• 1930s Federal Theatre Project director Hallie Flanagan considered Seattle's Playhouse Theatre to be the project's best "Negro unit"?

Facts on topics related to Negro

African American

• African American economist Abram Lincoln Harris was a four-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in economics?
• African American actor Lorenzo Tucker, the star of the 1932 race film Veiled Aristocrats, was dubbed the "black Valentino" because of his striking good looks?
• African American artist James W. Washington, Jr. first gained visibility in 1938 working with the WPA in his native Mississippi, but was later associated with the Northwest School?
• African American civil rights activist Mel Boozer was the first openly gay person nominated for the office of Vice President of the United States?
• African American singer Cora Green performed the Yiddish tune Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen in the 1938 race film Swing!?
• black Baptist minister and former slave R. H. Boyd had so much success in religious publishing that it caused a split in his denomination?
• center George Gregory led the Columbia Lions in 1930–31 to its first title in what was to become the Ivy League, and was later named as the first African American All-American basketball player?
• Louisiana Judge Kernan "Skip" Hand was overruled in 2008 by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the exclusion of two blacks as jurors in a high-profile murder case?
• Rear Admiral Evelyn J. Fields is the first woman and first African American to be the director of the Office of NOAA Corps Operations and the NOAA Commissioned Corps?
• 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, site of the 1963 church bombing, was designed in 1911 by noted African American architect Wallace Rayfield?

French language

• Alabama lawyer and Republican Party pioneer John Grenier of Birmingham was self-taught in four foreign languages: French, Spanish, German, and modern Greek?
• Soviet literature declared Russian the "world language of internationalism", denouncing French as the "language of fancy courtiers" and English as the "jargon of traders"?
• "Comme Ci, Comme Ça" was performed in French at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007, despite being the Cypriot entry?
• Allen Bares, a former member of the Louisiana State Legislature, was awarded the Medal of Merit by France for promotion of the French language?
• Avenue Charles de Gaulle in N'Djamena is a rare street in Chad to have retained its French name despite President François Tombalbaye's Authenticité Africanization program?
• charcuterie, derived from the French words for flesh (chair) and cooked (cuit), is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products primarily sourced from pork?
• HMS Fifi, a German warship captured and added to the Royal Navy during the First World War, was named to mean 'tweet-tweet' in French?
• Joe M. Rodgers, who spent six hours a day for four months learning French after being named U.S. Ambassador to France, later became CEO of language school operator Berlitz International?
• Merten de Keyser printed the first complete French and English Bibles in Antwerp?
• Reinald, a 13th century Cistercian monk and Bishop of Ross, was nicknamed Macer, French for "skinny"?

Portugal

• 18th century Franco-Portuguese industrialist Jácome Ratton (pictured) left a vivid account of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in his memoirs and was exiled to the Azores during the Napoleonic Wars?
• Angola gained its independence from Portugal through the Alvor Agreement?
• Eça de Queirós, one of the greatest writers in the Portuguese language, was born in Praça do Almada, the civic center of Póvoa de Varzim in Portugal?
• Italian explorer Rafael Perestrello, a cousin of Christopher Columbus, sailed on behalf of Portugal and established trading relationships for that country with the Ming Dynasty in China in 1516?
• Portugal was taken to court over its failure to implement EU directives regarding its water supply and sanitation systems?
• Portuguese Josefa de Óbidos was one of the few women dedicated to painting (pictured: still life by her) in the Baroque era?
• Portuguese architect Mateus Fernandes is best known for his Manueline-style work at the Monastery of Batalha?
• Portuguese soldier and explorer Francisco Barreto led an expedition to Monomotapa in search of legendary gold mines, but died along the way from tropical diseases, as did many of his men?
• Ulysses S. Grant awarded Bolama to Portugal, who made it the first capital of Portuguese Guinea?
• Arthur Raikes was a British army officer but received honours from Zanzibar, Austria and Portugal?

German language

• Alabama lawyer and Republican Party pioneer John Grenier of Birmingham was self-taught in four foreign languages: French, Spanish, German, and modern Greek?
• MEP Ryszard Czarnecki thought fellow Polish MEP Róża Gräfin von Thun und Hohenstein might harm the Civic Platform in the 2009 elections because of her German-sounding name?
• Leo Tolstoy's play The Living Corpse played in New York City in both Yiddish (1911) and German (1916) before it was ever presented there in English (1918)?
• Mark Twain wrote the essay "The Awful German Language" to express his frustrations when learning German?
• Russian historian and scientist Vladimir N. Beneshevich was arrested on charges of spying for Germany and executed because one of his books was translated into German in 1937?
• Eilhart von Oberge's German poem Tristrant, dating to the late 12th century, is the earliest complete version of the Tristan and Iseult legend in any language?
• Quirinus Kuhlmann, a German poet who called himself "son of the Son of God", was denounced as theologically and politically dangerous, and burnt at the stake for heresy in Moscow in 1689?
• Sabine Ehrenfeld, the Overstock.com spokesmodel, is fluent in German, French, English, and Italian and that she is an experienced pilot and equestrian?
• although Kristijonas Donelaitis wrote the poem The Seasons in Lithuanian, it was first published in its German translation in 1818?
• as a Seattle School Board member during World War I, German-born Nathan Eckstein bowed to pressure to drop German language classes in Seattle Public Schools?

Portuguese language

• Hindi, Bengali, and Portuguese have all recently been proposed as official languages of the United Nations?
• President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently launched TV Brasil Internacional, a Portuguese language television station aimed at 49 African nations?
• radio station KLBS broadcasts a Portuguese-language world music format to California's San Joaquin Valley?
• Quốc ngữ, the Vietnamese alphabet in general use today, was established by the 1651 trilingual Latin-Portuguese-Vietnamese dictionary Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum?
• the earliest Portuguese description of Malaysia, Tomé Pires's Suma Oriental, lay unpublished and presumed lost in an archive until 1944?

English language

• 16 of the 72 fiction authors with at least 100 million copies of their works in print did not write in English, and 16 of the 72 are women?
• 92% of students at West London's Villiers High School do not speak English as their first language?
• Andrew Carnegie (pictured) founded the Simplified Spelling Board in 1906, with the aim of making English the world language by addressing its difficult spelling?
• botanist Henry Lyte's Niewe Herball of 1578 was an English translation of the 1564 Cruydeboeck of Rembert Dodoens printed in Antwerp with the woodcuts of the original edition?
• children's book publisher Kane/Miller published the English language edition of Everyone Poops?
• Chilean Canadian writer Carmen Rodriguez publishes much of her work in both English and Spanish, and that she herself is responsible for their translation?
• Dutch linguist Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk published a Batak-Dutch dictionary to enable him to translate the Bible into Batak in 1861, and his posthumous trilingual Kawi-Balinese-Dutch dictionary was republished in English in 1971?
• Dutch rocker Wally Tax learned English by age 11 by working as a pimp for American sailors in the Port of Amsterdam?
• Edyta Górniak sang part of "To Nie Ja" in English at the dress rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest 1994, which almost caused the song to be disqualified?
• English once had a four-form yes and no system, employed by Shakespeare and others, instead of the two-form system that it has today?

Italy

• 19th century Polish general Ludwik Mierosławski led revolutionaries in Poland, Germany and Italy?
• Bulgarian–Italian Futurist painter Nikolay Diulgheroff, an honorary citizen of Turin, studied at the original Bauhaus in Weimar?
• canoe racer Josefa Idem, a 1984 Olympic bronze medalist for West Germany, later took an Italian citizenship and became the first female Olympic medalist in canoeing for her new country?
• chief justice Frederick Richard Jordan once decided that the government of New South Wales had "no business" refusing a water irrigation licence just because the applicant was Italian?
• Christmas is traditionally celebrated in Agnone, Italy, with a torchlight parade known as Ndocciata? (2006 event pictured)
• Galileo's father Vincenzo Galilei was a noted Italian lutenist?
• Giorgio Francia of Italy became the first non-German to win the German Formula Three Championship, by winning the title in the year 1974?
• Italian aerodynamicist Antonio Ferri took to the hills in 1943 with a trunk load of scientific documents to turn over to the Allies?
• Italian aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio developed a record-setting early helicopter in 1930 and designed the original Vespa motor scooter in 1946?
• Italian film director Marco Ferreri hired actor Michel Piccoli almost immediately after the two first met for his art house masterpiece Dillinger Is Dead?