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 1st

[Fronted by Lisbon's Tagus River, the Terreiro do Paço was completely rebuilt as part of the Pombaline Downtown after an earthquake in November 1755 ruined the Portugese capital during the reign of José I, whose statue now dominates the square; it was here, on the way home from the Vila Viçosa, that Carlos I was murdered by Alfredo Costa and Manuel Buiça. Of the four royals in the carriage, only Queen Maria Amélia escaped death or injury.]

1327 - England's Edward III was crowned, although it would be nearly four years before the teenaged king would be rid of his regents (his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer) who had already successfully conspired to depose her imprisoned husband Edward II, and were likely plotting his death on that day as well.

1662 - The Chinese general Koxinga seized the island of Taiwan after a nine-month siege.

1691 - Pope Alexander VIII died; he would be succeeded by Innocent XII on July 12th.

1713 - The Kalabalik, or Tumult in Bendery, resulted from the Ottoman sultan's order that his unwelcome guest, Sweden's King Charles XII, be seized.

1814 - The Mayon Volcano in the Philippines erupted, killing around 1,200 people; it was the most devastating eruption in the volcano's history.

1880 - The first edition of London's theatrical newspaper The Stage was published.

1896 - Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème premiered at the Teatro Regio Torino conducted by the young maestro Arturo Toscanini.

1908 - Portugal's King Carlos I and his son, Prince Luis Filipe, were assassinated by Republican terrorists in Lisbon's Terreiro do Paço; he was succeeded by his injured son, who became Manuel II, Portugal's ill-fated last king.

1920 - Canada's Northwest Mounted Police and Dominion Police merged to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - better known as the RCMP, or the Mounties.

1942 - Vidkun Quisling was appointed Premier of Norway by the country's Nazi occupiers.

1953 - An unprecedented storm lashed northern Europe, devastating dikes up and down the coast of Holland and wreaking havoc on the coastline of Britain; in addition to sinking the car ferry MV Princess Victoria (under the captaincy of James Ferguson, while en route from Stranraer in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland, with the loss of 130 lives in one event alone) the North Sea Flood of 1953 would end up claiming 1,835 lives.

1965 - The Hamilton River in Labrador was renamed the Churchill River by Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood.

1968 - Canada's three military services - the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force - were unified into the Canadian Forces.

1974 - A fire in the 25-story Joelma Building in São Paulo killed 189 and injured 293.

1979 - The Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after nearly 15 years of exile.

1982 - Senegal and The Gambia formed a loose confederation known as Senegambia.

1984 - Britain's half penny coin was removed from circulation.

2004 - 251 were trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

2005 - Nepal's King Gyanendra dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in an attempt to curb a Maoist insurgency in the remote Himalayan kingdom. It didn't work...
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POPnews - April 19th

[This is the scene of a heinous crime, a savage attack against the United States and all it stands for... In fact, prior to 9/11 it was the gravest act of terrorism ever committed on American soil. But was it caused by al-Qaeda, or even Muslim extremists of any kind? Not even close.]

1012 - When St. Alphege was killed by Danish raiders at Greenwich he became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to die violently; the martyred cleric (who was succeeded by Lyfing) was initially buried in London's St. Paul's Cathedral, but King Canute had his remains moved to Canterbury with great ceremony in 1023.

1054 - Pope Leo IX died; he was succeeded by Gebhard, Count of Calw, Tollenstein, and Hirschberg - who reigned as Victor II - on April 13th of the following year.

1587 - English privateer Francis Drake sank the Spanish fleet in the harbour at Cádiz; it is thought that Drake's act of daring lessened the impact of the Spanish Armada, which was launched by King Felipe II the following year, and which ultimately failed in its stated aim (namely, to conquer England).

1713 - Having no living male heirs the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, issued the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that lands then controlled by the Habsburg Dynasty (as well as the Austrian throne) could be inherited by his daughter, should the need arise... The need didn't so much arise when Maria Theresa was born in May 1717 as when she ascended to the throne following her father's death in October 1740 - at which time France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony (having initially agreed) refused to honour it, triggering the War of the Austrian Succession.

1770 - Marie Antoinette of Austria married France's Dauphin (the future King Louis XVI) by Proxy marriage at Vienna's Augustinian Church.

1775 - The American Revolution began, at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

1782 - John Adams secured the Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government, whereupon the house which he had purchased in The Hague became the first American embassy.

1809 - A corps of the Austrian army commanded by Archduke Ferdinand attacked and was defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw led by Józef Poniatowski at the Battle of Raszyn, part of the ongoing struggles of the Fifth Coalition; on the same day the main body of the Austrian army under Archduke Charles was defeated by a First French Empire corps led by Napoleon and his commander Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria, itself part of a four day campaign which resulted in a French victory.

1810 - Venezuela achieved home rule - whereupon Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General, was removed from his position by the people of Caracas and a junta was installed.

1839 - The Kingdom of Belgium was created by the Treaty of London, nine years after the Opera House Riot set off the Belgian Revolution in August 1830; as their first King Belgians chose a minor German prince who'd already proven his personal ambition in England, and whose reign as Leopold I began in July 1831.

1861 - At the outset of the American Civil War, a pro-secession mob in Baltimore attacked Union Army troops marching through the city.

1904 - Fire destroyed most of downtown Toronto.

1971 - Salyut 1 - the first human-made space station - was launched, by the Soviet Union.

1975 - India's first satellite, Aryabhata, was launched.

1985 - Advance Australia Fair was proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, with green and gold as the national colours.

1993 - Depending on your perspective, the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco either went horribly wrong or entirely according to plan.

1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed by Timothy McVeigh in retaliation for the Waco Siege two years previously to the day, and the execution on that very day of Richard Wayne Snell, who had previously planned an attack on the same building, only to have it thwarted. 168 people died - including 19 children at an on-site daycare center.

2005 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the Papal conclave to elect a successor to John Paul II.

2008 - The Bowie Seamount - northwest of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Columbia - became a Marine Protected Area.
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