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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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;

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

Orange cup coral (Tubastraea coccinea) is a large-polyp stony coral in the family Dendrophylliidae. It is native to the Indo-Pacific region, but has also been introduced into the Atlantic, including the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the West African region, and the Mediterranean Sea. The species is found in a variety of habitats including natural caves and rock faces as well as artificial surfaces such as granite, cement, steel and tile. The polyps of orange cup coral are red, and its tentacles are yellow-orange. The orange cup coral is heterotrophic and does not contain zooxanthellae in its tissues as many tropical corals do, allowing it to grow in complete darkness as long as it can capture enough food, feeding by using its transparent tentacles to capture zooplankton. It spreads using the ocean's currents and can reproduce both sexually and asexually. This orange cup coral was photographed in the Gulf of California off the coast of La Paz in Baja California Sur, Mexico.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

Qurabiya is a shortbread-type biscuit, usually made with ground almonds, eaten in much of the Arab world, the Balkans, Iran and Turkey. It is often eaten by Christians in those areas on Christmas Day, including in Serbia, Greece and Albania.

Photograph credit: Petar Milošević

The Vela supernova remnant, in the southern constellation Vela, is one of the closest known supernova remnants to Earth, being around 800 light-years away. Its source Type II supernova exploded approximately 11,000 years ago. The association of the Vela supernova remnant with the Vela Pulsar was made by astronomers at the University of Sydney in 1968; this, along with the Crab Pulsar, was among the first direct observational evidence that supernovae form neutron stars. This astrophotograph of the Vela supernova remnant was taken by the European Southern Observatory's VLT Survey Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile in 2022. The image has a field of view of 84 arcminutes and was produced as a mosaic of observations with four filters, here represented by the colours magenta, blue, green and red. The supernova remnant appears as wisps of pink and orange clouds, with stars in blue and yellow scattered throughout.

Photograph credit: European Southern Observatory / TIMER survey

Sheryl Cooper (born 1956) is an American dancer and stage performer. In addition to regularly performing on tour with her husband, shock rock singer Alice Cooper, she teaches, choreographs, produces, and directs children's dance and theatre in the area of Phoenix, Arizona. She was also one of three co-founders of Alice Cooper's Solid Rock, a non-profit foundation for inner-city teens in Arizona. Born in Denver, Cooper began dancing at a young age, training in classical ballet until the age of 16, when she switched to jazz. She met Alice in 1975 at the age of 18 when she became a dancer for his "Welcome to My Nightmare" tour, and the pair married in 1976. Cooper has toured with Alice throughout his career, dancing on his sets with roles including a sadistic ghoulish nurse (sometimes alongside their daughter Calico performing a similar character), a giant spider, a devil and a ghost. This photograph shows Cooper performing at the O2 in London in 2022, dressed as a Marie Antoinette–style character who helps apprehend Alice and sends him to the guillotine.

Photograph credit: Raph_PH

The silver-breasted broadbill (Serilophus lunatus) is a species of bird in the broadbill family, Eurylaimidae. It is found at a range of elevations in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest. It is a medium-sized broadbill: 16–17 centimetres (6.3–6.7 in) in length, 25–35 grams (0.9–1.2 oz) in mass. The plumage of the nominate race has a rusty-coloured head, ash-grey forehead, black supercilium over the eye, white breast and belly, and a bright rufous rump and upper wing. The flight feathers are striking blue and black and the tail is black. The silver-breasted broadbill's primary diet is insects, including grasshoppers, mantises, small snails and caterpillars, which it takes by flycatching from a perch or by gleaning branches and foliage. This male silver-breasted broadbill was photographed in Di Linh district, Vietnam.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison

Battleship Potemkin is a 1925 Soviet silent epic film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by Sergei Eisenstein, it presents a dramatization of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. The film, released on 21 December 1925, is a prime example of the Soviet montage theory of editing, such as in the "Odessa Steps" scene, which became widely influential and often recreated. Battleship Potemkin is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Film credit: Sergei Eisenstein

The Shah Jahan Mosque is a 17th-century central mosque in the city of Thatta, Pakistan. The mosque was built during the reign of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who bestowed it on Thatta as a token of gratitude, and is heavily influenced by Central Asian architecture – a reflection of Shah Jahan's campaigns near Samarkand shortly before the mosque was designed. It is notable for its geometric brick work, a decorative element that is unusual for Mughal-period mosques. The mosque is unusual for its lack of minarets although it has a total of 93 domes, the most of any structure in Pakistan. This photograph depicts an interior view of one of the Shah Jahan Mosque's larger domes, showing its blue-and-white tiles arranged in stellated patterns to represent the heavens.

Photograph credit: Alexander Savin

Pontia edusa, commonly known as the eastern Bath white, is a species of butterfly in the family Pieridae. It is found from the southwest of Europe (southern France, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia) up to central Europe, and in the Middle East in Iran and Iraq. It is a migrant that can also be encountered in Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Germany and Poland, in the Baltic states, and in southern Sweden and Norway. The species inhabits open grassy or flowery areas, in stony or rocky places and in roadsides, at altitudes up to 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) and occasionally higher. P. edusa is a small to medium-sized migrant butterfly, with a wingspan reaching about 45 millimetres (1.8 inches). The upperside of its wings is white, with black stains on the top of the forewing and hindwing, while the hindwing underside has greenish-grey spots. P. edusa is nearly identical to P. daplidice; it is generally only possible to distinguish the two through genital inspection or DNA analysis. This P. edusa butterfly, displaying its greenish-grey underside, was photographed in Učka Nature Park in Istria, Croatia. The photograph was focus-stacked from four separate images.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus Rubus in the family Rosaceae. Blackberries are typically produced from hybrid plants among the species within the subgenus Rubus, or hybrids between the subgenera Rubus and Idaeobatus. Similar to the raspberry, it is not a berry in the botanical sense, being classified as an aggregate fruit composed of small drupelets. Blackberries are perennial plants bearing biennial stems from their roots. Unmanaged plants tend to aggregate in a dense tangle of stems and branches, which can be controlled in gardens or farms using trellises. Blackberry shrubs can tolerate poor soils, spreading readily in wasteland, ditches, and roadsides. Blackberries grow wild throughout most of Europe. They are an important element in the ecology of many countries, and harvesting the berries is a common pastime. In some parts of the world, however, there are blackberry species that are considered to be an invasive species. The fruit is also grown commercially, with Mexico being the leading producer, exporting for sale in off-season fresh markets in North America and Europe. This photograph, which was focus-stacked from 23 separate images, depicts a blackberry of the species Rubus fruticosus.

Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus

Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterised as heroic. During this time, Beethoven began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression. This oil-on-canvas portrait, titled Beethoven with the Manuscript of the Missa Solemnis, was painted by Joseph Karl Stieler in 1820, and depicts Beethoven while composing his Missa solemnis, which was first performed in 1824. The painting hangs in the Beethoven House at his birthplace in Bonn, Germany.

Painting credit: Joseph Karl Stieler

The African chaffinch (Fringilla spodiogenys) is a species of passerine bird in the genus Fringilla. The African chaffinch is found from southern Morocco to northwestern Libya, and in Italy on the islands of Lampedusa and Pantelleria. There is also an isolated population in northeastern Libya. Its habitat includes deciduous forests and lowlands, and during the nonbreeding season extends its habitat to open areas including weedy fields and olive groves. The diet of the African chaffinch is similar to the Eurasian chaffinch, consisting mostly of small invertebrates and their larvae as well as flowers, seeds, and buds. This female African chaffinch was photographed in Sfax, Tunisia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

The McClure Tunnel is a tunnel in Santa Monica, California, which connects Pacific Coast Highway (State Route 1) with the western terminus of the Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10). It is 400 feet (120 m) long. The first tunnel on the site was a Southern Pacific Railroad tunnel constructed in 1886. This featured in a brief 1898 film called Going Through the Tunnel, which showed the ocean view appearing to the left as the passenger emerges from the western portal. The rail tunnel was demolished and replaced with the current road tunnel, which opened in 1936. It was named after local newspaper publisher Robert E. McClure in 1979.

Photograph credit: Steve Lyon