Leah LaBelle (September 8, 1986 – January 31, 2018) was an American
singer. Born in Toronto, Ontario, and raised in Seattle, Washington, she
began pursuing music as a career in her teens, which included performing
in the Total Experience Gospel Choir. LaBelle rose to prominence in 2004
as a contestant on the third season of American Idol, placing twelfth in
the season finals. Attending the Berklee College of Music for a year,
she dropped out to move to Los Angeles. Starting in 2007, LaBelle
recorded covers of R&B; and soul music for her YouTube channel. These
videos led to work as a backing vocalist starting in 2008 and a record
deal in 2011 with Epic in partnership with I Am Other and So So Def
Recordings. LaBelle released a sampler, three singles, and a posthumous
extended play (EP), and received the Soul Train Centric Award at the
2012 Soul Train Music Awards. In 2018, LaBelle and her boyfriend Rasual
Butler died in a car crash in Los Angeles.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_LaBelle>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1578:
Eighty Years' War: Spain won a crushing victory at the Battle
of Gembloux, threatening the States General of the Netherlands and
contributing to its move from Brussels to Antwerp.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gembloux_%281578%29>
1957:
A DC-7B operated by Douglas Aircraft collided in mid-air with a
U.S. Air Force F-89 and crashed into a schoolyard in Pacoima,
California.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_Pacoima_mid-air_collision>
1988:
Doug Williams became the first African-American quarterback to
play in a Super Bowl, leading the Washington Redskins to victory in
Super Bowl XXII.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Williams_%28quarterback%29>
2010:
James Cameron's Avatar became the first film to earn over
US$2 billion worldwide.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009_film%29>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
hover:
1. (transitive)
2. To keep (something, such as an aircraft) in a stationary state in the
air.
3. Of a bird: to shelter (chicks) under its body and wings; (by
extension) of a thing: to cover or surround (something).
4. (obsolete) Of a bird or insect: to flap (its wings) so it can remain
stationary in the air.
5. (intransitive)
6. To remain stationary or float in the air.
7. (figuratively)
8. To hang around or linger in a place, especially in an uncertain
manner.
9. To be indecisive or uncertain; to vacillate, to waver.
10. (computing) Chiefly followed by over: to use a mouse or other device
to place a cursor over something on a screen such as a hyperlink or icon
without clicking, so as to produce a result (such as the appearance of a
tooltip).
11. (nautical) To travel in a hovercraft as it moves above a water
surface.
12. An act, or the state, of remaining stationary in the air or some
other place.
13. A flock of birds fluttering in the air in one place.
14. (figuratively) An act, or the state, of being suspended; a
suspension.
15. (chiefly Southern England) A cover; a protection; a shelter;
specifically, an overhanging bank or stone under which fish can shelter;
also, a shelter for hens brooding their eggs.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hover>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I certainly do have this feeling of affection for the absolute
sense of intellectual freedom that exists as a live nerve, a live wire,
right through the center of American life. … Every time I get totally
discouraged with this country, I remind myself, "No, the fact is that
finally we can really say what we think, and some extraordinary things
have come out of that."
--Norman Mailer
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer>