Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an
American author best known for her works of speculative fiction. She
wrote more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in
addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's
books. She achieved critical and commercial success with A Wizard of
Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). Le Guin was
influenced by cultural anthropology, Taoism, feminism, and the writings
of Carl Jung. Many of her stories used anthropologists or cultural
observers as protagonists. Several works reflect Taoist ideas about
balance and equilibrium. Le Guin often subverted typical speculative
fiction tropes, such as through her use of dark-skinned protagonists in
the Earthsea fantasy series. She won eight Hugo Awards, six Nebulas, and
twenty-two Locus Awards, and in 2003 became only the second woman
honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1867:
The first and second of three treaties were signed near
Medicine Lodge, Kansas, between the United States and several Native
American tribes in the Great Plains, requiring them to relocate to areas
in present-day western Oklahoma.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Lodge_Treaty>
1959:
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by American
architect Frank Lloyd Wright, opened in New York City.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_R._Guggenheim_Museum>
1969:
Siad Barre led Supreme Revolutionary Council forces in a
military coup and established the Somali Democratic Republic.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Democratic_Republic>
1983:
At the 17th General Conference on Weights and Measures, the
length of a metre was redefined as the distance that light travels in
vacuum in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
smell you later:
(humorous, informal) See you later; goodbye.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell_you_later>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!
But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience
gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind
us!
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge>
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