POPnews - October 3rd

[Artist Kota Ezawa's take on the OJ Simpson Verdict is elegance
itself, whereas most people's reaction to the verdict has been
anything but elegant - my own very much included.]
1283 - Dafydd ap Gruffydd - prince of Gwynedd in Wales - became the first prominent person executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered, after being dragged through the streets of Shrewsbury on orders from England's King Edward I. His executioner, a man named Geoffrey, was paid 20 shillings (or £1) to carry out the arduous, gruesome task.

1739 - The Treaty of Nissa was signed by the Ottoman Empire and Russia at the end of the Russo-Turkish War.

1835 - The Staedtler Company was founded, in the German city of Nuremburg.

1849 - American author Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious in a gutter in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances - not that there's anything mysterious about finding someone drunk and unconscious in a gutter in Baltimore - just that in his case there was; it was the last time he would be seen in public before his death.

1863 - US President Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

1873 - Captain Jack and his companions were hanged for their part in the Modoc War.

1908 - The newspaper Pravda was founded in Vienna by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles, to be smuggled into Russia.

1918 - Bulgaria's Tsar Boris III acceded to the throne upon the abdication of his father Ferdinand I.

1929 - The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, or 'Land of the South Slavs'.

1932 - Iraq gained its independence from Great Britain.

1942 - A German V-2 rocket launched at Peenemünde became the first man-made object in space.

1951 - The Shot Heard 'Round the World - one of the greatest moments in the history of Major League Baseball - occurred when the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hit a game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning off of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, to win the National League pennant after being down 14 games.

1952 - It was announced in the United Kingdom that tea rationing would end after 12 years.

1955 - Captain Kangaroo, starring Bob Keeshan, debuted on CBS on the same day The Mickey Mouse Club debuted on ABC.

1957 - Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems was ruled not obscene, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, City Lights Bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti managed to convince Judge Clayton Horn of the work's 'redeeming social importance'.

1962 - As part of NASA's Project Mercury, Sigma 7 was launched from Cape Canaveral, with astronaut Wally Schirra aboard for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight around the world in space.

1964 - The first-ever Buffalo Wings were made, at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.

1990 - East and West Germany were reunited; the anniversary of the event is celebrated as German Unity Day.

1995 - O. J. Simpson was found not guilty of the brutal murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
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