"Where The Streets Have No Name" by U2

On this day in 1987 U2 paid homage to The Beatles Final Concert by shooting their video for Where the Streets Have No Name on the rooftop of the Republic Liquor Store at East 7th Street and South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. Director Meiert Avis managed to get enough usable footage despite the growing chaos in the street below and more police officers than one could expect to find at an actual liquour store shooting before the plug was pulled on the whole affair.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Paula Trickey

Once upon a time yours truly was enamoured of a silly little show called Pacific Blue...

It may have been the late hour in which the USA Network show was rerun in my market, or it might have been the copious quantities of Entertainment Helper I was smoking at the time*, but there was something in the beautifully photographed scenes of Santa Monica I really liked, and it wasn't the frankly ludicrous police procedural story-lines. If only I knew what it was I so loved about it...

Oh, that's right. Oodles of hotness owing to such cast members as Rick Rossovich, Jim Davidson, Mario Lopez - and of course Paula Trickey here. Besides which, it was the show that launched Shanna Moakler, who practiced the mad skillz she later employed so effectively against Paris Hilton on Trickey's character.

Trickey, of course, is a showbiz veteran, with appearances on Beverly Hills 90210, Walker, Texas Ranger, and The OC under her belt.

*Amazingly, even more than I'm smoking now!
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"In The Navy" by The Muppets

How could I not mark the US Navy's anniversary without this video of The Muppets, from Episode 524 of The Muppet Show, performing the Village People's anthemic disco favourite In the Navy as Viking pigs? I mean, after all, I'm only ostensibly human am I not?
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Pop History Moment: The US Navy Was Founded

On this day in 1794 the United States Navy was founded, as a replacement for the Continental Navy. The first of the vessels of the Continental Navy - Hannah, which was launched at Beverly, Massachusetts, in September 1775 - was even paid for out of George Washington's own pocket!

After passage of the Naval Act of 1794, six frigates were ordered and built: USS United States, USS President, USS Constellation, USS Chesapeake, USS Congress, and USS Constitution. The last of these - nicknamed 'Old Ironsides' - famously saw action during the First Barbary War, and is still in existence; it remains moored at Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor and today serves as a museum thanks to the efforts of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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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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