Makhtesh Ramon

Makhtesh Ramon, a cirque measuring 40 kilometres (25 mi) long, 2–10 kilometres (1.2–6.2 mi) wide, and 500 metres (1,600 ft) deep, is the world's largest makhtesh. It is located in Israel's Negev desert, some 85 kilometres (53 mi) south of Beersheba. The makhtesh and surrounding area are home to only one settlement, Mitzpe Ramon, and together form Israel's largest national park.

Lesser Sand Plover

The lesser sand plover (Charadrius mongolus) is a small, highly migratory wader in the plover family of birds. It feeds predominantly on insects, crustaceans and annelid worms.

Blackness Castle

Blackness Castle is a fortress located on the south shore of the Firth of Forth near Blackness, Scotland. Built by Sir George Crichton in the 1440s, the castle passed to King James II of Scotland in 1453. During its more than 500 years as crown property, the castle has served as a prison, artillery fortification, and ammunition depot. The castle is now aScheduled Ancient Monument, in the care of Historic Scotland.

Yule log Cake

A Yule log cake made of chocolate sponge cake, filled with raspberry jam, and decorated to resemble its namesake. Such cakes, known as bûche de Noël in French, are traditional desserts served near Christmas in France and several of its former colonies.

Striated Pardalote

The striated pardalote (Pardalotus striatus) is a passerine bird found in Australia. The most common pardalotespecies, it was first described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789. Although plumage varies, the nominate subspecies (as shown here) is identifiable by a yellow spot on the wing.

Victor Baltard

A sketch of the facade of the Saint-Augustin Church in Paris, by its architect Victor Baltard. Born to architect Louis-Pierre Baltard in 1805, Baltard began winning prizes for his architecture by 1833. In 1849 he was made Architect of the City of Paris, and in this position he designed several buildings, including Les Halles and the Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux Church as well as this church. Before his death in 1874, he also restored several churches, including Saint-Étienne-du-Mont and Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis.

Correa Alba

Correa alba is a shrub endemic to Australia. Reaching some 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) in height, this shrub is a hardy species in well-drained situations. The ovate leaves measure 1.5 to 3.5 centimetres (0.59 to 1.38 in) long and 1 to 2.7 centimetres (0.39 to 1.06 in) wide. The flowers, as shown here, are generally white, but may also be light pink. They usually appear between mid-autumn and early winter.

Percival Lowell

American astronomer Percival Lowell at his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. In this 1914 photograph Lowell is seen observingVenus high in the daytime sky, with the refracting telescope's 24-inch (61 cm) lens diameter stopped down to 3 inches (7.6 cm) to reduce the effects of atmospheric turbulence.

Lowell has been described as "the most influential popularizer of planetary science in America before Carl Sagan". His efforts to find Planet X eventually led to the discovery of Pluto, 14 years after his death. Pluto was named partly in recognition of Lowell's efforts, although the Planet X theory was subsequently disproved.

Castalius Rosimon

Castalius rosimon is a small butterfly in the family Lycaenidae. First described by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1775, the species can be found in South and Southeast Asia.

Shy Albatross

The shy albatross (Thalassarche cauta) is a medium-sized albatross, averaging 90 to 99 centimetres (35–39 in) in length with a 220–256 cm (87–101 in) wingspan. It breeds on rocky islands off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, but non-breeding birds can be found throughout the southern oceans. The shy albatross feeds on fish,cephalopods, crustacea, and tunicates; it has been known to dive to depths of 5 m (16 ft) in search of prey.

Grose Valley

The Grose Valley is a rugged valley in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia, which was formed by the Grose River. The valley is located between the Great Western Highway and Bells Line of Road, the two major routes across the Blue Mountains. Most of the valley falls within the Blue Mountains National Park. On the right side of the image, the Bridal Veil Falls are visible.

Orbicular Batfish

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 inbrackish 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.

Mark IV tank

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.

The Heart of the Andes

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.

Astrolabe

An Iranian astrolabe, handmade from brass by Jacopo Koushan in 2013. Astrolabes are elaborate inclinometers used byastronomers, 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.

Curculio

Curculio occidentis, a species ofweevil in the genus Curculio, atop an acorn. Commonly known as acorn weevils or nut weevils, members of this genus infest oaks and hickories.

Musk Duck

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.

Hagia Sophia

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 Catholiccathedral 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.

Cassini Projection

The Cassini projection is a map projection first described by César-François Cassini de Thury in 1745. It is the transverse aspectof 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.

Noisy Miner

The noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) is a bird in the honeyeater family endemic to eastern and south-eastern Australia and feeds mostly on 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, resulting in an overabundance.

Pectinidae

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.

Burj Khalifa

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.

Common poppy

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".

Marsh Sandpiper

The marsh sandpiper (Tringa stagnatilis) is a small wader which breeds in open grassy steppe and taiga wetlandsfrom 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.

Lowa and Nebraska

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 boosterismin 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.

Haddon Hall

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.