Wikipedia:Picture of the day/April 2022

A ha-ha is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond. The design includes a turfed incline that slopes downward to a sharply vertical face, typically a masonry retaining wall. Ha-has are used in landscape design to prevent access to a garden, such as by grazing livestock, without obstructing views. In security design, they are used to deter vehicular access to a site while minimizing visual obstruction. The name ha-ha is thought to have stemmed from the exclamations of surprise by those coming across them, as the walls were intentionally designed so as not to be visible on the plane of the landscape. This picture shows a ha-ha at Hopetoun House in West Lothian, Scotland, which keeps animals off the lawn while remaining unseen from the main house, visible here in the background. The wall disappears from view as it curves away to the left of the photograph.

Photograph credit: Andrew Shiva

Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. This collage depicts samples of nine types of sand, in rows from left to right:

1. Glass sand from Kauai, Hawaii
2. Dune sand from the Gobi Desert
3. Quartz sand with green glauconite from Estonia
4. Volcanic sand with reddish weathered basalt from Maui, Hawaii
5. Biogenic coral sand from Molokai, Hawaii
6. Coral pink sand from Utah
7. Volcanic glass sand from California
8. Garnet sand from Emerald Creek, Idaho
9. Olivine sand from Papakolea, Hawaii

Photograph credit: Siim Sepp

The African emerald cuckoo (Chrysococcyx cupreus) is a species of cuckoo that is found across much of sub-Saharan Africa. The species is sexually dimorphic: the male has a green back and head with a yellow breast, while the female is barred green and brown on the back and green and white on the breast. This male of the subspecies C. c. cupreus was photographed in Kakum National Park, Ghana.

Photograph credit: Charles James Sharp

The Colombo National Museum is a museum in Colombo and the largest in Sri Lanka. Established in January 1877 and maintained by the Department of National Museums, it holds collections of significant importance to Sri Lanka, such as the regalia of the Kingdom of Kandy, as well as many other exhibits relating the country's cultural and natural heritage. This photograph depicts the facade of the museum, housed in a 19th-century building constructed by Arasi Marikar Wapchie Marikar.

Photograph credit: Alexander Savin

Hygrocybe miniata, commonly known as the vermilion waxcap, is a small, bright red or red-orange species of mushroom in the genus Hygrocybe, the waxcaps. It is a cosmopolitan species, distributed worldwide. In Europe, it is found in fields, on sandy heaths, or grassy commons in the autumn. These two H. miniata mushrooms were photographed in Ferndale Park in Sydney, Australia.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

Pattie Ruffner Jacobs (1875–1935) was an American suffragist from Birmingham, Alabama. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1978.

Photograph credit: National Photo Company; restored by Adam Cuerden

The California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) is a coastal species of eared seal native to western North America. It is one of six species of sea lion. Its natural habitat ranges from southeast Alaska to central Mexico, including the Gulf of California. This female sea lion was photographed next to a western gull in Scripps Park in the neighborhood of La Jolla in San Diego, California.

Photograph credit: Rhododendrites

Oedipus and the Sphinx is an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Gustave Moreau. The picture depicts the story in Greek mythology of Oedipus meeting the Sphinx at a crossroads on his journey between Thebes and Delphi. Oedipus must answer the Sphinx's riddle correctly in order to pass, and failure to do so means his own death and that of the besieged Thebans. The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Painting credit: Gustave Moreau

Pigeon Point Lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse (tied with Point Arena Light) on the West Coast of the United States, located in San Mateo County, California. It stands on a rocky promontory and has long been a landmark for ships approaching San Francisco Bay from the south. This headland, and hence the lighthouse, took its name from the ship Carrier Pigeon, which was wrecked here in 1853.

Photograph credit: Frank Schulenburg

Hubertine Auclert (10 April 1848 – 4 August 1914) was a leading French feminist and a campaigner for women's suffrage. Speaking at the Socialist Workers' Congress in 1879, she made passionate pleas for women's rights, arguing that women needed their economic independence. Moving to Algeria in 1888, she studied and recorded the daily lives of Arab women, and advocated for their rights.

Photograph credit: Agence Rol; restored by Adam Cuerden

The northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), also known as the peewit, is a species of bird in the family Charadriidae, the plovers, dotterels and lapwings. It is a wader that breeds on cultivated land and other short vegetation habitats. It has a distribution across much of the temperate Palearctic realm and is highly migratory. At least in parts of its range, there have been population declines due to changes in agricultural practices.

Photograph credit: Andreas Trepte

Denis Mukwege (born 1955) is a gynaecologist and Pentecostal pastor who specializes in the treatment of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have been raped by armed rebels. He has treated thousands of women who were victims of rape as a weapon of war since the Second Congo War, some of them more than once, performing up to ten operations a day during 17-hour working days. In 2018, Mukwege and Iraqi Yazidi human-rights activist Nadia Murad were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict".

Photograph credit: Claude Truong-Ngoc

The white-headed petrel (Pterodroma lessonii), also known as the white-headed fulmar, is a species of seabird in the petrel family, Procellariidae. About 400 mm (16 in) in length, the species occurs in the Southern Hemisphere, and breeds alone or in colonies in burrows dug among tussocks and herbfields on subantarctic islands. This white-headed petrel in flight was photographed off the eastern coast of the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania, Australia.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary, also known as Lo Spasimo or Il Spasimo di Sicilia, is an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael, originally painted on panel around 1514 to 1516 but later transferred to canvas in the 19th century. It depicts Christ carrying the cross to his crucifixion, specifically the moment when he falls and his mother Mary suffers a spasm of agony, known as the Swoon of the Virgin. The painting's emotion is densely crammed into the foreground, and the background is similar to that of a stage set with distant groups of people and crosses. The work was commissioned by the Sicilian monastery of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo and now hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Painting credit: Raphael

Richèl Hogenkamp (born 16 April 1992) is a professional tennis player from the Netherlands. Her highest WTA singles ranking is 94, which she reached on 24 July 2017. On the ITF Women's World Tennis Tour, she has won 16 singles and 14 doubles titles. This photograph depicts Hogenkamp competing at the 2015 Madrid Open.

Photograph credit: Carlos Delgado

The Talamanca hummingbird (Eugenes spectabilis) is a large species of hummingbird, in the family Trochilidae. Some taxonomic authorities, such as the International Ornithological Committee, split the magnificent hummingbird (genus Eugenes), in which case the nominate subspecies fulgens is renamed Rivoli's hummingbird and spectabilis is named the admirable hummingbird. Other taxonomic authorities have not recognized the split. The range of the Talamanca hummingbird is from Costa Rica to Panama. This male was photographed in the Mount Totumas cloud forest in Panama.

Photograph credit: Charles James Sharp

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9. Devastating fires soon broke out in San Francisco and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died, and over 80 percent of the city was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States. This photograph depicts the aftermath of the earthquake around Post Street and Grant Avenue.

Photograph credit: H. D. Chadwick; restored by Yann Forget

Glenn T. Seaborg (April 19, 1912 – February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in this area also led to his development of the actinide concept and the arrangement of the actinide series in the periodic table. He was the principal or co-discoverer of ten elements, including seaborgium, which was named in his honor while he was still living. This 1950 photograph depicts Seaborg in a laboratory with an elution column used for the ion exchange of actinide elements.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Bammesk

The Gare du Nord, officially Paris-Nord, is one of six large mainline railway station termini in Paris, France. In 2015, it was the busiest railway station in Europe by total passenger numbers, with more than 700,000 passengers alighting or disembarking per day. The current Gare du Nord was designed by French architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff and constructed between 1861 and 1865, replacing an earlier and much smaller terminal that was operational between 1846 and 1860. This interior view of the station's main hall was captured from the balcony level.

Photograph credit: David Iliff

The bar-shouldered dove (Geopelia humeralis) is a species of dove, in the family Columbidae, native to Australia and southern New Guinea. Its typical habitat consists of areas of thick vegetation where water is present, damp gullies, forests and gorges, mangroves, plantations, swamps, eucalyptus woodland, tropical and sub-tropical shrubland, and river margins. It can be found in both inland and coastal regions. This bar-shouldered dove was photographed in Brunkerville, New South Wales.

Photograph credit: John Harrison

Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann. It is loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which was based both on fact and on Goethe's own early life. This poster, designed by the Swiss artist Eugène Grasset, advertised the opera's first performance in France, which was given by the Opéra-Comique at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris on 16 January 1893.

Poster credit: Eugène Grasset; restored by Adam Cuerden

The blue-sided leaf frog (Agalychnis annae) is a species of tree frog in the family Phyllomedusidae native to the tropical rainforests of Central America. It is known only from the Central Valley of Costa Rica, on the slopes of the Cordillera de Talamanca, the Cordillera de Tilarán and the Cordillera Central, at altitudes between 600 and 1,650 m (2,000 and 5,400 ft). The total extent of its range is estimated to be around 16,000 km² (6,178 sq mi), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed it as a vulnerable species. This photograph of a blue-sided leaf frog was captured in Heredia Province, Costa Rica, and was focus-stacked from two separate images.

Photograph credit: Charles James Sharp

Balkan cuisine is a type of regional cuisine found across the Balkan region in southeastern Europe. It combines characteristics of European cuisine with some of those from western Asia. This photograph depicts a Serbian breakfast traditionally served on Orthodox Easter, consisting of boiled eggs, cheese, ham, horseradish, scallions, pepper salad with garlic, rye bread, and cinnamon cakes. A similar meal is commonly eaten in Slovenia, but with Slovenian potica instead of cake.

Photograph credit: Petar Milošević

St Lawrence Jewry is a Church of England guild church in the City of London on Gresham Street, next to Guildhall. The medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, and rebuilt to a design by Sir Christopher Wren. The building suffered extensive damage on 29 December 1940, during the Blitz, and was restored in 1957 by Cecil Brown to Wren's original design. It is the official church of the Lord Mayor of London. Wren's church has an aisle only on the north side (in the left-hand side of this photograph), divided from the nave by Corinthian columns. The ceiling is divided into sunken panels, ornamented with wreaths and branches.

Photograph credit: David Iliff

The warbling white-eye (Zosterops japonicus), also known as the Japanese white-eye or the mountain white-eye, is a small passerine bird in the family Zosteropidae. Native to southeastern Asia, it was introduced to Oahu in 1929, and by 1987 had become the most abundant land bird in the Hawaiian Islands. This warbling white-eye was photographed in Tennōji Park in Osaka, Japan.

Photograph credit: Laitche

Seeds are embryonic plants enclosed in protective outer coverings. This collage of forty-two photomicrographs depicts the seeds of various plants, in rows from left to right:

Photograph credit: Alexander Klepnev

Jasmin Moghbeli (born 1983) is an American Marine Corps test pilot and NASA astronaut. As of 2019, she has accumulated more than 2,000 hours of flight time and flown in 150 combat missions, including sorties during the War in Afghanistan. She has been assigned as the commander of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station, scheduled to launch in 2023. This official portrait of Moghbeli as a NASA astronaut candidate was taken in 2017.

Photograph credit: Bill Stafford

Calcite is a carbonate mineral and the most stable polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). This photograph shows fluorescence and birefringence in a calcite crystal with a 445-nanometre laser.

Photograph credit: Jan Pavelka

Charles S. Fairchild (April 30, 1842 – November 24, 1924) was a New York businessman and politician who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1887 to 1889 and Attorney General of New York from 1876 to 1877. This line engraving of Fairchild was produced around 1902 by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) as part of a BEP presentation album of the first 42 secretaries of the treasury.

Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva