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Alexander McQueen, fashion designer

The armadillo shoe is a high fashion platform shoe created by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen (pictured) for his final collection, Plato's Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010). Only 24 pairs exist: 21 were made during the initial production in 2009, and 3 were made in 2015 for a charity auction. The shoes are named for their unusual convex curved shape, which resembles an armadillo. Each pair is approximately 12 inches (30 cm) in height, with a 9-inch (23 cm) spike heel; this extreme height caused some models to refuse to walk in them. American pop star Lady Gaga famously wore the shoes in several public appearances, including the music video for her 2009 single "Bad Romance". They are often considered iconic in the Plato's Atlantis collection, McQueen's body of work, and fashion history in general. Criticism focused on the height of the heel, which has been viewed as impractical, even unsafe. Critics have called them both grotesque and beautiful, sometimes in the same review. (Full article...)

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Boykinia richardsonii

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In the news

Kaja Kallas

In the Estonian parliamentary election, the Reform Party, led by Kaja Kallas (pictured), wins the most seats in the Riigikogu.
Cyclone Freddy leaves at least 23 people dead in Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Bola Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress, is elected President of Nigeria.
A train crash in Thessaly, Greece, kills at least 57 people.
At least 67 migrants are killed in a shipwreck off the coast of Calabria, Italy.

On this day

March 7: Feast day of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism)

Artist's impression of the Kepler space telescope

1277 – Bishop Étienne Tempier promulgated a condemnation of 219 heretical propositions that were being discussed at the University of Paris.
1814 – War of the Sixth Coalition: Napoleon's army forced Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov's Russian troops to withdraw from the Chemin des Dames, but French casualties exceeded Russian losses.
1985 – The charity single "We Are the World" by the supergroup USA for Africa was released, and went on to sell more than 20 million copies.
2009 – The Kepler space telescope (depicted), designed to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, was launched.

Heraclianus (d. 413)
Harriet Jacobs (d. 1897)
Viv Richards (b. 1952)

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Today's featured picture

La Wally is an opera in four acts by composer Alfredo Catalani, to a libretto by Luigi Illica, first performed at La Scala, Milan, in 1892. The story is set in the Austrian Tyrol where the heroine Wally is in love with Giuseppe Hagenbach. However, her father, Stromminger, wants her to marry Vincenzo Gellner. The opera concludes with Hagenbach and Wally pledging their love for each other, but being killed by an avalanche. La Wally was Catalani's last opera. This 1892 illustration by Adolfo Hohenstein depicts the Act I costume design for the title character Wally.

Painting credit: Adolfo Hohenstein; restored by Adam Cuerden

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