POPnews - January 23rd

[The Ålesund Fire actually had a positive outcome for the town; the original city centre was both over-crowded and served by only rudimentary sanitation, whereas after being rebuilt it had such improved 'mod cons' that it was able to better handle the influx of tourists that have been flocking there ever since.]

393 CE - Theodosius I - the last to rule the Eastern and Western Roman Empires jointly - proclaimed his nine-year-old son Honorius to be co-emperor.

1368 - In a coronation ceremony Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne as the Hongwu Emperor, supplanting the Yuan Dynasty with the Ming Dynasty, which would rule China for the next three centuries.

1556 - An earthquake in China's Shaanxi province may have killed as many as 830,000 people (about 60% of the region's population); its epicenter was near Mount Hua. It's been estimated that the quake was an 8 on the Richter Scale, and remains the deadliest earthquake in human history.

1570 - The assassination of James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, at the hands of James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh precipitated a civil war in Scotland; for his good governance on behalf of James VI, the infant son of Mary, Queen of Scots (then imprisoned in England) he was known as 'The Good Regent'. Which is why they killed him, obviously...

1571 - London's Royal Exchange was opened by Elizabeth I.

1579 - The Union of Utrecht formed the Protestant Republic of the Seven United Netherlands in Holland, although the new nation would not be recognized by its former Spanish overlords until the Twelve Years' Truce in 1609.

1656 - Blaise Pascal published the first of his Lettres provinciales.

1719 - The Principality of Liechtenstein was created within the Holy Roman Empire; its first prince, Anton Florian, never even visited.

1789 - Georgetown College - the first Roman Catholic university in the United States - was established in Washington, DC.

1855 - The first permanent bridge over the Mississippi River opened in what is now Minneapolis, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.

1870 - US cavalrymen in Montana led by Maj. Eugene Baker killed 173 Piegan Blackfeet Indians - mostly women and children - in the Marias Massacre.

1897 - Elva Zona Heaster was found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia; the resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in US history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.

1904 - The Norwegian coastal town Ålesund was devastated by fire, leaving 10,000 people homeless and one person dead; it was Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II - a frequent visitor to the town - who not only funded the rebuilding of the town in Jugendstil style but sent the first relief ships even as the embers were still smoldering.

1958 - The government of Venezuelan President Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown by the commander of that country's Navy, Wolfgang Larrazábal.

1973 - US President Richard Nixon announced the Paris Peace Accord which brought an end to the Vietnam War.

1977 - The miniseries Roots, based on the best-selling book by Alex Haley, began on ABC.

1986 - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted its first members: Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.

2002 - John Walker Lindh - the so-called 'American Taliban' - returned to the US from Afghanistan in FBI custody.

2003 - NASA made its last contact with Pioneer 10, when it was 7.5 billion miles from Earth.
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POPnews - June 10th

[If you're like me - and let's face it, would you be if you didn't have to be? - you like gawking at super fit college aged men clad only in revealing sporting costumes, all the while enjoying yourself a pleasant afternoon in an idyllic riverside setting... Which makes the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race the ideal way to combine my hobbies (and/or pervs). The image above shows a practice run by the Cambridge team in 1866 along the River Cam, near the Plough Inn at Fen Ditton. You know the place I mean. Anyway, that year Cambridge lost to Oxford - a race which included a dramatic near-collision with a barge!]
1190 - Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa drowned in Turkey's Saleph river while leading an army to Jerusalem on his way to fight the Third Crusade.

1619 - The Battle of Záblatí proved a turning point in the Bohemian Revolt during the Thirty Years' War when Karel Bonaventura Buquoy won the day for the Holy Roman Empire, while Ernst von Mansfeld suffered heavily losses in personnel and a baggage train as well, following which he was forced to lift the siege of Budějovice.

1692 - During the Salem Witch Trials, Bridget Bishop was hanged at Gallows Hill for 'certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries'. Which, I'm sure, is what Jesus would have done...

1719 - The Battle of Glen Shiel proved a decisive victory for its commander Joseph Wightman and put an end to the Jacobite Rising, whose commander Lord George Murray (among others) had hoped to put the Catholic Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne of England as Charles III in place of the Protestant George I.

1786 - A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by the Kangding Louding earthquake ten days earlier collapsed, killing 100,000 in the Chinese province Sichuan province as far as 1400 km upriver, making it the second deadliest landslide on record.

1805 - Yussif Karamanli signed a treaty ending hostilities with the United States following the First Barbary War; try and guess whether or not that lasted...

1829 - The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge took place; annually pitting eights against each other on the River Thames since 1856 (and four times unofficially elsewhere during the Second World War) the brain-child of Charles Merivale, a student at St John's College, Cambridge, and his chum Charles Wordsworth, who was at Christ Church, Oxford, today the 6.8 km- (4 mile, 374 yard-) long race is attended by a quarter million spectators bankside along the course from Putney to Mortlake, while 7-9 million watch on telly in the UK, and more than 20 million people tune in worldwide.

1838 - At Australia's Myall Creek Massacre 28 Aboriginals were murdered near Inverell, a sheep station in New South Wales; seven of the 11 whites responsible were later found guilty, a first for Australian jurisprudence.

1886 - Following the eruption of New Zealand's Mount Tarawera, 153 people were killed and the country's famous Pink and White Terraces were destroyed.

1924 - Fascists kidnapped and killed Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome, a crime which historians now believe was ordered by Il Duce himself, Benito Mussolini.

1925 - The inaugural service for the United Church of Canada - a union of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches - was held in Toronto Arena.

1935 - With the assistance of Bill Wilson, Dr. Robert Smith took his last drink, thereby helping to found Alcoholics Anonymous.

1942 - The Nazi occupiers of Czechoslovakia burned the village of Lidice in reprisal for the earlier killing of Reinhard Heydrich as part of Operation Anthropoid.

1944 - 15-year old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds became the youngest player ever in a Major League game.

1967 - The Six-Day War 'ended' when Israel and Syria agreed to a cease-fire... There are those, however, who feel a war cannot truly be over as long as one side continues to call for the death of all of those on the other side, in addition to all of their co-religionists throughout the world, and the total destruction of their country besides. I'm just saying, is all.

1977 - James Earl Ray escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee; he was recaptured three days later.

1986 - Patrick Magee was found guilty of planting the bomb that damaged Brighton's Grand Hotel during a Conservative Party conference in October 1984, killing five.

2001 - Pope John Paul II canonized Lebanon's first female saint, Rafqa.

2003 - The Spirit Rover was launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission; it landed successfully the following January 4th, three weeks before its twin Opportunity landed on the other side of the planet.
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