POPnews - June 29th

[Every year Canada House is the site of London's largest Canada Day celebration, drawing thousands of revellers to Trafalgar Square to celebrate the culture of Britain's quiet, well-behaved Commonwealth offspring; unlike Australia - which has pretty thoroughly insinuated itself into the rich tapestry of English life in the tried-and-true manner of a middle child - Canada and Canadians whether in the Mother Country or on the world stage have been content to sit back and not draw too much attention to themselves...]

1149 - Raymond of Poitiers was defeated and killed by Nur ad-Din at the Battle of Inab.

1194 - Sverre was crowned King of Norway.

1252 - Denmark's King Abel was murdered by a wheelwright named Henner on Husum Bridge near Eiderstedt, following the shortest reign in that country's history; since his son Valdemar was being held prisoner by the Archbishop of Cologne at the time, Abel's brother would be crowned Christopher I at Lund Cathedral on Christmas Day.

1444 - Albania's national hero Skanderbeg defeated an Ottoman invasion force commanded by Ali Pasha at the Battle of Torvioll.

1613 - London's Globe Theatre burnt to the ground during a performance of William Shakespeare's play Henry VIII when a shot from a prop cannon set the thatched roof on fire.

1644 - England's King Charles I defeated a Parliamentarian detachment under Sir William Waller at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge - making it the last battle won by an English King on English soil.

1659 - The Russians, led by Prince Trubetskoy were defeated by the Ukrainian armies of Ivan Vyhovsky in the Battle of Konotop.

1888 - George Frideric Handel's Israel in Egypt became the first music ever recorded, when the oratorio was preserved on a wax cylinder at The Crystal Palace by Col. George Gouraud.

1914 - Jina Guseva attempted to assassinate Grigori Rasputin while he was on a visit to his Siberian home town of Pokrovskoye; Rasputin survived the knife attack, and history does not record what became of Guseva following her placement in an asylum for having committed it.

1925 - Canada House was opened, in London's Trafalgar Square, by King George V and Queen Mary.

1926 - Arthur Meighen (shown, at right) returned to office as Prime Minister of Canada; unlike his first term, which lasted a comparably lengthy 17 months between July 1920 and December 1921, this second term would not last twelve weeks*, at which time the fragile Conservative-Unionist coalition assembled by his predecessor Sir Robert Borden would topple before the mighty Liberal Party and its indefatigable leader, Mackenzie King.

*In addition to owning the historical footnote of Canada's shortest-serving head of government, Meighen was also the first Prime Minister to serve as a Member of Parliament from Manitoba.

1928 - The Outerbridge Crossing and Goethals Bridge in the New York City borough of Staten Island both opened.

1956 - The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, officially creating America's Interstate Highway System.

1967 - Hollywood actress Jayne Mansfield died when when the car in which she was a passenger struck the rear of a tanker truck on US Highway 90 outside New Orleans...  Also killed was her driver, Ronnie Harrison; her three children - Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska, who were passengers in the back seat of the 1966 Buick Electra 225 belonging to Mansfield's latest employer, supper club impresario Gus Stevens - were uninjured.  Mansfield, on the other hand, was scalped* as part of a massive head injury caused when the front end of the vehicle went under the truck.

*Not decapitated, as legend would have it.

1976 - The Seychelles became independent from the United Kingdom.

1995 - During NASA's STS-71 space shuttle mission Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir for the first time.

2001 - The British government announced that a £3.6m memorial fountain - designed by Kathryn Gustafson and dedicated to Diana, Princess of Wales - would be placed in London's Hyde Park; it was opened by HM The Queen in July 2006.

2006 - The US Supreme Court ruled, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violated US and international law.

2007 - Apple Inc. released the iPhone for the United States market, resulting in the widespread tizzification of Apple acolytes everywhere.
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POPnews - April 8th

[Despite its dramatic West Front, there's very little about Winchester Cathedral that would indicate the marvels to be found within its precincts; yet this is one of the largest churches in England and has both the longest nave and greatest overall length of any Gothic church in Europe. Dedicated to the Holy Trinity as well as St. Peter and St. Paul its name also commemorates one who is actually buried there, namely Saint Swithun, who was Bishop of Winchester until his death in 862 CE. Plus, it has a pop song written about it... Take that Brompton Oratory!]
217 CE - Roman Emperor Caracalla was assassinated by one of his bodyguards, Julius Martialis, while urinating at the side of the road near Harran; he was succeeded by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus, who was almost certainly complicit in the killing.

1093 - The new Winchester Cathedral was dedicated by Walkelin, the first Norman to serve as Bishop of Winchester; situated adjacent to the Old Minster - which was founded sometime in the 4th decade of the sixth century CE - the cathedral marks the resting place of Saxon royalty such as King Eadwig and his queen Ælfgifu as well as the notable novelist Jane Austen.

1149 - Pope Eugene III took refuge in the castle of Ptolemy II of Tusculum, where he would remain until November; while there he met France's King Louis VII and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who stopped over while on their way home from the disastrous Second Crusade.

1271 - Sultan Baibars conquered the Krak of Chevaliers in Syria, capturing it from the Knights Hospitaller by tricking them into thinking Bohemond VI, count of Tripoli, had enjoined them to surrender; the castle's design was later adapted by England's Edward I (who saw it while on the Ninth Crusade) to fortify his new vassal state of Wales.

1730 - Shearith Israel, New York City's first synagogue, was dedicated, apparently.

1808 - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Baltimore was promoted to an archdiocese, with the founding of the dioceses of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Bardstown (now Louisville) by Pope Pius VII.

1820 - The Venus de Milo was apparently discovered, on the Aegean island of Melos, by a peasant named Yourgos; sculpted of parian marble around 130 BCE and attributed to Alexandros of Antioch, the sculpture was subsequently seized by the Turkish then purchased by the French for the Louvre, where it still resides. For a statue she's had quite a life, as detailed in Disarmed: The Story of the Venus de Milo by Gregory Curtis.

1886 - Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone introduced the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.

1895 - The US Supreme Court declared unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.; the opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Melville Fuller.

1904 - The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom signed the Entente cordiale, ending nearly a thousand years of conflict between the two nations.

1913 - The 17th Amendment to the US Constitution - requiring the direct election of Senators - became law.

1935 - The Works Progress Administration was formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 became law.

1950 - Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru signed the Liaquat-Nehru Pact in an attempt to cool sectarian tensions between the two countries.

1953 - Jomo Kenyatta was sentenced to seven years' hard labour by Kenya's British rulers for organizing the Mau Mau movement and planning the Mau Mau Rebellion.

1973 - Pablo Picasso died at his villa at Mougins.

1974 - Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run, surpassing Babe Ruth's 39-year-old record.

1986 - Actor-director Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

1992 - Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announced that he had AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.

2006 - The bodies of eight men, all shot to death, were found in a field 5 km north of Shedden, Ontario; the murders of what came to be known as the Shedden Massacre were soon linked to members of the Bandidos motorcycle gang.
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