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Lauren Weinstein, whose comic Girl Stories was serialized on Gurl.com

Gurl.com was a US website for teenage girls that was online from 1996 to 2018. It was created by Rebecca Odes, Esther Drill, and Heather McDonald as a resource centered on teen advice, body image, sexuality, and other teen concerns. First published as an online zine, it expanded into an online community. It was purchased in turn by Delia's, iVillage, PriMedia, and what became Defy Media. It ceased activity after Defy Media's closure in 2018 and was redirected to Seventeen's website. In the US, Gurl.com was heavily associated with zine culture and third-wave feminism and was used in academia to study the online behavior of teenage girls. Known for its humorous tone and unconventional approach to teen-related topics, it won an award from I.D. magazine in 1997 and a Webby in 1998; its founders received awards from New York magazine in 1997. Gurl.com attracted privacy concerns, and criticism from conservative and anti-pornography advocates for its sex-positive stance and sex education resources. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Olive MacLeod

... that Olive MacLeod (pictured) journeyed 6,000 km (3,700 mi) through Africa in 1910–1911 to visit her murdered fiancé's grave, and wrote a book based on her observations?
... that Church Clothes 4 deals with Christian hip hop artist Lecrae's faith deconstruction and reconstruction?
... that Richard Newland is cricket's earliest-known left-handed batter?
... that construction workers at UC Berkeley paused their work in solidarity with the 2022 University of California academic workers' strike?
... that Taingda Mingyi U Pho engineered the massacre of around 40 members of the Burmese royal family in order to eliminate nearly all possible heirs to the throne?
... that Tennessee State Route 396 was constructed to provide access to the Spring Hill Manufacturing plant of Saturn Corporation?
... that when Arthur Forrest suggested that the squadron of French ships were looking for a battle, Captain Maurice Suckling replied "I think it would be a pity to disappoint them"?
... that an apparently jobless man wearing a cardboard box who taped himself to a lamppost was actually a new DJ for a Vermont radio station?

In the news

George R. R. Martin

In video games, Elden Ring (writer George R. R. Martin pictured) wins Game of the Year at The Game Awards.
American basketball player Brittney Griner and Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout are freed via a prisoner exchange.
In Germany, 25 members of a far-right group are arrested in connection with a coup d'état plot.
Albert Rösti and Élisabeth Baume-Schneider are elected to the Federal Council, Switzerland's government.

On this day

December 12: Beginning of the Yule Lads' arrival in Iceland, Musikhjälpen in Sweden

Oaks Colliery explosion

1388 – Unable to defend her possessions, Maria of Enghien sold the lordship of Argos and Nauplia to the Republic of Venice.
1866 – England's worst mining disaster occurred when a series of explosions (depicted) caused by flammable gases ripped through the Oaks Colliery, killing 361 people.
1905 – In support of the December Uprising in Moscow, the Council of Workers' Deputies of Kiev staged a mass uprising, establishing the Shuliavka Republic in the city.
1941 – The Holocaust: At a Nazi Party meeting in the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler declared the imminent destruction of the Jewish people.
1985 – Arrow Air Flight 1285R crashed after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, killing 256 people, including 248 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.

Johann Christoph Gottsched (d. 1766)
Gustave Flaubert (b. 1821)
Henrietta Swan Leavitt (d. 1921)

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From today's featured list

During its lifetime Lionhead Studios released eight video games, primarily for Microsoft Windows personal computers and Xbox consoles, and worked on at least ten other titles which were cancelled in various stages of development. Lionhead Studios was a British video game developer located in Guildford, England. It was founded in July 1997 by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson, following their departure from Bullfrog Productions, which Molyneux had co-founded in 1987. In 2001 it released its first title, the real-time strategy game Black & White. Lionhead was purchased by Microsoft Game Studios in 2006. Over the next decade, Lionhead only released titles in the Fable series; although several other projects were worked on, such as Project Dimitri, Survivors, and Project Milo, sometimes for years, none turned into published products. Molyneux, the face of the company, left in 2012, before the company's final two games were released that year. In 2016, with no further titles finished, the studio was shut down by Microsoft, cancelling its in-progress projects Fable Fortune and Fable Legends, the latter while in closed beta. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Elizabeth Glendower Evans (February 28, 1856 – December 12, 1937) was an American social reformer and suffragist. She pursued social reform, serving in a variety of positions, including as a delegate to the International Congress of Women at the Hague in 1915, the first national organizer of the Woman's Peace Party, and a national director of the American Civil Liberties Union. This photograph, from the library of The Washington Times, depicts Evans wearing a large feathered hat. The image was published in an issue of The Suffragist in 1914.

Photograph credit: The Washington Times; restored and cropped by Adam Cuerden

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