Mariah Carey is an American singer, record producer and entrepreneur. Referred to as the "Songbird Supreme" by the Guinness World Records, she is noted for her five-octave vocal range, melismatic singing style, signature use of the whistle register, songwriting prowess, she rose to fame in 1990 after signing to Columbia Records and releasing her eponymous debut album, which topped the U. S. Billboard 200 for eleven consecutive weeks. Soon after, Carey became the only artist to have their first five singles reach number one on the U. S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, from "Vision of Love" to "Emotions". Carey achieved worldwide success with follow-up R&B and pop albums Music Box, Merry Christmas, Daydream; these albums spawned some of Carey's most successful singles, including "Hero", "Without You", "All I Want for Christmas Is You", "Fantasy", "Always Be My Baby", as well as "One Sweet Day", which became Billboard's Song Of The Decade. After separating from Mottola, Carey adopted a new image and incorporated more elements of hip hop into her music with the release of Butterfly.

Billboard named her the country's most successful artist of the 1990s, while the World Music Awards honored her as the world's best-selling recording artist of the 1990s, the best-selling female artist of the millennium. After eleven consecutive years charting a U. S. number-one single, Carey parted ways with Columbia in 2000 and signed a $100 million recording contract with Virgin Records. However, following her publicized physical and emotional breakdown, as well as the critical and commercial failure of her film Glitter and its accompanying soundtrack, her contract was bought out for $50 million by Virgin and she signed with Island Records the next year. After a unsuccessful period, she returned to the top of music charts with The Emancipation of Mimi, which became the best-selling album of 2005 in the U. S, its second single, "We Belong Together", was the number one song of 2005 in the U. S. and was declared Billboard's Song of the Decade. In 2009, she was cast in the critically acclaimed film Precious, which won her Breakthrough Actress Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Throughout her career, Carey has sold more than 200 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. With a total of 19 songs topping the Billboard Hot 100, Carey holds the record for the most number-one singles by a solo artist, a female songwriter, a female producer. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, she is the second-best-selling female artist in the United States, with 66.5 million certified albums. In 2012, she was ranked second on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music. Aside from her commercial accomplishments, Carey has won five Grammy Awards, nineteen World Music Awards, ten American Music Awards, fifteen Billboard Music Awards, she has been credited with inspiring a generation of singers, is hailed as being one of the pioneers of pop and contemporary R&B music. Mariah Carey was born in New York, her father, Alfred Roy Carey, was of African American and Afro-Venezuelan descent, while her mother, Patricia, is of Irish American descent.

According to Mariah, her maternal grandparents were "from Ireland". The last name Carey was adopted by her Venezuelan grandfather, Francisco Núñez, after he came to New York. Patricia was an occasional opera singer and vocal coach before she met Alfred in 1960; as he began earning a living as an aeronautical engineer, the couple wed that year, moved into a small suburb in New York. After their elopement, Patricia's family disowned her for marrying a black man. Carey explained that growing up, she felt neglected by her maternal family, which affected her. During the years between the births of Carey's older sister Alison and herself, the Carey family struggled within the community due to their ethnicity. Carey's name was derived from the song "They Call the Wind Maria" from the 1951 Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon; when Carey was three, her parents divorced. After their separation, Alison moved in with her father, while the other two children and brother Morgan, remained with their mother. Carey grew apart from her father and stopped seeing him altogether.

By the age of four, Carey recalled that she had begun to sneak the radio under her covers at night, just sing and try to find peace within the music. During elementary school, she excelled in subjects that she enjoyed, such as music and literature, but did not find interest in others. After several years of financial struggles, Patricia earned enough money to move her family into a stable and more affluent area of New York. Carey had begun writing poems and adding melodies to them, thus starting as a singer-songwriter while attending Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, where she graduated in 1987. Carey excelled in her music, demonstrated usage of the whistle register, though only beginning to master and control it through her training with her mother. Though introducing her daughter to classical opera, Patricia never pressured her to pursue a career in it, as she never seemed interested. Carey recalled that she kept her singer-songwriter works a secret and noted that Patricia had "never been a pushy mom.

She never said,'Give it more of an operatic feel.' I respect opera like crazy, but it didn't influence me."While in high school, Carey began writing songs with Gavin Christopher. They needed an assistant who could play the keyboard: "We called someone and he couldn't come, so by accident we stumbled upon Ben. Ben came to the studio, he couldn't pla

The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association was an organization devoted to women's suffrage in Minnesota. From 1881 to 1920, the organization struggled to secure women's right to vote, its members organized marches, wrote petitions and letters, gathered signatures, gave speeches, published pamphlets and broadsheets to force the Minnesota Legislature to recognize their right to vote. Due to their efforts, the legislature approved the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. In the 1870s, many women across Minnesota organized local women's suffrage groups. In 1875, the Minnesota legislature recognized. However, many women wanted to vote in all elections. Seeing the need for a statewide agency, fourteen women formed the MWSA in Hastings in 1881; the Minnesota chapter was affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Among the founders of the MWSA were Harriet Bishop and Sarah Burger Stearns. Stearns became the organization's first president. By 1882, the MWSA had grown to two hundred members. In 1885, MWSA-president Martha Ripley convinced NAWSA to hold their annual meeting in Minnesota.

This national event demonstrated the importance of the Minnesota chapter to the larger organization. It drew the attention of Minnesota's male lawmakers. In 1893, the MWSA convinced the Minnesota Senate to take up women's suffrage. President Julia Bullard Nelson worked with a Populist state senator; the Populists supported a women's suffrage plank. Nelson herself was a Populist school superintendent candidate in 1894. Nelson and Donnelly sought the vote for women in municipal elections. However, the Senate went further, its members voted to remove the word "male" from the state's voting requirements. The bill passed thirty-two to nineteen. However, this change did not pass the House; that chamber did not have time to take it up before the legislative session ended. If it had passed the House, the voters of Minnesota would have had to approve it before it became law. After the failure of the 1893 amendment, the movement continued. However, the MWSA was unable to build on its earlier success; the MWSA and its ally, the Political Equality Club, placed women's suffrage before the state legislature every session.

Each time, the bill either was defeated. During the 1910s, the movement picked up momentum again. In 1914, Clara Ueland - who would become the MWSA's president in 1915 - organized a parade through Minneapolis of over 2000 suffrage supporters; this event gave the movement renewed attention. During this period, the MWSA had to contend with a rival organization, a Minnesota branch of the National Woman's Party; the NWP was more radical than the MWSA. It was much more to take direct action, such as hunger strikes, than the MWSA. Despite these differences in opinion, the two organizations worked together. By 1919, 30,000 women across the state belonged to local suffrage associations, they joined the MWSA, the NWP, other organizations. Their numbers and continued activities convinced lawmakers to act. In 1919, the Minnesota legislature recognized; the same year, the legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. However, the amendment did not take effect until 1920, when it was ratified by two-thirds the required of the states.

With their right to vote secured, the MWSA became the Minnesota League of Women Voters, selecting Clara Ueland as their first president. The League is still active in Minnesota politics today, publishing a voting guide to inform voters on candidate positions on issues affecting women. A memorial to the achievements of the MWSA stands on the lawn of the Minnesota State Capitol and is known as the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial. M508, The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association Records. Woman Suffrage in Minnesota: A Record of the Activities in its Behalf since 1847. Minneapolis: Inland Press, 1916. Lief, Julia Wiech. "A Woman of Purpose: Julia B. Nelson." Minnesota History 47, no. 4: 302-314. Stuhler, Barbara. "Organizing for the Vote: Leaders of Minnesota's Woman Suffrage Movement," Minnesota History 54, no. 3:290-303. Ziebarth, Marilyn. "MHS Collections: Woman's Rights Movements." Minnesota History 42, no. 2: 225-230. "The Minnesota Legislature: A day of debate: The woman suffragists capture the senate".

The Minneapolis Tribune. March 16, 1893. P. 7 – via Newspapers.com. "The Minnesota Legislature: Women won: The suffrage bill passes the Senate easily". The Minnesota Tribune. March 22, 1893. P. 2 – via Newspapers.com. "A killing: Closing hours of the bill passing session of the legislature: Woman suffrage and anti-pool room bills go down to death together". The Minneapolis Tribune. April 18, 1893. P. 1 – via Newspapers.com. "Men urge citizens to join suffrage parade". The Minneapolis Tribune. May 1, 1914. P. 7 – via Newspapers.com. "Women to March in Silence for Suffrage". The Minneapolis Tribune, May 2, 1914. P. 1 and p. 8 - via Newspapers.com "Paraders Place Equal Suffrage on a New Plane". The Minneapolis Tribune, May 3, 1914. P. 1 and p. 3 - via Newspapers.com "Suffrage parade an impressive spectacle". The Minneapolis Sunday Tribune. May 3, 1914. P. 17 – via Newspapers.com. This article incorporates text from MNopedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Severe Tropical Storm Domoina in 1984 caused 100 year floods in South Africa and record rainfall in Swaziland. The fourth named storm of the season, Domoina developed on January 16 off the northeast coast of Madagascar. With a ridge to the north, the storm tracked westward and southwestward. On January 21, Domoina struck the third storm in six weeks to affect the nation. After crossing the country, Domoina strengthened in the Mozambique Channel to peak 10 minute sustained winds of 95 km/h. On January 28, the storm made landfall in southern Mozambique, weakened over land. Domoina crossed into Swaziland and eastern South Africa before dissipating on February 2. In Mozambique, Domoina dropped heavy rainfall in the capital Maputo that accounted for 40% of the annual total. Floods in the country destroyed over 50 small dams and left widespread crop damage just before the summer harvest; the rains caused the worst flooding in over 20 years in Swaziland, which damaged or destroyed more than 100 bridges.

Disrupted transport left. In South Africa, rainfall peaked at 950 mm, which flooded 29 river basins, notably the Pongola River which altered its course after the storm. Flooding caused the Pongolapoort Dam to reach 87% of its capacity. Throughout the region, Domoina caused widespread flooding that damaged houses and crops, leaving about $199 million in damage. There were 242 deaths in southeastern Africa. In January and February 1984, conditions were favorable for tropical cyclogenesis in the southwest Indian Ocean, including warmer than normal sea surface temperatures and an active monsoon trough. On January 16, a spiral area of convection persisted off the northeast coast of Madagascar, associated with the intertropical convergence zone; that day, it organized enough to warrant a satellite-based Dvorak rating of T2.5, prompting the Réunion Meteorological Service to name it Domoina. Around that time, Météo-France estimated winds of about 65 km/h. Domoina tracked to the west-northwest, passing near Tromelin Island on January 18.

Around that time, the storm had begun moving to the southwest, MFR estimated that it weakened to tropical depression status. On January 19, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center began warning on Domoina, designating it Tropical Cyclone 14S; the same day, MFR again upgraded Domoina into a moderate tropical storm. On January 21, the storm made landfall just south of Tamatave in southeastern Madagascar. While crossing Madagascar on a westward trajectory, Domonia weakened. On January 23, the storm emerged into the Mozambique Channel near Belo, due to a ridge to the north, it resumed its southwest motion. Domoina executed two small loops off the western coast of Madagascar while progressing southwestward. On January 25, MFR estimated that Domonia attained peak 10 minute sustained winds of 95 km/h near Europa Island. Two days the JTWC estimated peak 10 minute winds of 100 km/h. Early on January 28, Domonia made a second landfall on southeastern Mozambique near peak intensity, it weakened over land while moving across southern Mozambique.

The JTWC discontinued advisories on January 29 when the storm was near the border of Mozambique and Swaziland. The next day, Domonia crossed into Swaziland and subsequently into eastern South Africa, weakening into a tropical depression while passing near Durban. At around that time, the system was dissipating, although MFR continued tracking Domonia until February 2, when it dissipated just offshore the east coast of South Africa. Throughout its path, Domoina left thousands of people homeless, caused widespread flooding due to drawing moisture from the Indian Ocean and the Mozambique channel; the rains led to rivers bursting their banks. In the months before Domoina struck, dry conditions persisted across southeastern Africa. Crossing Madagascar as a moderate tropical storm, Domoina dropped rainfall along its path, reaching 98.8 mm in Mahanoro on the east coast and 166.8 mm in Maintirano along the west coast, both over a period of 24 hours. In the latter city, a station recorded winds of 100 km/h.

The storm caused heavy damage in Marovoay, affected by Cyclone Kamisy. Domoina was the third storm to strike the country in a six-week period, after cyclones Andry and Caboto; the three storms collectively caused 42 deaths and $25 million in damage, much of it from crop damage. As Domoina made its final landfall in Mozambique, it dropped heavy rainfall reaching 430 mm in the town of Goba over a five-day period. Rainfall in the capital Maputo, reaching 300 mm over two days, was about 40% of the annual total. After flooding occurred further south in South Africa, waters were released from the Pongolapoort Dam without warning; this caused many farmers to drown in southern Mozambique. Officials advised residents along the Maputo River to evacuate to higher grounds, thousands had to leave their houses; the storm flooded the Maputo, Incomati river basins, causing widespread power outages. The storm left the capital Maputo without clean water for several days after a pumping station was damaged, the main harbor in the city was closed.

In the city, the storm downed hundreds of trees, wrecked roofs, damaged houses.