POPnews - September 1st

[It's too late to help Martha here, but as a helpful hint to any currently
endangered species - a) don't be tasty, and b) humans suck.]

1715 - The death of France's King Louis XIV brought to a close one of the longest reigns of any sovereign in history - more than 72 years.

1752 - The Liberty Bell arrived in Philadelphia.

1763 - Russia's Catherine the Great endorsed Ivan Betskoy's plans for a Foundling Home in Moscow.

1772 - Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa was founded by Junípero Serra in San Luis Obispo, California.

1807 - Former US Vice President Aaron Burr was acquitted of treason for conspiring to establish his own nation.

1836 - Narcissa Whitman, one of the first white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrived at Walla Walla, Washington.

1894 - A forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota, which came to be known as the Great Hinckley Fire killed more than 400 people.

1897 - The Green Line of Boston's subway opened, making it the first underground metro in the United States; today it remains one of the most heavily used subway lines in the country.

1905 - The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan joined the Canadian confederation.

1914 - Martha, the last passenger pigeon (and named after Martha Washington), died at the Cincinnati Zoo; although today her taxidermied remains reside in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, she is not currently on display.

1923 - What came to be known as the Great Kantō Earthquake, centred on Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan, killed between 100,000 and 142,000 people and left a further 1.9 million homeless.

1928 - Ahmet Zogu declared Albania a monarchy, and named himself King Zog.

1939 - Nazi Germany invaded Poland, precipitating the deadliest armed conflict of modern times and indeed of all time; more than 70 million people, most of them civilians, died as a result of the hostilities of World War II.

1969 - A revolution in Libya brought Moammar Khadaffy to power, deposing King Idris I in the process; although he holds no official title in Libya he remains, to this day, owner of the least spellable name in the world.

1970 - Several attempted assassinations of King Hussein by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization were thwarted, at the start of what became known in Jordan as Black September.

1982 - Canada adopted a Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of its Constitution; the inspiration of Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the Tories have been trying to undermine it for years, to no avail.

1985 - A joint American-French team led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Dr. Robert Ballard out of the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts discovered the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

1991 - Uzbekistan seceded from the Soviet Union.

2004 - Chechen separatists and Islamic fundamentalists took more than 1200 people - many of them schoolchildren - hostage in the town of Beslan, Russia; according to official counts, 344 civilians (including 186 children) were killed during two days of heavy fighting, and hundreds more were injured.
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POPnews - July 24th

[Mary Stuart, erstwhile Queen of Scots, in a stunning portrait from 1565... Alas, she was a better subject for an oil painting than a Queen, and her abdication (on this day in 1567) was actually something of a relief.]
1132 - The Battle of Nocera pitted Ranulf II of Alife against Sicily's King Roger II.

1148 - France's Louis VII laid siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.

1411 - The Battle of Harlaw - one of the bloodiest battles in Scottish history, pitting the Lowlanders of Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, against the Highlanders of Donald of Islay, Lord of the Isles, - took place, resulting in a tactical draw but a strategic victory for the Earl of Mar.

1567 - While imprisoned at Loch Leven Castle - recovering from her rape by Bothwell and the miscarriage of their twins - Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate in favour of her 13-month-old son James VI (who would later become better known as James I of England).

1715 - A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla left Havana for Spain; seven days later, 9 of them sank in a storm off the coast of Florida. It took a few centuries, but treasure was salvaged from these wrecks eventually.

1823 - Slavery was abolished in Chile.

1847 - After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young led 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City; these events are being celebrated in Utah today with the Pioneer Day state holiday and the Days of '47 Parade.

1901 - Author O. Henry was released from prison in Austin (early, for good behaviour) having served three years for embezzling from the bank where he worked.

1911 - Hiram Bingham III rediscovered the ruins of Macchu Picchu, the fabled 'lost city of the Incas'.

1915 - The passenger ship S.S. Eastland rolled over and capsized while docked in the Chicago River, with the loss of 845 lives.

1923 - The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, was signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.

1937 - The State of Alabama dropped rape charges against the Scottsboro Nine, who'd been arrested in March 1931.

1967 - During a state visit to Canada for Expo 67, French President Charles deGaulle offered aid and comfort to Quebec separatists by shouting Vive Quebec Libre during a speech in Montreal, outraging his hosts and much of English Canada in the process.

1969 - Apollo 11 splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, having returned to the Earth from the Moon.

1972 - The Croatian paramilitary Bugojno group - which had been organized by the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood - was captured by Yugoslav security forces.

1983 - George Brett, while batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, hit a game-winning home run which was later nullified by the Pine Tar Incident.

2001 - Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, deposed as Tsar of Bulgaria in 1946 (when he was just 9 years old), was sworn in as Prime Minister of that nation, the first former Head of State in history to later become Head of Government.
2002 - Democrat James Traficant was expelled from the US House of Representatives on a vote of 420 to 1.

2005 - Lance Armstrong won a record-breaking seventh consecutive Tour de France; following his victory, Armstrong retired from professional cycling to focus on finding a cure for cancer*.

*In addition to humping and dumping Sheryl Crow and furthering the cult of his own personality with those Live Strong bracelets.
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POPnews - April 15th

[Many's the performer who can be said to have died on stage; Tommy Cooper, though, actually did it!]
1450 - At the Battle of Formigny, which was fought near the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French under the Comte de Clermont and Arthur III, Duke of Brittany, attacked and nearly annihilated Thomas Kyriell's English forces, finally ending the English domination of Northern France that began when Normandy's William the Conqueror invaded England in October 1066.

1632 - At the Battle of Rain - during the Thirty Years' War - Swedish forces under Gustavus Adolphus defeated the armies of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic League commanded by Count Johan Tzerclaes of Tilly.

1715 - The Pocotaligo Massacre triggered the start of the Yamasee War in Colonial South Carolina.

1738 - Serse - an opera, in Italian, by George Frideric Handel - premiered at London's King's Theatre, Haymarket.

1755 - Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published, by Richard Bentley, in London.

1802 - William Wordsworth was out for a walk with his sister Dorothy when he saw a 'long belt' of daffodils, inspiring him to write I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - although, at Dorothy's insistence, he didn't open his poem with the line 'I wandered lonely as a cow' like he'd wanted. Smart lady...

1865 - US President Abraham Lincoln died, having been shot the previous evening by John Wilkes Booth; upon his death Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States.

1920 - Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti allegedly murdered two security guards while robbing the Slater-Morrill Shoe Company in South Braintree, Massachusetts; in the more than seven years that followed prior to their August 1927 execution their case became a cause célèbre, involving the luminous likes of Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Bertrand Russell, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells among many others.

1941 - During the Belfast Blitz, two hundred Luftwaffe bombers attacked that Ulster city, killing more than nine hundred people, injuring 1,500 (400 of them seriously) and damaging half of the city's 70,000 houses - leaving 100,000 homeless in a population of 425,000.

1942 - The George Cross, Britain's highest civilian honour for valour, was awarded to 'the island fortress of Malta - its people and defenders' by King George VI.

1945 - The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated.

1947 - Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line.

1955 - Ray Kroc opened his first franchise of a McDonald's restaurant, in Des Plaines, Illinois; although it was technically the ninth McDonald's overall, Kroc soon ended up taking over the entire company.

1957 - The British Columbia town of White Rock officially separated from Surrey and was incorporated as a new city; to be honest, though, the only reason I've mentioned it here is because both of them have since been gobbled up by Metro Vancouver.

1967 - Scotland defeated rival England 3-2 at Wembley Stadium, causing Scottish football fans to jokingly claim their side as 'Unofficial World Champions', creating the phenomenon of the Unofficial Football World Championships.

1984 - British comedian Tommy Cooper suffered a massive heart attack while performing on the ITV variety programme, Live From Her Majesty's; he was later pronounced dead on arrival at Westminster Hospital.

1986 - In retaliation for the bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin on April 5th - in which two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish woman were killed - US President Ronald Reagan ordered major bombing raids against the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, which killed 60 people - including Muammar Gaddafi's 15-month-old adopted daughter, Hanna.

1989 - The death of Hu Yaobang ignited the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing; this last organized campaign aimed at bringing democracy to China was savagely suppressed by Communist authorities by June 4th.

2003 - US troops in Baghdad captured Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, which killed American Leon Klinghoffer on the hijacked cruise liner the Achille Lauro in October 1985.
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