The winners of the Sixth Annual Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year Contest were recently announced and the final round gallery is a sight to behold. Since 2006, the contest has featured the best photographs available on Wikimedia Commons. To be eligible, a photograph must first have been featured on the site in 2011.…
VINTAGE ACROBATIC INSANITY Photograph via Mapes on Reddit In this heart-stopping photograph we see three brave acrobats performing on a ledge located on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City. Unfortunately I was unable to find much additional information on the date/year of this photograph or…
CURIOSITY LANDS ON MARS Photograph by NASA/JPL-Caltech This image taken by NASA’s Curiosity shows what lies ahead for the rover — its main science target, Mount Sharp. The rover’s shadow can be seen in the foreground, and the dark bands beyond are dunes. Rising up in the distance is the highest…
ENTRANCE TO THE SAINT PETERSBURG MOSQUE Photograph by Canes @ Wikimedia Commons In this beautiful capture, we see the entranceway to the Saint Petersburg Mosque in St Petersburg, Russia. When the mosque opened in 1913, it was the largest in Russia. Its minarets reach 49 meters (161 ft) in height and…
THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN Photograph by Richard Peter In this powerful and chilling photograph taken between Sept. 17 and Dec. 31 of 1945, we see a statue overlooking the recently bombed and destroyed city of Dresden, Germany. The photograph was taken by press photographer and photojournalist Richard Peter who is best…
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that…
WHERE THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA MEETS THE SEA Photograph via Better_Be-Safe on Reddit Laolongtou or “The Old Dragon’s Head” is part of the Shanhai Pass (also known as Shanhaiguan) of the Great Wall of China. It is where the Great Wall ends to the East and leads into the Bohai…
Used with permission from Microsoft Recognize this photo? It’s the default wallpaper for Microsoft Windows XP. Released in 2001, there were over 400 million copies in use as of January 2006 (not including pirated copies). Now imagine how many friends, family members, work colleagues and people using public workstations have no doubt used…
THE THICK RED LINE Photograph by Palindromo Meszaros | palindromo.info On October 14, 2010 at 12:25pm in Ajka, Veszprém county, Hungary; around a million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) of toxic waste was released after a retaining wall in one of the reservoirs used for the accumulation of red mud (a…
The Potala Palace is located in Lhasa, Tibet. It is named after Mount Potalaka and was the chief residence of the Dalai Lama until the 14th Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India, during the 1959 Tibetan uprising. It stands as a symbol of Tibetan Buddhism, built on the Red Mountain at an altitude of…