Monday, January 31, 2011

POPnews - January 31st

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[As seen from the air the island nation of Nauru doesn't look like much - and it isn't; still, the once-rich island, famed for its phosphate, remains a tropical paradise, and despite rudimentary health care and reticent locals it's still a better bet to visit than a lot of places I could name, but won't.]

314 CE - The papal reign of Sylvester I began; he succeeded Pope Miltiades, who'd died on January 10th.

1606 - Guy Fawkes was executed for his role in the Gunpowder Plot.

1746 - The first clinic specializing in the treatment of venereal disease was opened at London Lock Hospital.

1814 - Gervasio Antonio de Posadas became Supreme Director of Argentina.

1846 - Following the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown on the east bank of the Milwaukee River and Kilbourntown on the west were united as Milwaukee.

1919 - The Battle of George Square occurred in Glasgow between the Scottish TUC and Clyde Workers' Committee and City of Glasgow Police over the forty-hour work week; despite many injuries (some to women and children) no fatalities were reported, and afterwards workers were granted a 47-hour work week.

1929 - The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky to Alma Ata (now in Kazakhstan); he would be expelled to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and his son Lev Sedov.

1930 - 3M began marketing Scotch tape.

1936 - The Green Hornet debuted on the NBC Blue radio network.

1958 - The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit made the first space age discovery when Explorer 1 was used by James Van Allen to discover the Van Allen radiation belt.

1961 - Ham the Chimp traveled into outer space on board the Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket as part of NASA's Project Mercury.

1966 - The Soviet Union launched its unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.

1968 - Nauru declared its independence from Australia.

1969 - The body of nursing student Gail Miller was discovered by Larry Fisher; she had been raped then brutally murdered before being dumped in a Saskatoon alley. Arrested for the crime was a lodger of Fisher's, 17-year-old David Milgaard, who was convicted one year later to the day. Milgaard served 23 years in jail before his release in 1992; in 1997 he was exonerated by DNA evidence, and Fisher himself was convicted of the crime after more than 30 years.

1971 - Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off aboard a Saturn V rocket as part of the Apollo 14 Mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

2001 - In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicted one Libyan and acquitted another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which caused a December 1988 crash at Lockerbie, Scotland.

2003 - The Waterfall rail accident occurred near the Australian town of Waterfall, New South Wales.

2007 - Under the aegis of Operation Gamble, eight suspects (including mastermind Parviz Khan) were arrested in Birmingham, accused of plotting the kidnap, holding, and eventual beheading of a serving Muslim British soldier in Iraq. Khan would eventually be sentenced to life in prison for his role in the plot.

2009 - At least 113 people were killed and over 200 injured in Kenya following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.
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2 comments:

michael sean morris said...

As long as you're not a spammer, that's great! (If you are a spammer, though, I believe you should be publicly horse-whipped...)

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