POPnews - May 2nd

[A great deal remains of Expo 86 in the Vancouver streetscape - Canada Place, BC Place Stadium, the Plaza of Nations, and the Expo Line of the SkyTrain, as well as the geodesic dome of Science World (shown, above, as photographed by yours truly!) are all iconic both locally and globally. And yet... The city's real estate developers are as famously rapacious as its contruction unions - both hit hard by a recently burst economic bubble over-inflated by their own hot air; combined with a nouveau-riche elite whose contempt for the character of heritage isn't even thinly veiled means none of these things will ever be truly safe from the onslaught of the wrecking ball.]
1194 - England's King Richard I granted Portsmouth its first Royal Charter.

1230 - William de Braose, 10th Baron Abergavenny was hanged at Garth Celyn by Prince Llywelyn the Great of Wales, having been caught in flagrante delicto* with Llywelyn's wife Joan, Lady of Wales, daughter of England's King John. She was put under house arrest for one year, during which time she may have given birth to de Braose's daughter; the low-lying area where His Lordship was executed is now commemorated as Gwern y Grog, or 'The Hanging Marsh'.

*Latin for 'Gittin' it ON'...

1568 - Mary Queen of Scots escaped from Loch Leven Castle, where she had been imprisoned by the Earl of Morton; it would prove to be a short-lived liberation, followed by an even longer imprisonment...

1670 - England's King Charles II granted a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America; they remain a major force in Canadian business to this day, despite no longer being Canadian owned after more than 300 years.

1808 - At the beginning of the Peninsular War the good people of Madrid rose up in rebellion against their French occupation during the Dos de Mayo Uprising; the scene was later immortalized in a painting by Francisco Goya, entitled The Second of May 1808.

1816 - Léopold of Saxe-Coburg and Charlotte Augusta were wed at Carlton House, and lived thereafter at Claremont, which was a wedding gift from the nation; as daughter of England's Prince Regent, Charlotte was Heiress Presumptive.

1863 - American Civil War hero Stonewall Jackson was wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering for the Battle of Chancellorsville; he succumbed to pneumonia 8 days later.

1869 - The Folies Bergère opened in Paris.

1885 - Cree and Assiniboine warriors won the Battle of Cut Knife, their largest victory over Canadian forces during the North-West Rebellion.

1945 - The Soviet Union announced the Fall of Berlin as Red Army soldiers hoisted their flag over the Reichstag; elsewhere German forces began to surrender en masse as the Third Reich - once trumpeted as being capable of lasting a thousand years - crumbled after just a dozen.

1946 - At the Battle of Alcatraz, San Francisco's Alcatraz Federal Prison was taken over by six inmates - Marvin Hubbard, Joseph Cretzer, Mirian Thompson, Clarence Carnes, and Sam Shockley led by bank robber Bernard Coy - following a failed escape attempt. Two guards and three inmates were killed in the fracas, with 11 guards and one inmate injured over two days of fighting.

1952 - Winging passengers from London to Johannesburg, the De Havilland Comet 1 - the world's first ever jet airliner - made its maiden voyage, ushering in the Jet Age.

1955 - Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

1969 - RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 of the Cunard Line departed Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York City.

1982 - The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano in one of the fiercest days of fighting during the Falklands War; in all 321 military and 2 civilian personnel were killed.

1986 - The 1986 World Exposition - nicknamed Expo 86 - was opened in Vancouver by The Prince of Wales, Diana, Princess of Wales, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

1999 - Mireya Moscoso became the first woman to be elected President of Panama.

2000 - Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands unveiled the Man With Two Hats monument in Apeldoorn; nine days later she would unveil another one in Ottawa, symbolically linking both Holland and Canada for the latter's assistance of the former throughout the Second World War.

2008 - Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Burma - which the Pop Culture Institute steadfastly refuses to call Myanmar - killing over 130,000 people and leaving millions of people homeless.
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