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Addie Viola Smith (1893–1975) was an American attorney who served as the U.S. trade commissioner to Shanghai from 1928 to 1939, the first female Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Foreign Service to work under the Commerce Department, and the first woman to serve as trade commissioner. A native of Stockton, California, Smith moved to Washington, D.C., in 1917. While working for the United States Department of Labor, she attended the Washington College of Law part-time, earning a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1920. She joined the Foreign Service in October that year. Posted to Beijing as a clerk, she was promoted to assistant trade commissioner in Shanghai in 1922, and to trade commissioner in 1928. She later held roles in the U.S. government, world organizations, and the United Nations. Smith met her life partner, Eleanor Mary Hinder, in 1926; they moved to Hinder's native Australia in 1957, where stone seats are dedicated to them at the E. G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Patrick Hessian

... that Patrick J. Hessian (pictured), the 16th Chief of Chaplains of the United States Army, earned the Soldier's Medal for disarming a suicidal soldier who was holding a live grenade with the pin pulled?
... that Rolling Stone listed Ácido Argentino as the most essential album of Argentine heavy metal?
... that people of the Zenú culture built canals in the La Mojana wetland area of Colombia long before Spanish arrival?
... that Kaylee Bryson was the first female driver to advance to the A-Main feature race at the Chili Bowl Nationals?
... that the Villa of Augustus was found buried beneath another villa?
... that every summer, the Suiattle River dirties the Sauk with glacial debris?
... that architect Donald MacKay designed a fire station which later burnt down in the Great Seattle Fire?
... that according to legend, after one of the Earl de Grey's parrots was killed, the other never spoke again?

In the news

Alberto Fujimori in 1991

At least 37 people are killed and more than 3,400 others injured after electronic devices used by Hezbollah members explode in Lebanon and Syria.
Severe flooding in central Europe leaves at least 25 people dead and 11 others missing, with several towns submerged.
Amid widespread protests, Mexico ratifies constitutional changes that will see the federal judiciary chosen by popular vote.
Former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori (pictured) dies at the age of 86.

On this day

September 20

Great Buddha of Kamakura

1498 – A tsunami caused by the Meiō earthquake washed away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha (pictured) at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Japan; the statue has since stood in the open air.
1792 – The French Army achieved its first major victory of the War of the First Coalition at the Battle of Valmy.
1967 – L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, announced the story of Xenu in a taped lecture sent to all Scientologists.
1997 – Hurricane Erika, the strongest and longest-lasting hurricane of the 1997 Atlantic hurricane season, dissipated after causing flooding and power outages throughout Puerto Rico.

Susanna Rubinstein (b. 1847)
Edith Rogers (b. 1894)
Davidson Nicol (d. 1994)
Victor Henry Anderson (d. 2001)

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From today's featured list

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch

American actor Gregory Peck had an extensive career in film, television, radio, and on stage. His breakthrough role was as a Catholic priest who attempts to start a mission in China in the 1944 film The Keys of the Kingdom, for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In the late 1940s, Peck received three more Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, for his roles as a caring father in The Yearling (1946), a journalist who pretends to be Jewish to write an exposé on American antisemitism in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and a brave airman in Twelve O'Clock High (1949). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Atticus Finch (pictured), a lawyer attempting to exonerate a black man wrongly accused of rape, in the courtroom drama To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). The role topped the AFI's 50 Greatest Screen Heroes. Peck made his television debut in 1982 by appearing as President Abraham Lincoln in the miniseries The Blue and the Gray. (Full list...)

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Today's featured picture

Holothuria fuscogilva, also known as the white teatfish, is a species of sea cucumber in the family Holothuriidae. It is found in the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific in shallow waters near islands and around coral reefs. Juveniles live in shallower waters (such as inter-tidal zones) and then migrate to deeper waters as they mature. Adults of this species weigh between 2.4 and 4 kilograms (5.3 and 8.8 pounds) and are elliptical in shape with a firm texture. They feature lateral papillae (teats), which are often buried in the sand. The species is consumed as food and is vulnerable to over-exploitation from commercial fishing. This H. fuscogilva sea cucumber was photographed in Ras Muhammad National Park off the Red Sea coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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