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Look 44 from the collection

What a Merry-Go-Round is the eighteenth collection by British fashion designerAlexander McQueen, made for the Autumn/Winter 2001 season of his fashion houseeponymous fashion house. The collection drew on imagery of clowns and carnivals, inspired by McQueen's feelings about childhood and his experiences in the fashion industry. The designs were influenced bymilitary chic, cinema such asNosferatu (1922) andCabaret (1972), 1920sflapper fashion and theFrench Revolution. The palette comprised dark colours complemented with neutrals and muted greens. The collection'srunway show was staged in February 2001 in a dark room with acarousel at the centre, with 62 looks(one pictured) presented. It was McQueen's final show in London. Critical response to the collection was generally positive, and it has attracted some academic analysis for the theme and messaging. It served as a critique of the fashion industry, which McQueen sometimes described as toxic and suffocating. (Full article...)

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Sekijin (Important Cultural Property)

... that thestone men, horses,&c.(example pictured) of Japan'skofun may have been inspired by thespirit paths of China?
... that people traveled from as far away as Australia and the Netherlands to stay ata house in Ohio?
... that urbanists have usedhive cities from thescience-fiction universe ofWarhammer 40,000 as an example of howvertical cities could become dystopian?
... that thePhilippine embassy in Pretoria responded to a South African newspaper's denunciation ofhorse fighting in the Philippines by saying that the practice was already illegal?
... that artisan bakerJules Rabin was inspired to bake bread after a 1971 visit to a commune in France where "they didn't speak of bread as holy, but they treated it as a holy object"?
... thatTout est lumière, a setting byMaurice Ravel for soprano, choir and orchestra of a poem byVictor Hugo, earned Ravel a place in the second round of the 1901Prix de Rome?
... thatTommy Cronin played both basketball and football in high school, in college, and professionally?
... that the grave of a Dutch officer and his dog who were killed in theBattle of Nanggulon is a designated cultural object in Indonesia?
... thatCowboy Wheeler was a Reimer Wiener?

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South Korea'sConstitutional CourtremovesYoon Suk Yeol(pictured) as thepresident of South Korea, followinghis earlier declaration of martial law.
US presidentDonald Trump announcestrade tariffs on most countries.
Marine Le Pen, the runner-up inthe 2017 and2022 French presidential elections,is convicted of embezzlement and banned from standing in elections for five years.
A magnitude-7.7 earthquake leaves more than 4,900 people dead in Myanmar and Thailand.

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On this day

April 7:National Beer Day in the United States

Artist's conception of2001 Mars Odyssey

1655 – Aftera conclave lasting eighty days, theCollege of Cardinals elected Fabio Chigi asPope Alexander VII.
1945 –World War II: U.S. forces sank the Japanese battleshipYamato duringOperation Kikusui I in theEast China Sea.
1994 –Rwandan Civil War: TheRwandan genocide began a few hours afterthe assassination of PresidentJuvénal Habyarimana, with hundreds of thousands killed in the following 100 days.
1995 –First Chechen War: Russianparamilitary troops begana massacre of hundreds of civilians inSamashki, Chechnya.
2001 –NASA's2001 Mars Odyssey(artist's conception pictured), the longest-surviving continually active spacecraft in orbit around a planet other than Earth, launched fromCape Canaveral.

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National Assembly Building, Lusaka

There are 156 parliamentary constituencies in Zambia that each elect one member to theNational Assembly(building pictured), the country'sunicameral legislature. The assembly meets in the Zambian capital,Lusaka, and is presided over by thespeaker of the National Assembly and two deputy speakers. The National Assembly was established upon Zambia's independence in 1964 to succeed the Legislative Council of the British protectorate ofNorthern Rhodesia. Since 2016, it has 167 members, of which 156 are elected byfirst-past-the-post voting in single-memberconstituencies, a further eight are appointed by thepresident of Zambia, and three areex officio members. TheConstitution of Zambia mandates that the constituencies aredelimited after every census by theElectoral Commission of Zambia. (Full list...)

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Thebuff-tailed coronet (Boissonneaua flavescens) is a species ofhummingbird in the "brilliants", members of the tribeHeliantheini in the subfamilyLesbiinae. Found in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, the buff-tailed coronet is 11 to 12 centimetres (4.3 to 4.7 inches) long and weighs 7.3 to 8.8 grams (0.26 to 0.31 ounces). Both sexes have a short, straight, black bill and a small white spot behind the eye. Males of the nominate subspecies,B. f. flavescens, are mostly shining green, with a buff belly spotted with green. The buff-tailed coronet is highly territorial, though it may share feeding at a flowering tree with other hummingbirds. It typically forages in the mid-story but also feeds in the canopy. Breeding behavior has been recorded between November and March, and it has a song consisting of "a continuous series of single high-pitched 'tsit' notes". This buff-tailed coronet of the subspeciesB. f. flavescens was photographed in the Reserva Ecologica Rio Blanco, nearManizales, Colombia.

Photograph credit:Charles J. Sharp

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