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Foxboro Stadium, host venue of MLS Cup 1999

MLS Cup 1999 was the fourth edition of the MLS Cup, the championship match of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-level soccer league of the United States. It took place on November 21, 1999, at Foxboro Stadium (pictured) in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and was contested by D.C. United and the Los Angeles Galaxy in a rematch of the inaugural 1996 final played at the same venue. Both teams finished atop their respective conferences during the regular season under new head coaches and advanced through the first two rounds of the playoffs. D.C. United won 2–0 with first-half goals from Jaime Moreno and Ben Olsen for their third MLS Cup victory in four years; Olsen was named the most valuable player of the match for his winning goal. The final was played in front of 44,910 spectators – a record for the MLS Cup – and drew 1.16 million viewers on its ABC television broadcast. It was also the first MLS match to be played with a standard game clock and without a tiebreaker shootout. (Full article...)

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In the news (For today)

Samantha Harvey

Samantha Harvey (pictured) wins the Booker Prize for her novel Orbital.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby announces his resignation as a result of the John Smyth abuse scandal in the Church of England.
In Zhuhai, China, 35 people are killed in a vehicle-ramming attack.
Alliance for Change, led by Navin Ramgoolam, wins the Mauritian general election.

In two days

November 21: Armed Forces Day in Bangladesh

Alan Freed

1894 – First Sino-Japanese War: After capturing the Chinese city of Port Arthur, the Japanese army began a massacre of the city's soldiers and civilians.
1959 – American disc jockey Alan Freed (pictured), who popularized the term rock and roll, was fired from WABC-AM for his role in the payola scandal.
1964 – The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn in New York City, opened to traffic as the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.
1974 – Bombs exploded in two pubs in central Birmingham, England, killing 21 people and leading to the imprisonment of six people who were later exonerated.
2009 – An explosion in a coal mine in Heilongjiang, China, killed 108 miners.

Voltaire (b. 1694)
Hetty Green (b. 1834)
Milka Planinc (b. 1924)
Catherine Bauer Wurster (d. 1964)

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Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature. In 1897, he founded and became the first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was multilingual, having taught himself French, English, German and Greek later in life. Machado's work shaped the realist movement in Brazil. He became known for his wit and his eye-opening critiques of society. Generally considered to be Machado's greatest works are Dom Casmurro (1899), Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, also translated as Epitaph of a Small Winner) and Quincas Borba (also known in English as Philosopher or Dog?). In 1893, he published "A Missa do Galo" ("Midnight Mass"), often considered to be the greatest short story in Brazilian literature. This photograph of Machado was taken by the Brazilian photographer Marc Ferrez in 1890.

Photograph credit: Marc Ferrez; restored by Adam Cuerden

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