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From today's featured article

Fingerspelling of BASL

Black American Sign Language (BASL) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf Black Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced by the segregation of schools in the American South based on race, creating a language community among Black deaf signers at black schools. As of the mid-2010s, BASL is used by signers in the South despite public schools having been desegregated since 1954. BASL differs from other varieties of ASL in its phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. BASL tends to have a larger signing space, and some signs are produced further away from the body than in other dialects. Signers of BASL also tend to prefer two-handed variants of signs, and some signs differ from other dialects because they borrow from African-American English. Younger signers are more likely to have a positive perception of the dialect, as they are less likely to be influenced by perceptions that segregated schools imprinted upon the dialects. (Full article...)

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Abra aequalis shell held on a finger

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... that the black-rumped magpie was made a full species in 2018?
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... that the mating display of Servaea incana includes a "zigzag dance" in which a male moves in ever-narrowing arcs towards a female?

In the news

António José Seguro

Shootings at a residence and a school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, leave nine people dead.
António José Seguro (pictured) is elected president of Portugal.
In American football, the Seattle Seahawks defeat the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl.
In the Thai general election, the Bhumjaithai Party, led by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, wins the most seats in the House of Representatives.

On this day

February 12: Lincoln's Birthday in some parts of the United States; Red Hand Day

Depiction of the Café Terminus attack

1894 – Ère des attentats: In one of the first acts of modern terrorism, Émile Henry threw a bomb into Café Terminus (depicted) in Paris, France, killing one person and injuring 17 more.
1935 – USS Macon, one of the largest helium-filled airships ever created, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
1993 – Two-year-old James Bulger was led away from New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, England, and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, who became the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history.
2001 – The NASA space probe NEAR Shoemaker touched down on Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
2016 – In the first meeting between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow signed the Havana Declaration at José Martí International Airport in Cuba.

Wulfhelm (d. 941)
Pari Khan Khanum (d. 1578)
Mary Young Pickersgill (b. 1776)
Jean Eyeghé Ndong (b. 1946)

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Today's featured picture

Francis II (12 February 1768 – 2 March 1835) was the last Holy Roman Emperor from 1792 to 1806, and the first Emperor of Austria as Francis I from 1804 to 1835. He was also King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, and served as the first president of the German Confederation following its establishment in 1815. Francis was born in Florence as the eldest son of future Emperor Leopold II and Maria Luisa of Spain. Leopold became Holy Roman Emperor in 1790 but died two years later, and Francis succeeded him. The Holy Roman Empire immediately became embroiled in the French Revolutionary Wars, the first of which ended in Austrian defeat and the loss of the left bank of the Rhine to France. In 1806, after Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, Francis abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor, which in effect marked the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1813, Francis turned against Napoleon and finally defeated him in the War of the Sixth Coalition, forcing him to abdicate. Francis died in 1835 at the age of 67 and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand I. This oil portrait on canvas, painted in 1815 by Joseph Kreutzinger, depicts Francis wearing Austrian military uniform with the insignia of various orders. The painting hangs in the Neue Galerie of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria.

Painting credit: Joseph Kreutzinger

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