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Lady Gaga

"Dance in the Dark" is a song written, produced and arranged by American singer Lady Gaga (pictured) and Fernando Garibay. It is taken from her third extended play, The Fame Monster (2009)—the reissue of her debut studio album, The Fame (2008). It is about a girl who prefers to have sex in the dark as she is insecure about her body. A Europop track containing retro and new-wave influences, it begins with a stuttering introduction and includes a spoken memorial as an interlude. Critics praised the song for its chorus and theme, although some found its production formulaic. Retrospective reviewers ranked the song as one of Gaga's best. "Dance in the Dark" reached the top ten on charts in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, as well as the US Dance/Electronic Digital Song chart. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording. Gaga performed "Dance in the Dark" as the opening song of The Monster Ball Tour, at the 2010 Brit Awards and at her Las Vegas residency, Enigma. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Karl Liebknecht

... that 55,000 Berlin workers went on strike on 28 June 1916 to protest the arrest and trial of anti-war campaigner Karl Liebknecht (pictured)?
... that Derrick Palmer and Chris Smalls, leaders of the Amazon Labor Union, were named two of the "100 most influential people in the world" in 2022?
... that the 1957 Mongolia earthquake produced the world's best-preserved surface rupture of any great earthquake?
... that Jean Holzworth obtained a PhD in Latin, then retrained as a veterinarian after one of her favorite cats died from a viral infection?
... that Wyndham Lewis abandoned work on a portrait of Edith Sitwell from 1923 to 1935 after he failed to pay the rent for his studio?
... that Erick Russell is the first openly gay African American elected to a statewide office in the United States?
... that Gastria in Cyprus is "not old", but is home to Bronze Age tombs and a medieval castle?
... that the robot Cozmo is said to have "felt like a real-life version of WALL·E"?

In the news

Anwar Ibrahim

Protests across China break out in response to the government's zero-COVID policy.
Anwar Ibrahim (pictured) of the Pakatan Harapan coalition becomes Prime Minister of Malaysia after the general election produces the nation's first hung parliament.
An earthquake centred near Cianjur in Indonesia's West Java kills at least 310 people and injures more than 2,000 others.
In Canadian football, the Toronto Argonauts defeat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Grey Cup.

On this day

November 27

Artist's impression of HD 209458 b

1095 – At the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade, declaring holy war against the Muslims who had occupied the Holy Land and were attacking the Eastern Roman Empire.
1703 – The great storm of 1703, one of the most severe storms to strike southern Great Britain, destroyed the first Eddystone Lighthouse off Plymouth.
1945 – A consortium of twenty-two U.S. charities founded CARE with the mission of delivering food aid to Europe in the aftermath of World War II.
2001 – Astronomers announced the detection of sodium in the atmosphere of the extrasolar planet HD 209458 b (artist's impression pictured), the first exoplanet atmosphere to be measured.

Increase Sumner (b. 1746)
Jean Albert Gaudry (d. 1908)
Gary Speed (d. 2011)

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Today's featured picture

La reine de Chypre (The Queen of Cyprus) is an 1841 grand opera in five acts composed by Fromental Halévy to a French-language libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges. The libretto was praised by Richard Wagner, who called it "noble, feeling and even new and elevating", although he was critical of Halévy's lapses towards what he called "unsophisticated orchestration". Although he felt the opera did not reach the level of the composer's La Juive, Wagner wrote "the Opéra may congratulate itself on the birth of this work, for it is decidedly the best that has appeared on its boards since Giacomo Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots". George Sand, who was also at the premiere, was less impressed, writing in a letter to Eugène Delacroix: "You did well, old friend, not to go to the Opera. It was boring to death in spite of the magnificence and pomp of the spectacle. I trust your truffles gave you more inspiration than La Reine de Chypre gave to M. Halévy." This illustration, executed in watercolour, gouache and pencil, depicts Charles-Antoine Cambon's set design for Act 5, Scene 2, of the opera's premiere.

Illustration credit: Charles-Antoine Cambon; restored by Adam Cuerden

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