Photo of the Day: October 2020
Trick-or-treaters take a snack break in Medellín, Colombia. Once considered the most dangerous city in the world, Medellín's murder rate dropped 80 percent between 1991 and 2014.
October festivals in Guadalajara, Mexico, celebrate Mexican culture and art with plenty of parades, music, food, and drinks. In this image from the March 1967 issue, parade participants are wearing paper masks as an homage to the area's Indigenous people.
Two Ojibwa people scout for wild rice along the St. Croix River between Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Ojibwa have inhabited this land for thousands of years.
A woman dances at a Berber wedding celebration in Taarart, Morocco. Berbers are an ethnic group native to northern Africa, and most Moroccans claim Berber descent—even though the government systematically denies their identity.
A park ranger at Glacier National Park shows tourists details in Sperry Glacier. When this picture was published in May 1956, Sperry Glacier spanned 300 acres. By 2014, the glacier had lost more than a third of its area.
A Han teacher calls out the correct answer in Chinese at a Uyghur high school in Azak, Xinjiang, China. Recent media investigations show that the Chinese government have targeted Uyghurs—a Muslim minority people group—for mass detentions and even forced birth control.
Photographer Jonathan Blair, his wife Arlene, and a guest are silhouetted by gas lamps as they pose in the openings of a cave home in Cappadocia, Turkey. The couple lived in the cave for a month, following in the footsteps of habitants who have settled here for centuries.
In this picture from the March 1974 issue, crowds flock to taverns in Munich, Germany, to celebrate Oktoberfest. Beer, food, and music draw millions to the festival every year.
This picture from the July 1914 issue shows performers pretending to be an animal at a child's garden party in Japan. The image was part of a photo series covering Japanese childhood.
Published in the August 1921 issue, this picture of leaping deer is one of the earliest photographs of wildlife at night. The story, about wildlife around Lake Superior, included several pages detailing the writer-photographer's efforts to create a night photography system.
This mausoleum, carved into a desert boulder in Saudi Arabia, dates to the first century A.D. The tomb sits on the well-preserved Nabatean site of Hegra.
A bride poses for portraits in front of the Second Temple of Hera in Paestum, Italy. Dating back to the fifth century B.C., the temple honours the Greek goddess of marriage, family, and childbirth.
When Mexico lost in the quarterfinals of the 1970 World Cup—hosted in Mexico City—Mexican soccer fans turned their allegiances to Brazil. Revellers took the streets after Brazil bested Italy for the championship.
Massive beams of selenite dwarf explorers in Mexico's Cave of Crystals, deep below the Chihuahuan Desert. Formed over millennia, these crystals are among the largest yet discovered on Earth.
A rainy ceremony can't stop this Columbia University graduate from celebrating his new degree. This photo originally appeared in the September 1990 issue, in a story that traveled the length of Broadway in New York City.
Two stallions fight at a wild horse conservation center in South Dakota. Tens of thousands of wild horses roam the American West—some of which are periodically rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management and transferred to a holding facility, or adopted out to new owners.
Dancers sway to the beat of soca—a fusion of soul and calypso music—at the Notting Hill Carnival in the late 1990s. The street festival, not to be confused with celebrations before Lent, has been held in London every August since 1966.
A story in the March 1998 issue surveyed 12 U.S. marine sanctuaries. Here, a biplane flies over the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, home of the only barrier coral reef in North America.
Every November, this icon of Our Lady of Porta Vaga is borne across Manila Bay in the Philippines. The ceremony is in remembrance of Spanish trade galleons that travelled between Mexico and the Philippines from 1565 to 1815.
With the 355-foot drop of Zambia's Victoria Falls just inches away, a swimmer stands at the lip of a hidden pool—an eight-foot-deep divot in the riverbed rock—accessible only when the Zambezi River runs low.
A craftsman works on a wood-and-paper effigy of Ravana, a 10-headed demon king, for the 1962 Dussehra Festival in New Delhi, India. During the Hindu festival, torches will set the effigy ablaze, and fireworks will shoot out of its eyes.
Merchants at a market in Saqqara, Egypt, carry trays of dates on their heads. Saqqara is home to an ancient burial ground that dates all the way back to the Bronze Age.
A lioness charges through water toward her prey in Botswana's Okavango Delta. In the wild, lions need to eat between 10 and 15 pounds of meat every day.
A dramatic storm means rainfall will soon make its way into the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska. The aquifer supplies irrigation for crops and drinking water for millions of people from South Dakota to the Texas Panhandle.
Members of Hampton University's marching band feign disinterest in the arrival of Norfolk State's musicians, increasing the competitive atmosphere of that day's football game.
Excited students raise their hands at a new village school in Iharara, Tanzania, which was funded by government taxes on tourist developments.
Buddhist pilgrims walk around the Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal. The circles around the sacred site and the pilgrimage itself are known as a kora.
Students are crowned homecoming king and queen during a football game at Maricopa High School in Arizona. When this story was published in 1977, Maricopa was considered a small town outside of the suburban sprawl. Now, it's considered part of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
A worker spreads coffee cherries to dry in the sun on a coffee plantation in Brazil. The March 1981 issue told the story of the whole coffee economy, nicknaming the crop "the bonanza bean."
