"Its difficult to identify, and to the untrained eye it looks like the European pipits, until you see its shiny ebony black legs, " he said.

BBC: American Buff-Bellied Pipit

And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks black as ebony, the tops of the hatches, the battened companions, the heads of the covered winches, the foot of a mast.

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Slender, sheathed in black leather, with short ebony hair sticking up in a tuft, her fingers sticking out of black woollen gloves as they skitter across a keyboard, Mara cuts through scene after scene like a swift, dark blade.

NEWYORKER: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Named one of the country's top black preachers by Ebony magazine in 1993, he also regularly injects his views on the Bush administration into his discourse from the pulpit.

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