POPnews - February 21st

[Incas, the last known Carolina parakeet, ironically died in the same cage where Martha, the world's last known Passenger Pigeon, had cooed her last four years earlier in September 1914.]
1245 - Thomas, the first known Bishop of Finland, was granted resignation by Pope Innocent IV having confessed to torture and forgery; after donating his books to a Dominican convent in Sigtuna he retired to a similar institution in Visby to live out the remaining three years of his life.

1543 - At the Battle of Wayna Daga a combined army of Ethiopian and Portuguese troops commanded by Ethiopia's Emperor Galawdewos defeated the Muslim army of Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi.

1613 - Mikhail I was unanimously elected Tsar by a national assembly, beginning the Romanov dynasty of Imperial Russia, although it took them five weeks to find the teenager and his mother at the Ipatiev Monastery near Kostroma.

1848 - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto; it took the world just under a hundred and fifty years to discover that, however laudable their aims might have been in principle, the book's tenets are utterly unworkable in practice.

1874 - George Staniford and Benet A. Dewes published the first issue of the Oakland Daily Tribune.

1878 - The first telephone book was issued, in New Haven, Connecticut; it was all of a single page, and listed just 50 numbers.

1885 - The newly completed Washington Monument was dedicated in the presence of US President Chester A. Arthur and Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman.

1916 - The First World War's pivotal Battle of Verdun began; lasting until mid-December, it was a crucial engagement along the Western Front between France and Germany.

1918 - The last Carolina parakeet died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo, although it wouldn't be until 1939 that the species was considered extinct.

1919 - The German socialist Kurt Eisner was assassinated by Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley; his death resulted in the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic and parliament and government of Bavaria fleeing Munich.

1945 - The Empire of Japan's Kamikaze planes sank the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea and badly damaged the USS Saratoga near Iwo Jima, where the two craft had been assisting the American invasion of that island.

1948 - NASCAR was incorporated.

1952 - In Dhaka, capital of East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), police opened fire on a procession of students who were demanding the establishment of Bengali as the country's official language, killing four people and starting a country-wide protest which eventually led to the recognition of Bengali as one of the national languages of Pakistan; the day has since been declared International Mother Language Day by UNESCO.

1958 - The Peace symbol was designed and completed by Gerald Holtom; it had been commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, and remains a powerful emblem of both the 1960s and the anti-war movement to this day.

1971 - The Convention on Psychotropic Substances was signed at Vienna.

1972 - US President Richard Nixon made an historic visit to the People's Republic of China in an attempt to normalize Sino-American relations.

1973 - Over the Sinai Desert, a pair of Israeli F-4 Phantom II fighter aircraft shot down Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 jet killing 108 of the 113 passengers and crew on board over the jetliner's refusal to leave Israeli airspace.

1995 - Steve Fossett landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, making him the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

2004 - Europe's first political party organization, the European Greens, was established in Rome.
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POPnews: September 9th

[Perched high atop a volcanic crag which is itself a part of the Stirling Sill geological formation, Stirling Castle has seen at least eight (and as many as sixteen) sieges over the years - the last of these by Bonnie Prince Charlie during the Jacobite Rising in January 1746 - although surely none of them compare to the daily influx of tourists visiting the Scheduled Ancient Monument as guests of Historic Scotland!]

9 CE - Arminius' alliance of six Germanic tribes ambushed and annihilated three Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

1379 - The Treaty of Neuberg - which split the Austrian Habsburg lands between the Dukes Albert III and Leopold III - was signed at Neuberg an der Mürz; its signing also brought about a split in the dynasty between Albertinian and Leopoldinian lines.

1493 - The Battle of Krbava field - a decisive defeat during the Croatian struggle against invaders of the Ottoman Empire - saw the army of Ban Mirko Derenčin decimated by those of Bayezid II.

1513 - Scotland's King James IV was defeated (and died) in the Battle of Flodden Field, ending Scotland's involvement in the War of the League of Cambrai.

1543 - Nine-month-old Mary, Queen of Scots, was crowned in the Chapel Royal at Stirling Castle.

1914 - The first entirely mechanized unit in the British Army - the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade - was created.

1923 - Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, established the Republican People's Party (CHP).

1944 - The Fatherland Front led by Kimon Georgiev took power in Bulgaria through a military coup in the capital and armed rebellion in the countryside, following which a new pro-Soviet government was established.

1945 - Following the Second Sino-Japanese War Japan formally surrendered to China.

1948 - Republic Day in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea saw the formal division of Korea into North and South after the withdrawal of colonial rule by the Empire of Japan following its defeat in World War II.

1970 - A British airliner, BOAC Flight 775, was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and flown to Jordan's Dawson's Field.

1971 - British diplomat Geoffrey Jackson was released from captivity in Uruguay; Jackson had been abducted by Tupamaros guerrillas on January 8th.

1987 - 25 football fans from Liverpool were extradited to Belgium to stand trial for their role in the Heysel stadium disaster.

1988 - Hot on the heels of the so-called Summer of Four Captains, Graham Gooch and seven other members of England's cricket team were refused visas to India owing to their involvement in the so-called South African rebel tour of 1982, effectively canceling their scheduled tour of the subcontinent; an alternative tour, to New Zealand, was also called off in December as South Africa was then facing increasing international censure for its adherence to apartheid.

1990 - During the Batticaloa massacre 184 Tamil civilians were killed by the Sri Lankan Army in that country's eastern Batticaloa District.

1991 - Tajikstan gained its independence from the Soviet Union.

1993 - The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognized Israel as a legitimate state.

2001 - Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, was assassinated.

2004 - A bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, killing 11 people.

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POPnews - July 12th

[This shows what you can do with an Etch-a-Sketch.
The best I could ever manage was stairs.]
1191 - Saladin's garrison surrendered, ending the two-year Siege of Acre, following which Conrad of Montferrat (who had negotiated the surrender) raised the banners of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and of the Third Crusade leaders - England's Richard I, France's Philip II, and Austria's Leopold V - on the city's walls and towers.

1543 - England's King Henry VIII married Catherine Parr who, unlike her predecessors, managed to keep her head while all those around her were losing theirs.

1580 - Ostrog Bible - the first such book to be printed in a Slavic language - was published by Ivan Fyodorov in Ostroh.

1790 - The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed by France's National Assembly during the French Revolution, subordinating the power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church to the French government - a measure favoured by such revolutionary priests as Pierre Claude François Daunou and Henri Grégoire, but acquiesced to only reluctantly by King Louis XVI.

1804 - Alexander Hamilton died at the home of William Bayard in Manhattan, of the injuries he received the previous day dueling Vice President Aaron Burr at Weehawken, New Jersey; he was later buried in Trinity Churchyard Cemetery.

1806 - Sixteen of Germany's imperial states left the Holy Roman Empire to form the Confederation of the Rhine.

1812 - The United States invaded Canada via Windsor, precipitating the War of 1812.

1862 - The Medal of Honor was authorized by the US Congress.

1917 - The Bisbee Deportation occurred as vigilantes kidnapped and deported nearly 1,300 striking miners and others from Bisbee, Arizona, to New Mexico under appalling conditions.

1918 - The Japanese Imperial Navy's battle ship Kawachi blew up - owing to the spontaneous ignition of unstable cordite in its ammunition magazine - while anchored at Tokuyama Bay, killing at least 621 of a crew numbering 1059.

1933 - The US Congress passed its first minimum-wage law, providing workers with a minimum of 33 cents per hour worked.

1960 - The first Etch-a-Sketch went on sale.

1962 - The Rolling Stones performed their first ever concert, at London's Marquee Club.

1973 - A fire destroyed the entire 6th floor of the US National Personnel Records Center located in the St. Louis suburb of Overland, Missouri; in all some 16-18 million military personnel records were lost in the blaze.

1975 - São Tomé and Príncipe declared their independence from Portugal.

1979 - The island nation of Kiribati declared its independence from Great Britain.

2002 - The Superior Court of Ontario ordered the government of that province to recognize same-sex marriages. (Supreme Court of Ontario: Look! There they are!)

2005 - Albert II assumed the throne of Monaco following the death of his father, Rainier III.

2006 - Hezbollah initiated Operation True Promise.
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