POPnews - March 27th

[The Paiute and Sierra Miwok peoples had lived in the vicinity of the Yosemite Valley for centuries before Lafayette Bunnell first clapped eyes on it; to his credit, he named the area Yosemite following discussions with Chief Tenaya of the Ahwahneechee, whose territoriality and allegedly violent natures soon led to their extermination.]
1329 - Pope John XXII issued his papal bull In Agro Dominico condemning some of the writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical.

1513 - While searching for the Fountain of Youth explorer Juan Ponce de León became the first European on record to sight Florida.

1613 - A son born to Nicholas Guy and his wife at the English plantation at Cuper's Cove, in Newfoundland's Conception Bay, was the first white child born in Newfoundland (and thus Canada).

1625 - Charles I became King of England, Scotland and Ireland (and claimed the title King of France for good measure) upon the death of his father, King James VI and I.

1794 - The US government passed the Naval Act of 1794, which established a permanent Navy to replace the Continental Navy which had served during the American Revolution and authorized the building of six frigates.

1851 - Dr. Lafayette Bunnell - physician with the Mariposa Battalion - became the first European to describe the Yosemite Valley.

1868 - The Lake Ontario Shore Railroad Company was organized in Oswego, New York.

1958 - Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union after forcing his predecessor, Nikolai Bulganin, to resign from the position following a purge of hardliners from the Politburo.

1963 - Wielding the so-called Beeching Axe British Railways chairman Dr. Richard Beeching issued a report calling for huge cuts to the United Kingdom's rail network for God knows what real reason but which he claimed was for efficiency and profitability's sake.

1964 - The Good Friday Earthquake - at a magnitude of 9.2 the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history - struck south central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.

1968 - Yuri Gagarin - Soviet cosmonaut and the first human in space - died during an aircraft training accident.

1969 - Mariner 7 was launched as part of NASA's Mariner Program, the second of a two-part mission to explore Mars.

1976 - The first 7 km (4.6 miles) of the Washington Metro opened; since then the system has grown to include five lines, 86 stations, and 171.1 km (106.3 miles) of track.

1980 - The Norwegian oil platform Alexander Kielland collapsed in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.

1986 - A car bomb concealed in a 1979 Holden Commodore exploded outside the Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, killing Constable Angela Taylor and injuring 21 others; the motive and perpetrator remain unknown.

1994 - The Eurofighter took its first flight over the German municipality of Manching.

1998 - The Food and Drug Administration approved Viagra for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.

2002 - At the so-called Passover Massacre a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 29 people and injured 140 partaking of the Passover meal at a hotel in Netanya; many of the dead were over the age of 70.

2004 - HMS Scylla - a decommissioned Leander-class vessel and the last Royal Navy frigate to have been built at the Devonport Royal Dockyard - was intentionally sunk for use as an artificial reef (the first of its kind in Europe) off Whitsand Bay in Cornwall.
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