POPnews - November 18th

[By 1450, when this image was made, the Renaissance St. Peter's Basilica which had grown up around the tomb of Saint Peter had itself grown too old-fashioned for the silk- and velvet-dressed, perfumed and bejewelled he-men who lived and worked there; originally intending to preserve the old building, Pope Julius II eventually tore one architectural masterpiece down with an unshakable faith that someday an even greater one would arise...]
326 CE - The Old St. Peter's Basilica was consecrated, during the papal reign of St. Sylvester I.

1302 - When Pope Boniface VIII issued the Papal bull Unam sanctam - 'The One Holy' - it wasn't the first bull issued by a Pope (and Lord knows it wouldn't be the last) but it was one of the strongest statements to date about Papal infallibility, and is probably responsible for that holier-than-Thou attitude of theirs the rest of us must contend with to this day.

1307 - According to legend, William Tell shot an apple off his son's head.

1477 - When William Caxton produced Dictes, or Sayengis of the Philosophres (written by the King's brother-in-law Earl Rivers, whose sister Elizabeth married Edward IV), it would be the first book printed on a printing press in England.

1626 - The extensively remodeled St. Peter's Basilica was re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII.

1803 - At Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines defeated French troops under Vicomte de Rochambeau - leading to the establishment of the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere, the Republic of Haiti, where the day is still celebrated.

1863 - Denmark's King Christian IX signed that country's November Constitution, which (in part) declared Schleswig to be part of Denmark; this was seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and would eventually lead to the German-Danish War of 1864.

1865 - Mark Twain's story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was first published, in the New York Saturday Press.

1905 - Denmark's Prince Carl became King Haakon VII of Norway following the 1905 dissolution of the union between the two countries.

1916 - The First Battle of the Somme ended when British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig called off the battle - which had started on July 1st.

1928 - The animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully-synchronized sound cartoon, was released; directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, it featured the second appearances of cartoon stars Mickey and Minnie Mouse. This date is also considered by the Disney Corporation to be Mickey's birthday.

1929 - The Grand Banks earthquake - a submarine seismic event recorded at 7.2 on the Richter scale and centred on the Grand Banks in the Atlantic Ocean off the south coast of Newfoundland - broke 12 underwater transatlantic telegraph cables and triggered a tsunami that destroyed many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula area.

1947 - A fire at Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch killed 41, making it the worst such catastrophe in New Zealand history.

1978 - At the Jonestown incident in Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them at Jonestown itself, including over 270 children; the event had been precipitated by the fact-finding mission of Congressman Leo Ryan (D.-Calif.) and his subsequent murder (along with four journalists) at the hands of Jonestown thugs, also on this day.

1985 - Bill Watterson's legendary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes debuted.

1987 - During a fire in London, 31 people died at the city's busiest Tube station, King's Cross St Pancras.

1991 - Following the 87-day siege of Vukovar, that Croatian city capitulated to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.

2000 - Welsh beauty Catherine Zeta-Jones married Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas at New York City's famed Plaza Hotel.

2003 - The UK's Local Government Act 2003 received Royal Assent, repealing the Thatcher government's controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28 in England and Wales; Scotland had already repealed it in June 2000 with the passage of its Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000. First passed in May 1988 and championed by, among many others, Michael Howard, Section 28 remains one of the most loathsome pieces of legislation ever produced by the Mother of All Parliaments.
*
share on: facebook

POPnews - May 24th

[It was with considerable razzmatazz that the Brooklyn Bridge was finally opened on this day in 1883, which was maybe less than appropriate, considering the tragedies that occurred during its construction - not the least of which were the death of its architect, John Roebling and the incapacitation of his son and successor, Washington Roebling. In fact, it was largely due to the indefatigable efforts of the younger Roebling's wife, Emily Warren Roebling, that the project was completed at all. The entire thrilling story is told in a work of popular history by David McCullough, called The Great Bridge, which naturally is housed in the collection of the Pop Culture Institute; the tale also opens Brooklyn Bridge (1981), the first documentary made by Ken Burns for PBS, which was narrated by McCullough.]

1487 - Lambert Simnel was crowned as 'King Edward VI' at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin; Simnel, along with Perkin Warbeck, was a pretender to the English throne which had been usurped by Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field in August 1485. Neither of them had any right to the throne, though, whereas Henry VII did*; so while the King was initially lenient towards them when they became a threat to his rule he reluctantly had them put to death.

*Sort of... At least a better one than either of them!

1621 - The Protestant Union was formally dissolved under pressure from Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor; the event was one of many factors contributing to the continuance of the Thirty Years' War.

1626 - Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Canarsee - a Metoac band related to the Lenape Nation - even though they had no right to sell it; the transaction greatly displeased the Weckquaesgeek (whose land it actually was) and who later fought the Dutch during Kieft's War in retaliation. The sale - for 60 guilders but often since rendered as $24 - has been used to bigoted ends ever since to prove the triumph of the supposedly superior European over the stupid heathens, but in fact the sale greatly strengthened the Canarsee in the region by not only undermining their rivals but helping them to obtain technology, since the sale was not in cash but in trade goods for that value, goods which enabled them to get the upper hand geopolitically.

1689 - The English Parliament passed the Act of Toleration protecting Protestant Nonconformists (in other words, those who dissented from the Church of England) from religious discrimination; Roman Catholics were intentionally excluded from protection.

1738 - John Wesley converted from Anglicanism, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.

1798 - The Irish Rebellion of 1798 - led by the United Irishmen against British rule and inspired by both the American and French revolutions - began in the counties of Leinster and Kildare.

1830 - Mary Had a Little Lamb, a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale, was published.

1844 - When Samuel F. B. Morse sent a Bible quotation - 'What hath God wrought' (Numbers 23:23) - from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the US Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore along a single wire strung beside the track of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad it became the first message ever sent by telegraph.

1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge was opened to traffic after 14 years of construction, which had begun in January 1870.

1930 - Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, having departed from Croydon on May 5 and flown a total of 11,000 miles before landing at Darwin; the de Havilland Gipsy Moth in which she made her historic flight (and which she named 'Jason') is currently on display at the Science Museum in London.

1943 - Josef Mengele became chief medical officer at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1962 - As part of NASA's Project Mercury, astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.

1970 - The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole began in the Soviet Union.

1976 - At the so-called Judgment of Paris professional wine testers rated wines from California higher than their French counterparts, challenging the notion that France was the foremost producer of the world's best wines.

1989 - Sonia Sutcliffe - wife of Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, who was found guilty in 1981 of the gruesome murders of 13 women - was awarded £600,000* in damages after winning an action against Private Eye; the magazine's editor, Ian Hislop, had the temerity to suggest in print that there was a bidding war for Mrs. Sutcliffe's story - which there was, as was later proven - and famously stated following the trial 'If that's justice, then I'm a banana.' As for Private Eye, they scored a major PR coup by holding a fundraiser, known as the Bananaballs Fund, with the amount left over donated to the families of Sutcliffe's victims.

*The sum was later reduced to £60,000 on appeal, which at the time was £100,000 more than the previous record-holder for libel in Britain, and a hundred times greater than any compensation given to Sutcliffe's victims.

1990 - Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were critically injured when a pipe bomb planted in their car exploded in Oakland, California; the FBI initially attempted to charge them with the crime, but once it was proven to them that such a thing was not possible no further investigation was carried out. The culprit or culprits remain unknown.

1992 - The last Thai dictator, General Suchinda Kraprayoon, resigned following a series of pro-democracy protests known as Black May.

1993 - Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia with Isaias Afewerki as the new country's first Provisional President.

2001 - Owing to faulty construction the third story of the Versailles wedding hall - in Jerusalem's Talpiot suburb - collapsed, killing 23 and injuring more than 200 in what is considered Israel's worst-ever civil accident. In the aftermath of the disaster laws were passed which tightened the regulation of construction, and the hall's owners - Avraham Adi, Uri Nisim, and Efraim Adiv - were found guilty of causing death by negligence. The ruin was demolished in 2007, and the land remains unoccupied, although across the street there is a memorial garden honouring the victims.
*
share on: facebook

POPnews - May 4th

[It's always interested me how, from the vast number of pictures taken, some of them - like John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winner of 14 year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio keening over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller moments after he was shot and killed while protesting the US invasion of Cambodia - end up becoming iconic. Certainly the award helps, since it guarantees a wider distribution, but three other students - Allison Beth Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder - were also killed that terrible day in 1970 at Kent State, and it seems no similar photos exist of their tragic deaths under such ugly circumstances.]
1415 - Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance; initially called by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund to try and solve the Western Schism (caused by there being three popes simultaneously, which is almost too many to fit in a Volkswagen, or its 15th Century equivalent anyway) the Council also ruled on issues of national sovereignty versus papal authority, the rights of pagans, and what constituted a just war. The chief result of the Council, though, was a book entitled Ars moriendi, or The Art of Dying.

1471 - During the Wars of the Roses, Edward IV defeated a Lancastrian army at the Battle of Tewkesbury and killed Edward of Westminster - son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou - making him the only Prince of Wales to ever die in battle. His widow, Anne Neville, later married the man who became Richard III.

1493 - Pope Alexander VI divided the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Demarcation Line in the papal bull Inter Caetera.

1626 - Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland (now better known as Manhattan) aboard the See Meeuw to take up his post as third director-general of the Dutch West India Company.

1814 - The former French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte came ashore at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile, having arrived in the middle of the night before.

1859 - The Cornwall Railway was opened by Albert, Prince Consort, linking Plymouth in Devon with Falmouth in Cornwall across the Royal Albert Bridge (which he'd also opened, two days earlier) .

1869 - The Naval Battle of Hakodate took place off the coast of Hokkaidō, between whatever boats the crumbling Tokugawa shogunate could muster and the Imperial Japanese Navy; an imperial victory hastened the demise of the already waning Boshin War and greatly strengthened the position and prestige of Emperor Meiji.

1886 - At the Haymarket Square Riot a bomb was thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, killing constable Mathias J. Degan; in retaliation the police fired into the crowd, themselves killing ten and wounding as many as 60, although many of the injured may have succumbed to friendly fire.

1904 - The United States began construction on the Panama Canal; the canal was an initiative of President Theodore Roosevelt, who later appointed John Frank Stevens as Chief Engineer on the project.

1910 - The Royal Canadian Navy was created under the leadership of Rear-Admiral Charles Kingsmill.

1924 - The 1924 Summer Olympics opened in Paris; it would be the last Olympiad organized by Pierre de Coubertin.

1932 - Mobster Al Capone began serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta; while there he played the bigshot, which resulted in his transfer to Alcatraz in August 1934.

1949 - The entire Torino F. C. (except for one player who did not take the trip due to an injury) were killed in a plane crash near the Basilica of Superga on the outskirts of Torino, in Italy.

1953 - Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Old Man and the Sea.

1961 - During the American Civil Rights Movement the Freedom Riders began a series of bus trips through the South - from Washington, DC, to New Orleans - in order to test a Supreme Court decision known as Boynton v. Virginia. Along the way the riders were harassed, attacked, and arrested. By September more than 450 riders had participated in at least one of 60 rides, and succeeded in embarrassing the Kennedy Administration, which had previously been lax in its attempts to end racial segregation.

1970 - The Ohio National Guard - sent to Kent State University after the ROTC building there was burnt down by protesters opposed to the Vietnam War - specifically the US invasion of Cambodia - opened fire on unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine others.

1980 - President-for-Life Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia forfeited his title at the age of 87.

1982 - The British destroyer HMS Sheffield was hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War, killing 20; after the ship was struck the surviving crew, waiting to be rescued, sang Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python's Life of Brian to keep their spirits up. While not destroyed in the attack, the ship foundered six days later in high seas while being towed back to England by HMS Yarmouth for repairs.

2000 - Ken Livingstone became the first Mayor of London; re-elected once, he was denied a third term by Boris Johnson in 2008.
*
share on: facebook