POPnews - January 19th

[The last thing I recall was typing in the words 'Cooper's' and 'briefs', at which point my head started to swim... When I was finally revived by my assistant Pandora I recalled a story making the rounds in April 2007 that, while at the gym, silver fox Anderson Cooper was spied showering in his. Never before in the history of the Pop Culture Institute has such an egregiously spurious connection been made to justify the posting of a picture!]
1520 - Sten Sture the Younger, the Regent of Sweden under the Kalmar Union, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Bogesund; he died a couple of weeks later, on February 5th.

1607 - Manila's San Agustin Church was officially completed; it is currently the oldest church in the Philippines.

1795 - The Batavian Republic was proclaimed in the Holland, ending the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

1817 - An army of 5,423 soldiers, led by General José de San Martín, crossed the Andes from Argentina to liberate Chile and then Peru.

1853 - Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore made its debut at the Teatro Apollo in Rome.

1893 - Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder premiered in Berlin.

1917 - German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sent the Zimmermann Telegram to Mexico, proposing a German-Mexican alliance against the United States.

1935 - Cooper's sold their first-ever pair of men's briefs.

1937 - Howard Hughes set a new record for flying from Los Angeles to New York - 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds - in his H-1 Racer.

1953 - An estimated 68% of the televisions in the United States were tuned in to see Lucy give birth to Little Ricky on I Love Lucy.

1966 - Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India.

1969 - Student activist Jan Palach died, three days after setting himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968; Palach's funeral turned into another major protest.

1975 - State-owned and publicly funded radio station Triple J began broadcasting in Sydney, Australia.

1977 - US President Gerald Ford pardoned Iva Toguri-D'Aquino, one of about twenty women who during World War II broadcast as Tokyo Rose.

1981 - US and Iranian officials signed an agreement known as the Algiers Accords which brought about the end of the Iran Hostage Crisis with the release of 52 American hostages after 14 months of captivity. Iran decided to wait a day, though, so as to coincide the release with the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, who later let the credit for it be attributed to him even though, as the mere President-elect, he had no part in the negotiations, whereas President Jimmy Carter and his Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher definitely did.

1983 - The Apple Lisa, Apple Inc.'s first commercial personal computer to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, was announced.

2007 - Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated in front of his newspaper's office by 17-year-old Turkish ultra-nationalist Ogün Samast.
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