POPnews - December 5th

[Ippolit Giliarovsky's refusal to eat maggoty meat during the Russian Revolution of 1905 may have only indirectly led to the Revolution of 1917, but it directly led to the creation of Russian cinema which, in the hands of such visionary filmmakers as Sergei Eisenstein, extended the national knack for storytelling to an entirely new medium.]
1082 - Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona, was assassinated; he was succeeded by his twin brother and co-ruler Berenguer Ramon II, who may have orchestrated the killing.

1484 - Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputized Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany, leading to genocide, courtesy of one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history.

1492 - Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola.

1590 - Niccolò Sfondrati was elected Pope Gregory XIV following the death of Urban VII.

1766 - James Christie held the first sale at his auction house.

1776 - Phi Beta Kappa - the first scholastic fraternity in the United States - was founded in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia, by students from the College of William and Mary.

1892 - Conservative Sir John Thompson became the fourth Prime Minister of Canada upon the retiremet of his predecessor, John Abbott; not only was he Canada's first Roman Catholic premier, he was the only one to die at Windsor Castle.

1926 - Sergei Eisenstein's classic film The Battleship Potemkin had its American debut.

1932 - Albert Einstein was granted a US visa, apparently.

1933 - Prohibition was repealed in the United States when Utah ratified the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution, which itself repealed the 18th Amendment, which had mandated Prohibition in 1919 and introduced it in 1920.

1945 - Flight 19 disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.

1952 - During what came to be known as the Great Smog, a cold fog descended upon London which, when combined with an inversion layer and the greater burning of coal necessitated by the chill temperatures, caused fatal air pollution which killed at least 12,000 - many of them children, the elderly, and infirm - in the weeks and months that followed. The calamity brought about the Clean Air Acts of 1956, which went a long way to preventing similar conditions from recurring in the future.

For an informative account of the Great Smog, why not visit our blog friend Another Nickel in the Machine?

1958 - Subscriber Trunk Dialling was inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she spoke to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh without first having to go through an operator.

1970 - Dario Fo's play Morte accidentale di un anarchico received its world premiere in the Italian city of Varese.

1979 - Sonia Johnson was formally excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for her outspoken criticism of the church concerning its position on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Because that's what Jesus would have done.

1983 - ICIMOD was established and inaugurated with its headquarters in Kathmandu, and legitimized through an Act of Parliament in Nepal later the same year.

2005 - The UK's Civil Partnership Act came into effect.

2006 - Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew the government of Fiji.

2007 - Nineteen-year-old Robert A. Hawkins opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, killing eight people and wounding four others (two critically) before taking his own life.
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POPnews - November 7th

[Actually, Sir Donald Smith had to drive in two last spikes on
this day in 1885, as he bent the first one; fortunately he
only financed the railway, and didn't build it.]
1492 - The Ensisheim Meteorite - the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact - struck the Earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, in the Alsace region of France; it is still preserved there in the Regency Palace.

1665 - The London Gazette - the official record of the British government and the oldest such publication extant - was first published.

1786 - Pupils of the composer William Billings founded the Stoughton Musical Society in Boston, making it the oldest musical organization in the US.

1848 - Whig Zachary Taylor was elected 12th US President over Democrat Lewis Cass.

1876 - Rutherford B. Hayes was elected 19th US President over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden.

1885 - Construction - begun in 1881 - ended on the Canadian Pacific Railway with the driving of the Last Spike by Sir Donald Smith, in Craigellachie, British Columbia. The promised railroad had been key in bringing Canada's westernmost province into Confederation in 1870.

1916 - Woodrow Wilson was elected to a second term as US President over Republican Charles Evans Hughes.

1929 - New York City's Museum of Modern Art opened to the public.

1932 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century aired on radio for the first time.

1933 - Fiorello H. LaGuardia was elected the 99th mayor of New York City.

1940 - In Tacoma, Washington, the middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (known as 'Galloping Gertie') collapsed in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge's completion.

1944 - Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as US President over Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

1967 - Carl B. Stokes was elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, making him the first black mayor of a major American city.

1972 - Richard Nixon was elected to a second term as US President over Democrat George McGovern.

1983 - A concealed bomb exploded inside the U.S. Capitol Building outside the Senate Chamber, causing $250,000 in damages and ruining a portrait of Daniel Webster; since the Senate had been adjourned for nearly four hours at the time the corridor where the explosion occurred was empty, and no one was injured or killed. Marilyn Buck, Laura Whitehorn, and Linda Evans were later sentenced for their part in the blast, as well as other bombings at Ft. McNair, and the Washington Navy Yard.

1989 - Douglas Wilder won the gubernatorial election in Virginia, becoming the first elected black governor in the United States.

1990 - Mary Robinson became the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Ireland.

1991 - Magic Johnson held a press conference to announce that he was infected with HIV; he thereupon retired from the NBA.

2000 - George W. Bush was 'elected' 43rd US President over Democrat Al Gore (although the controversial results would not be verified until January 6th, 2001, when the electoral college votes were ratified during a raucous joint-session of Congress - just two weeks before the inauguration); in the same election Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the United States Senate, becoming the first former First Lady to win a public office in the United States.
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POPnews - August 3rd

[When Ralph Metcalfe, Jesse Owens, and Frank Wykoff posed for this publicity shot on-board the ocean liner SS Manhattan as part of the largest American Olympic team to date they were not only boldly repudiating the cockamamie ideas a certain sawed-off Austrian paper-hanger had about so-called 'racial purity' but confronting some pretty deep-seated prejudices from back home as well.]

435 CE - The deposed Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius - who is fortuitously considered the originator of Nestorianism - was exiled by Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II to a monastery in Egypt's Great Oasis of Hibis (also known as al-Khargah).

881 CE - Louis III, King of Western Francia, defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu, an event celebrated in the poem Ludwigslied.

1460 - Scotland's King James II died, aged only 29, when the cannon he was standing next to during a siege of Roxburgh Castle exploded; he was succeeded by his 9-year-old son, James III, who governed under the regency of his mother Mary of Guelders until her death in December 1463*. The siege, on the other hand, was continued by the late King's commander George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus. After the castle capitulated a few days later, the widowed queen ordered it demolished.

*Following her death the regency passed to James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews (who had also served as regent to James II), and Gilbert, Lord Kennedy, until 1466, and then to Robert, Lord Boyd until 1469, at which time he attained his majority.

1492 - Christopher Columbus set out on his famous voyage of discovery to the New World from Palos de la Frontera.

1527 - The first-known letter from North America was sent by John Rut, who had just arrived at St. John's, Newfoundland, to King Henry VIII back in England, detailing the number and nationality of fishing vessels in the vicinity.

1645 - During the Thirty Years' War at the Second Battle of Nördlingen (also known as the Battle of Allerheim) the combined French and Weimar forces of Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, and Vicomte de Turenne scored a victory over the Bavarian Johann von Werth and Franz Baron von Mercy of the Holy Roman Empire, who died in battle.

1811 - Jungfrau - the third highest summit in the Bernese Alps - was ascended for the first time by the Meyer brothers, sons of the topographer J. R. Meyer.

1852 - The first Harvard-Yale Regatta - itself the first American intercollegiate athletic event - was held between (you guessed it!) Yale and Harvard; for the record, Harvard won...

1913 - The Wheatland Hop Riot - a labour action involving the Industrial Workers of the World - occurred at the Durst Ranch near Wheatland, California.

1914 - Germany declared war on France at the outset of what would become known as World War I.

1916 - Irish rebel Sir Roger Casement (shown, at left) was hanged at London's Pentonville Prison, having undergone the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and been accepted into the Roman Catholic faith while incarcerated at the Tower of London; Casement's legacy remains a conflicted one, since any efforts on his behalf in favour of the independence of Ireland were tainted after his death by revelations contained in the so-called Black Diaries he kept that he was not only actively but pretty unapologetically homosexual.

1923 - At 2:47 AM Republican Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th President of the United States following the death of Warren G. Harding the previous day; the presidential oath was administered by Coolidge's father, John Calvin Coolidge, Sr, who was a notary public.  The office of Vice President was left vacant until the 1924 Election, at which time Coolidge was re-elected alongside Charles G. Dawes.

 1934 - Hitler became Führer of Germany after combining the Presidency and Chancellorship.

1936 - Jesse Owens won the 100-metre dash at the Berlin Olympics, defeating Ralph Metcalfe, who was also black.

1949 - The National Basketball Association (NBA) was founded in New York City with the merger of the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL).

1958 - The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus became the first such vessel to reach the North Pole by traveling beneath the Arctic ice cap.

1966 - Controversial comedian Lenny Bruce was found dead on the floor of the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 N. Hollywood Blvd.; he was 40.  Although the official cause of death was 'acute morphine poisoning caused by an accidental overdose' and Bruce was known to be a heavy drug user, the legal battles he faced in his later years - brought on by obscenity charges pressed by people with little or no understanding of the First Amendment - couldn't have helped matters.

2001 - The Real IRA detonated a car bomb in the London borough of Ealing, injuring seven people.

2005 - Mauritania's President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd in Riyadh.
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POPnews - August 1st

[Video Killed the Radio Star, by The Buggles, was the first video ever to air on MTV.]

30 BCE - Octavian (later known as Augustus) entered Alexandria and brought it under the control of the Roman Republic, causing his foe Mark Antony to commit suicide that very day and his foe's ho Cleopatra to follow suit soon after.

1291 - The Swiss Confederation was formed with the signing of the Federal Charter.

1492 - The Alhambra Decree - passed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in March - took effect, either driving the Jews out of Spain or else forcing them to convert to Roman Catholicism.

1820 - London's Regent's Canal opened.

1828 - Britain's Bolton and Leigh Railway opened to freight traffic, connecting the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal at Bolton to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Leigh.

1831 - A new John Rennie-designed London Bridge opened, replacing the far more famous medieval one; King William IV and Queen Adelaide attended a banquet in a pavilion erected on the bridge in honour of the event. In April 1968 the bridge was sold to oilman Robert P. McCulloch, who ordered it painstaking disassembled and rebuilt as part of an Anglophilic theme park in Lake Havasu City, Arizona It has since been replaced by yet another bridge, this time designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson.

1842 - The Lombard Street Riot erupted - not in San Francisco, as you might expect, but in Philadelphia.

1876 - Colorado became the 38th US state.

1907 - Robert Baden-Powell opened a Boy Scout camp on Brownsea Island in Dorset's Poole Harbour to field test the ideas laid out in his acclaimed book Scouting for Boys.

1936 - The Games of the XI Olympiad were opened in Berlin.

1944 - Anne Frank made the last entry in her diary.

1966 - Charles Whitman killed 15 people at The University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.

1968 - Hassanal Bolkiah was crowned the 29th Sultan of Brunei.

1977 - Former Lockheed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers crashed the news helicopter he was flying in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area just a few miles short of the Burbank Airport; also killed in the crash was NBC newsman George Spears, with whom he'd been covering forest fires in the vicinity of Santa Barbara. According to his son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., the experienced pilot crashed because he'd reported a fuel gauge error to a mechanic - when the plane's fuel gauge indicator displayed 'Empty' there was actually had enough fuel for thirty more minutes of flight time - who apparently made the repair without telling anyone.

1981 - MTV made its broadcast debut.

1993 - The Great Flood of 1993, which had inundated an area of Missouri 1200 km (745 miles) long and 700 km (435 miles) wide - or about 840,000 km² (320,000 square miles) - since April, and would continue to do so until October, came to a peak; at it's worst, the rising water at St. Louis topped 15.1 m (49.6 feet), nearly 6 m (20 feet) above flood stage and easily surpassing the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The 16 m (52-foot)-high St. Louis Floodwall, built to handle the volume of the 1844 flood, was able to keep the 1993 flood out with just over 60 cm (two feet) to spare!

2004 - A supermarket fire in the Paraguayan capital of Asunción killed as many as 396 people and injured 500; according to survivors doors within the complex were closed under the direction of the owners, Juan Pío Paiva and his son, Víctor Daniel, deliberately trapping people inside in order to prevent them from fleeing with merchandise without paying for it - a claim the management of the shopping centre has denied.

2007 - The I-35W Mississippi River Bridge - spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota - collapsed during the evening rush hour, killing thirteen people and injuring 145; the tragedy sparked a brief public debate about the state of America's crumbling infrastructure... That is until (and I'm guessing here) some celebrity or other did something stupid, at which point the media got back to reporting on what's really important.
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POPnews - March 31st

[This 1901 map of Vancouver Island - which, at 32,134 km² (12,407 sq mi), is Canada's 11th and the world's 43rd largest island - doesn't even begin to demonstrate the myriad charms of the place, unlike the website it links to...]
1146 - In a field outside the French village of Vézelay and in the presence of France's King Louis VII Bernard of Clairvaux preached a sermon urging the necessity of a Second Crusade, which convinced the King if no one else.

1492 - Under the terms of the Alhambra Decree, Queen Isabella of Castile ordered her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.

1717 - In the presence of King George I the Bishop of Bangor - aka Benjamin Hoadly - delivered a sermon entitled The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ which argued that no temporal Church government had any spiritual authority, provoking the Bangorian Controversy.

1774 - In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party Parliament in London ordered the port of Boston closed with its passage of the Boston Port Act, one of the so-called Intolerable Acts which precipitated the American Revolutionary War.

1778 - Captain James Cook first landed on and then claimed what later came to be known as Vancouver Island for Great Britain.

1854 - Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Convention of Kanagawa with Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi as the representative of the Empire of Japan (on behalf of Emperor Kōmei, who by custom and temperament was neither allowed nor cared to interact with foreigners); the treaty opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade, albeit against their will and at the end of a cannon, ending a two-century period of insularity known as Sakoku.

1889 - The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated.

1917 - The United States took possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, renaming the territory the US Virgin Islands.

1959 - The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed the border into India and was granted political asylum at Dharamsala, where he established the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.

1964 - The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of General Castello Branco, began.

1968 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson shocked the nation when, in a televised address, he announced that he would not be running for re-election; although he would have been eligible for another term (since his 'first' term was technically the remainder of President Kennedy's) his health was poor and his popularity was suffering due to the ongoing Vietnam War.

1970 - Explorer 1 re-entered the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit; having discovered the Van Allen radiation belt, it made its last fiery flight over the southern Pacific Ocean.

1979 - The last British soldier left Malta upon that country's independence; the day is still celebrated as Freedom Day, or Jum il-Ħelsien, as well as being commemorated by a monument in the town of Birgu (Vittoriosa).

1986 - The Thatcher government abolished six metropolitan county councils under the terms of the Local Government Act 1985.

1990 - 200,000 protestors took to London's Trafalgar Square to show their displeasure at the Thatcher government's newly introduced Community Charge. The so-called Poll Tax Riots lasted more than ten hours, during which time 45 police officers were among the 113 people injured; 20 police horses were also hurt in the fracas.

1991 - In the Georgian independence referendum nearly 99 per cent of the voters supported that country's independence from the Soviet Union.

1992 - The US Navy's last active battleship - the USS Missouri (BB-63) - was decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

1995 - 23 year-old Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez - better known as Selena - was shot and killed in Corpus Christi, Texas, by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her own fan club.

2008 - Aloha Airlines permanently ended passenger service following bankruptcy.
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