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From today's featured article

Evelyn Mase (1922–2004) was a South African nurse who was the first wife of the anti-apartheid activist and later president Nelson Mandela, to whom she was married from 1944 to 1958. Born in Engcobo, Transkei, Mase moved to Johannesburg to train as a nurse, and there met and married Mandela. Living together in Soweto, they raised four children; three of them—Thembekile, Makgatho, and Makaziwe—survived into adulthood. In the 1950s, her relationship with Mandela became strained; they separated in 1956 and divorced in 1958. Mase moved to Cofimvaba with the children and opened a grocery store. She spoke to reporters in 1990, when Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, and in 1994, when he was elected as South Africa's first Black president. In 1998 she married a businessman, Simon Rakeepile. Her 2004 funeral attracted international media attention and was attended by Mandela, his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and his third wife, Graça Machel. (Full article...)

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Pelican Rock at Martin's Beach

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... that after finishing his term as Indonesia's minister of agriculture, Sjarifuddin Baharsjah was immediately succeeded by his wife?
... that Canada's National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls called for the abolition of birth alerts?
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... that the whaleback barge 115 became the last Great Lakes shipwreck of the 1800s?
... that when women's champion Dotty Fothergill sued in 1970 for being denied the right to compete in men's tournaments, the Professional Bowlers Association countersued for "disastrous ridicule"?

In the news

Perseverance landing on Mars

Porfirije is enthroned as the 46th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
NASA's Perseverance rover, carrying the Ingenuity helicopter, successfully lands on Mars (pictured).
A winter storm in North America leaves at least 70 people dead and several million others without clean water or power.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes the first woman and the first African to be appointed Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

On this day

February 20

Parícutin

1685 – The French colonization of Texas began with colonists led by Robert de La Salle landing near Matagorda Bay.
1846 – Polish insurgents in the Free City of Kraków led an uprising to incite a fight for national independence, which was put down by the Austrian Empire nine days later.
1943 – A fissure opened in a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacán and continued to erupt for nine years, forming the cinder cone Parícutin (pictured).
1988 – The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.
2009 – The Tamil Tigers attempted to crash two aircraft loaded with C-4 in suicide attacks on Colombo, Sri Lanka, but the planes were shot down before they reached their targets.

Wulfric of Haselbury (d. 1154)
Ivan Albright (b. 1897)
Johnny Checketts (b. 1912)

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Today's featured picture

Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist, known for his black-and-white images of the American West. As a child, he visited Yosemite National Park with his family and was given his first camera. He was later tasked by the United States Department of the Interior to take photographs of national parks. For this work, and for his persistent advocacy, which helped expand the National Park system, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

Photograph credit: J. Malcolm Greany

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