POPnews - February 25th

[When, in 1794, Captain George Vancouver first happened upon Icy Strait (at the south end of Glacier Bay) it was choked with ice that was said to be 'a mile thick'; by the time John Muir visited the area in 1879 the Grand Pacific Glacier had retreated to the head of the bay, and by 1916 it was at the mouth of Tarr Inlet, about 100 km (65 miles) from where Captain Vancouver first sighted it. What the fastest documented glacial retreat in history so generously revealed was a rugged landscape of uncommon beauty. In all, not a bad trade...]

138 CE - Roman Emperor Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor; on the same day Antoninus adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus (son of the deceased Aelius Caesar) and Marcus Annius Verus (who was the grandson of a Senator buddy of Hadrian's of the same name and who just so happened to be betrothed to Aelius Caesar’s daughter Ceionia Fabia). All of which means Hadrian's Villa must have been one pretty hopping place, even eight years after the death of the Emperor's beloved Antinous...

1308 - Edward II was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey in the presence of his gaily caparisoned boyfriend Piers Gaveston (the original angertwink) who failed to bear St. Edward's Crown up the aisle with the suitable solemnity and while wearing the royal purple besides, a fuming 12-year-old Queen Isabella (not yet known as the She-Wolf of France) smarting that she had failed to win the King's heart, and an increasingly irate nobility with swords half-unsheathed for both Gaveston and the King... Even before Sir John Bakewell was trampled to death, things were not going well!

1570 - Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I via his papal bull entitled Regnans in Excelsis.

1601 - The Earl of Essex, former favourite of Elizabeth I, was afforded the privilege of a private execution at the Tower of London's Tower Green for his complicity in a plot to overthrow her.

1713 - Prussia's King Frederick I died; he was succeeded by his son, who reigned as Frederick William I.

1797 - Irish-American Colonel William Tate and his force of 1000-1500 French soldiers - having landed in Wales near Llanwnda three days earlier - surrendered at the Royal Oak pub in Fishguard having been routed in part by a girl, Jemima Nicholas, during an erstwhile military campaign now known as the Last Invasion of Britain.

1850 - China's Emperor Minning - known following his death as the Daoguang Emperor - died; he was succeeded by his son, Yichu, who in time would be posthumously known as the Xianfeng Emperor.

1866 - Miners in Calaveras County, California, discovered what is now called the Calaveras Skull - human remains that supposedly indicated that man, mastodons, and elephants had co-existed; it was later revealed to have been a hoax.

1901 - J.P. Morgan incorporated the United States Steel Corporation.

1912 - Marie-Adélaïde, the eldest of Guillaume IV's six daughters, became the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.

1925 - Glacier Bay National Monument - now Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve - was established in Alaska.

1933 - The USS Ranger - the first custom-built aircraft carrier - was launched, sponsored by First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, who was herself something of a battleship.

1941 - The February strike, the first organized agitation against Nazi anti-Semitism by the good Christians of Amsterdam, failed to bring that city to a standstill, and was suppressed by the Germans within 48 hours; the action nevertheless boosted Dutch morale during a particularly bleak season, giving much aid and comfort to Holland's growing Resistance movement.

1951 - The first Pan American Games were held, in Buenos Aires.

1956 - In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the actions of Joseph Stalin.

1964 - Following a much-hyped bout versus Sonny Liston in Miami (actually the first of two) Cassius Clay - soon to become even better known as Muhammad Ali - became Heavyweight Champion of the World. At the age of 22, Clay was the youngest man to ever hold the title; following his victory, by TKO, he famously jumped around the ring declaring 'I am the greatest!'

1972 - Coal miners in Britain called off a strike after causing a state of emergency and jeopardizing the country's power supply in exchange for a fat pay rise.

1986 - As the culmination of the People Power Revolution, President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of dictatorial rule, ceding power to Corazon Aquino, who became the country's first woman president.

1994 - Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein committed the Mosque of Abraham massacre in the West Bank city of Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, opening fire with an automatic rifle and killing 29 Palestinian worshipers (and injuring 125 more) before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors. During subsequent rioting outside Aghli Hospital in western Hebron the Israeli Army killed 26 more Palestinians and 9 Israelis.
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POPnews - February 8th

[The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, has long fascinated storytellers - likely because Her Majesty's own flair for the dramatic was very much on display that morning; emerging from her chamber shrouded in black and clutching a Bible, once on the dais she threw off her cloak to reveal a crimson dress and a vast expanse of white neck and shoulder, to audible gasps... And that was just for starters! The most vivid portrayal of this moment in history I've ever seen was enacted by Samantha Morton in the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age; only time will tell if Scarlett Johansson can go her one better when she becomes the latest in a string of beautiful ladies to assay the role.]
421 CE - Constantius III became co-Emperor of the Western Roman Empire alongside his brother-in-law Honorius, having married Galla Placidia in 417 CE.

1587 - Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle for suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

1601 - Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, marched out of London's York House at the head of an army determined to force an audience with Elizabeth I - as vividly depicted in the 2005 miniseries Elizabeth I, in which Essex was played by Hugh Dancy and the Queen by Helen Mirren. The abortive Essex Rebellion was quickly crushed and Essex was tried, convicted, and executed for treason within three weeks.

1807 - Following the Battle of Eylau Napoleon defeated a Russian army under General Count von Benigssen.

1817 - Juan Gregorio de las Heras crossed the Andes from Argentina with an army to join José de San Martín in liberating Chile from Spanish rule.

1855 - The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appeared in southern Devon.

1879 - Sandford Fleming first proposed the adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute in Toronto.

1887 - The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land in Oklahoma and divide it into individual allotments. Named for Massachusetts Senator Henry L. Dawes, the act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act; it remained on the books until 1934.

1904 - The Battle of Port Arthur - a surprise torpedo attack by Japanese Admiral Heihachiro Togo and Vice Admiral Shigeto Dewa against a Russian fleet commanded by Oskar Victorovich Stark and anchored at China's Port Arthur - incited the Russo-Japanese War.

1915 - D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation (based on Thomas Dixon's novel-cum-play The Clansman) had its world premiere in Los Angeles; the film glorifies that fine Christian organization the Ku Klux Klan and their efforts to protect the flower of white womanhood from the black man, yet offers no solutions as to how to protect those same women from their far more dangerous white male relatives.

1949 -Hungary's Jószef Cardinal Mindszenty was sentenced to life in prison for having committed treason against that country's Communist government, which exacted 'proof' of his treason under torture. He remained imprisoned until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

1952 - Elizabeth II proclaimed herself Queen of the United Kingdom in a ceremony at St. James's Palace in London.

1962 - At the so-called Charonne Massacre 9 trade unionists were killed by police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of Paris' Prefecture of Police.

1969 - The Allende Meteorite fell near Pueblito de Allende, in Mexico's Chihuahua state.

1974 - After 84 days in space, the crew of the first American space station Skylab returned to Earth; Skylab itself joined them in July 1979, when it famously burned up following re-entry of the Earth's atmosphere and scattered debris on the town of Esperance in Western Australia.

1983 - A dust storm hit Australia's second largest city, Melbourne - a result of the worst drought on record and following a day of severe weather conditions; within an hour the 320m deep dust cloud had enveloped the city, turning day to night, and serving as an ominous precursor to the Ash Wednesday fires which occurred one week later.

1986 - Arleigh McCree and his partner Officer Ronald Ball of the LAPD's Firearms and Explosives unit were killed while trying to dismantle two pipe bombs when they responded to a call in North Hollywood; at the time of his death McCree was recognized as one of the top explosives experts in the world.

1994 - London's Metropolitan Police Service announced an investigation into the death of Stephen Milligan, the Conservative MP for Eastleigh, who'd been found dead the previous day.

1996 - The Communications Decency Act, passed by the US Congress a week earlier, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
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