From today's featured article
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 Maya Angelou
Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies include racism, identity, family, and travel. Angelou (1928–2014), an African-American writer, achieved critical acclaim for her first of seven autobiographies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). That book and the second in the series, Gather Together in My Name (1974), are about the lives of Black women in America. Her autobiographies all have the same structure, a narrative of how she coped within the larger white society she inhabited. In her third autobiography, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), she showed the integrity of the African-American character as she experienced more positive interactions with whites. The series continues with The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), and Mom & Me & Mom (2013). Angelou's autobiographies take place from Arkansas to Africa and back to the US, and span almost forty years, from the start of World War II to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Full article...)
Part of the Maya Angelou series, one of Wikipedia's featured topics.
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Did you know...
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 Nutcracker dolls
- ... that most modern nutcracker dolls (examples pictured) are not functional, but merely decorative?
- ... that Helmut Kahlhöfer conducted his choir Kantorei Barmen-Gemarke in recordings of Reger's Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 110, and Bach's Mass in B minor for the tricentenary of the composer's birth?
- ... that, unusually for a constellation, the five brightest stars of Apus are red-tinged?
- ... that the Tongan Soakimi Gatafahefa, the first Polynesian to be ordained as a Catholic priest, studied in Rome and met Pope Pius IX?
- ... that the Christian song "Give Thanks With a Grateful Heart" was credited as unknown authorship when first released in 1986, despite being written by Henry Smith in 1978?
- ... that Ami Radunskaya, a mathematician who heads the Association for Women in Mathematics, spent ten years as a cellist and music composer between high school and college?
- ... that the Fashion History Museum in Cambridge, Ontario houses what may be the oldest existing European shoe worn in North America?
- ... that in 1858 Santa Claus made his first Hawaiian appearance at Washington Place, the home of Mary Dominis?
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In the news
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On this day...
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December 24: Christmas Eve (Gregorian calendar); Hanukkah begins at sunset (Judaism, 2016)
 Earthrise as seen by the crew of Apollo 8
- 759 – Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu departed for Chengdu, staying with his fellow poet Pei Di, where he composed poems about life in his thatched cottage.
- 1871 – Aida, one of Giuseppe Verdi's most popular operas, made its debut in Cairo, Egypt.
- 1953 – On New Zealand's North Island, at Tangiwai, a railway bridge was damaged by a lahar and collapsed beneath a passenger train, killing 151 people.
- 1968 – Astronaut William Anders of the NASA Apollo 8 mission, the first manned voyage to orbit the Moon, took the famous photograph known as "Earthrise" (pictured), showing the Earth rising above the lunar surface.
- 1974 – Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin, Australia, eventually destroying more than 70% of the city.
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