Monday, November 22, 2010

POPnews - November 22nd

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[Joseph Stalin refused to attend the Cairo Conference if Chiang Kai-shek was going to be there; he only had a few days to sulk, though, as the Tehran Conference was soon organized to keep the big diva in the loop.]


498 CE - After the death of Anastasius II, Symmachus was elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, while Laurentius was elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore; Laurentius was supported by Byzantine Emperor Anastasius, but Symmachus had the support of the more powerful Theodoric the Great, King of the Goths, and so prevailed.

1573 - The Brazilian city of Niterói was founded by the Tupi chief Araribóia - who, following his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1568, would later be re-named Martim Afonso after the Portugese explorer Martim Afonso de Sousa; nevertheless, Niterói remains the only Brazilian city to have been founded by a non-assimiliated non-Christian Brazilian Amerindian.

1574 - Chile's Juan Fernández Islands were discovered by accident, when Juan Fernández was blown off course during a voyage from Peru to the Chilean city of Valparaiso; the islands were later home to Alexander Selkirk, whose four-year exile there following a disagreement with captain of the St. George William Dampier inspired Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.

1718 - Pirate Edward Teach (better known as Blackbeard) was killed in battle off the coast of North Carolina during an engagement with Lt. Robert Maynard.

1830 - Having defeated the Tory government of the Duke of Wellington at the polls, Earl Grey of the Whig Party became Britain's Prime Minister when he was invited to form the United Kingdom's next government by King William IV.

1869 - The tea clipper Cutty Sark was launched from Dumbarton, in Scotland; one of the last clippers ever to be built, it remains one of only three such 19th Century vessels still surviving to this day despite a fire aboard it in May 2007.

1935 - The China Clipper left Alameda, California, with a cargo of more than 110,000 pieces of airmail; it arrived in Manila on the 29th. The first trans-Pacific airmail delivery was nearly a failure when the plane couldn't clear the Golden Gate Bridge (then still under construction) and pilot Edwin C. Musick had to make a daring pass under it to avoid crashing.

1943 - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek met at the Cairo Conference to discuss ways to defeat Japan in the ongoing War in the Pacific.

1975 - Juan Carlos I was declared King of Spain following the death of Francisco Franco.

1977 - British Airways inaugurated regular Concorde service between London and New York.

1987 - An unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask intruded upon the signals of two Chicago telelvision stations; neither WGN-TV nor WTTW were ever able to determine who had committed these acts of piracy.

1988 - The first prototype of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber was revealed.

1989 - Lebanese President Rene Moawad was assassinated when a bomb went off near his motorcade as it passed through West Beirut; no investigation into the attack has ever been carried out.

1990 - Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister following a political assassination at her party's conference, in which she failed to retain the leadership of Britain's Conservative Party.

1995 - Pixar's Toy Story was released, making it the first all-CGI animated feature; today it remains one of the best, but because of its script, not the CGI.

2002 - Anti-Miss World protests in Abuja, Nigeria, killed 100.

2003 - England won the Rugby World Cup.

2004 - Ukraine's Orange Revolution began, eventually unseating Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in favour of Viktor Yushchenko, amid charges that the former had poisoned the latter with dioxin.

2005 - Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor of Germany, the first woman to ever hold that post.
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