POPnews - January 18th

[Normally Tagish Lake in Canada's Yukon is as tranquil as this picture would suggest; certainly it was just before it was struck by a meteorite on this day in 2000, and indeed it would be again after more than 500 fragments - most the size and with the appearance of charcoal briquettes scattered over the lake's Taku Arm - had been gathered up and analyzed. Initially as large as 4 metres in diameter and weighing 56 tonnes, less than a quarter of the meteorite was ever recovered, suggesting it had experienced significant vaporization upon entering the Earth's atmosphere.]
474 CE - Leo II became Byzantine Emperor following the death of his grandfather Leo I; his reign would last just ten months, and after his suspicious death there were rumours he'd been poisoned by his mother Ariadne so her husband Zeno could become emperor, which he did.

1126 - Emperor Huizong abdicated the throne of China in favour of his son, Emperor Qinzong.

1213 - Georgia's Queen regnant Tamar died; she was succeeded by her son, George IV.

1471 - Japan's Emperor Go-Hanazono died; he'd already abdicated in favour of his son - who reigned as Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado - in 1464.

1591 - King Naresuan of Siam killed Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in hand-to-hand combat - albeit while riding war elephants - which event is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces Day.

1701 - Frederick I, formerly the Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, crowned himself the first King of Prussia - although to soothe the nerves of the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, he styled himself King in Prussia instead.

1871 - Wilhelm I was proclaimed the first German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles near the end of the Franco-Prussian War; the empire he commanded became known as the Second Reich.

1915 - Japan issued the Twenty-One Demands to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.

1919 - The Paris Peace Conference - whose mandate was to divvy up a world recently devastated by World War I - opened at the Palace of Versailles. The story of the conference, and the numerous egos that ran it, is brilliantly told in Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World.

1943 - The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto - oddly enough, known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - took place.

1955 - The Battle of Yijiangshan occurred on the Yijiangshan Islands, pitting the National Revolutionary Army of Wang Shen-Ming against the victorious Zhang Aiping's People's Liberation Army during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis.

1958 - Canadian Willie O'Ree, the first black player in the NHL, made his debut when he took to the ice for the Boston Bruins against the Montreal Canadiens.

1977 - The worst rail crash in Australian history occurred at Granville, near Sydney, killing 83.

1990 - Washington, DC mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession during an FBI sting.

1994 - During the Cando Event - a possible bolide impact over Cando, Spain - witnesses claim to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute.

1995 - Cave paintings estimated to be at least 17,000 years old were discovered at Vallon-Pont d'Arc in France.

1997 - Norway's Boerge Ousland became the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.

2000 - The Tagish Lake Meteorite impacted the Earth at Tagish Lake in Canada's Yukon.

2003 - A bushfire killed 4 people and destroyed more than 500 homes in the Australian capital of Canberra.
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POPnews: September 12th

[Since 1983 a replica of the cave at Lascaux has been open specifically for tourists - located 200m away from the original - in order to spare some 16,000 priceless images the worst ravages of tourism: namely creeping black mold, exposure to carbon dioxide, and having to spend 40 years in close proximity to a horde of unwashed mouth-breathers.]
1213 - During the Albigensian Crusade England's Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, killed King Peter II of Aragon during the Battle of Muret.

1846 - Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning.

1847 - The Mexican-American War's Battle of Chapultepec began, during which Chapultepec Castle was taken from Mexico's Nicolás Bravo by American commander Winfield Scott.

1848 - Switzerland became a Federal state.

1857 - The SS Central America sank about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon; the ship had been carrying 13-15 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush, and the loss of bullion triggered the Panic of 1857.

1874 - British Columbia's District of Maple Ridge was founded, a dozen years before Vancouver; now Vancouver is a world-class city and Maple Ridge... Uh... Isn't.

1910 - Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 received its world premiere in Munich (with a chorus of 852 singers and an orchestra of 171 players); Mahler's assistant conductor during rehearsals was Bruno Walter, who later made a name for himself as a maestro.

1940 - The world's single greatest trove of Paleolithic art was discovered near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne département, by four teenagers - Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas - as well as Ravidat's dog, Robot.

1943 - Benito Mussolini - Fascist dictator of Italy between October 1922 and July 1943 - was rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi during Operation Eiche by the German commando forces of Otto Skorzeny.

1959 - Bonanza, the first regularly-scheduled TV program presented in color, premiered on NBC; it would last until 1973 and make a star of Michael Landon - although it was Pernell Roberts who used to keep me up at night, if you know what I mean...

1964 - Utah's Canyonlands National Park was established.

1974 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by the Derg.

1977 - Steven Biko died of injuries received while in custody in South Africa; Biko's story came to light due to the work of the crusading journalist Helen Zille and, of course, crusading pop star Peter Gabriel.

1983 - A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, was robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros during an operation called Aguila Blanca (White Eagle).

1992 - NASA launched the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission; on board were Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark C. Lee and N. Jan Davis, the first married couple in space. So we pretty much know what their mission, um, entailed...

1994 - Frank Corder fatally crashed a stolen Cessna into the South Lawn of the White House; he'd intended to crash it directly into the Executive Mansion, but owing to his intoxication at the time he thankfully pulled off an epic fail and missed. He was the only casualty. President Bill Clinton and his family weren't even in residence at the time, due to renovations, and were staying instead across the street at Blair House; anyway, Corder's friends said he had no grudge against the President, and may only have wanted to commit a very high profile suicide.

2001 - US President George W. Bush declared War on Terror, marking the first time a nation ever declared war on a concept; tyranny, rather than hilarity, ensued...

2005 - Hong Kong Disneyland opened in Penny's Bay on Lantau Island.

2007 - Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada was convicted of the crime of plunder.
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