Friday, November 19, 2010

POPnews - November 19th

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[Even for mid-century ad copy - which could blow smoke with the best of them, even when not shilling for Big Tobacco - any and all of the enthusiasm for the Ford Edsel is here entirely a product of the copywriter's fevered imagination; then again, having devoured the First Season of Mad Men in its entirety I can almost understand what pressures drove them to lie their faces off like this.]

1095 - The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land, opened.

1493 - Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive at an island he named San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico), which he'd sighted the day before.

1816 - Warsaw University was established.

1850 - Upon the refusal of the position by Samuel Russell Alfred Lord Tennyson replaced William Wordsworth as England's poet laureate, apparently; it was a position he would hold until his death in October 1892.

1863 - US President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony of a military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

1941 - Following a battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran, the two ships sank each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.

1942 - Soviet forces under General Georgy Zhukov launched a series of counterattacks dubbed Operation Uranus during the Battle of Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.

1943 - The Nazis liquidated Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.

1954 - Sammy Davis, Jr., lost his left eye in an automobile accident in San Bernardino, California; in exchange for his recovery he converted to Judaism.

1955 - National Review began spewing its filth and lies, ably assisted by William F. Buckley, Jr., an old filth and lies spewer from way back.

1959 - The Ford Motor Company announced it was discontinuing its unpopular Edsel.

1961 - Michael Rockefeller, son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

1967 - TVB, Hong Kong's first wireless commercial television station, was established.

1969 - Soccer player Pelé scored his 1,000th career goal; unable to watch this singular event were Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, who on the same day landed at Oceanus Procellarum (aka the 'Ocean of Storms') making them the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

1976 - Jaime Ornelas Camacho took office as the first President of the Regional Government of Madeira in Portugal.

1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he met President Ephraim Katzir and Prime Minister Menachem Begin before addressing the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.

1990 - Pop group Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on their album Girl You Know It’s True, the vocals having been supplied in their entirety by session musicians.

1994 - The first drawing of the UK's National Lottery was held; initially hosted by Noel Edmonds, he soon handed over hosting duties to Anthea Turner and Gordon Kennedy.

1997 - Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in only the second known case where all seven babies were born alive; they would go on to become the first set of septuplets to survive infancy, with all seven still alive and living in Des Moines, Iowa, as of 2010.
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