis fulva) is a medium-sized migratory plover. It breeds in the Arctic tundra from northernmost Asia into western Alaska and winters in south Asia and Australasia.

Photograph: JJ Harrison

An interior view of the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Bury, Greater Manchester. Though a church has existed at the site since at least 971, the current building was designed by J. S. Crowther and officially opened in 1876. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building.

Photograph: Michael D Beckwith

A plasma globe is a decorative novelty item that consists of a glass orb filled with a mixture of various gases. A smaller orb in its center serves as an electrode, so that plasma filaments form connecting it to the outer glass shell. They appear as multiple, constantly moving beams of colored light.

Video: Colin

Eight Bells is an 1886 oil painting by the American artist Winslow Homer which depicts two sailors determining their boat's position. Though Eight Bells only sold for $400, it was praised by critics at its first exhibition in 1888. The painting is now held by the Addison Gallery of American Art.

Painting: Winslow Homer

A stereographic projection of the world north of 30°S. The stereographic projection is a function that projects a sphere onto a plane. The projection is defined on the entire sphere, except at the projection point, in this case the South Pole. This mapping is conformal, meaning that it preserves angles. The stereographic is the only projection that maps all small circles such as craters to circles.

Map: Strebe, using Geocart

Loligo forbesii is a commercially important species of squid in the family Loliginidae. It can be found in the seas around Europe, its range extending through the Red Sea toward the East African coast. The squid lives at depths of 10 to 500 m (30 to 1,600 ft), feeding on fish, polychaetes, crustaceans, and other cephalopods.

Illustration: Comingio Merculiano

Road Maker, or Aríìhiriš, a 19th-century Hidatsa chief.

The Hidatsa are Siouan people. Hidatsa are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a parent tribe to the modern Crow in Montana.

Illustration: Karl Bodmer; restoration: Chris Woodrich

The pin-tailed snipe (Gallinago stenura) is a small stocky wader. It breeds in northern Russia and migrates to spend the non-breeding season in southern Asia from Pakistan to Indonesia. These birds forage in mud or soft soil, probing or picking up food by sight. They mainly eat insects and earthworms, but also some plant material.

Photograph: JJ Harrison

During The Holocaust, approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators. Other victims of Nazi crimes included Romanis, ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled.

This photograph shows less than half of the bodies of the several hundred inmates who died of starvation or were shot by the Gestapo in the yard of the Boelcke Barracks, a subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora Nazi concentration camp located in the south-east of the town of Nordhausen. Numbers at the camp, which was used for sick and dying inmates from January 1945, rose from a few hundred to more than six thousand by the end of the war; up to a hundred inmates died every day.

Photograph: James E. Myers

The small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae L.) is a colourful Eurasian butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. It is the National Butterfly of Denmark.

Photograph: Jörg Hempel

The south facade of Lyme Park house in Lyme Park, a large estate located south of Disley, Cheshire. The symmetrical 15-bay three-storey south front overlooking the pond is the work of Giacomo Leoni and was completed in the 1720s. The house itself measures 190 feet (58 m) by 130 feet (40 m) round a courtyard plan. The older part is built in coursed, squared buff sandstone rubble with sandstone dressings; the later work is in ashlar sandstone.

Photograph: Julie Anne Workman

The Cathedral is an abstract oil painting on canvas created by Czech artist František Kupka in 1912–1913. Measuring 180 by 150 centimetres (71 in × 59 in), the painting is held by the Museum Kampa in Prague, Czech Republic. In this painting, vertical lines running the entire length of the canvas are intersected by diagonal lines to form rectilinear shapes of various sizes and colors.

Painting: František Kupka

Aplysina archeri is a species of sponge that has long tube-like structures of cylindrical shape. Many tubes are attached to one particular part of the organism; a single tube can grow up to 5 feet (1.5 m) high and 3 inches (7.6 cm) thick. These sponges mostly live in the Atlantic Ocean. These filter feeders eat food such as plankton or suspended detritus as it passes them.

Photograph: Nick Hobgood