POPnews - July 30th

[England captain Bobby Moore accepted the coveted (and only recently recovered) Jules Rimet Trophy from his Queen on this day in 1966 and fortunately neither from World Cup Willie nor a dog called Pickles.]
762 CE - The city of Baghdad was founded by Abu Ja'far Al-Mansur.

1419 - The First Defenestration of Prague occurred when seven members of that city's council were thrown from a window at Charles Square's Novoměstská radnice (Town Hall) by a crowd of radical Hussites under the command of Jan Želivský; those who didn't die from the fall were handily dispatched by the angry mob waiting in the street below. Upon hearing the news, King Václav IV reportedly suffered such a shock that he died shortly after.

1619 - The first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convened for the first time, in Jamestown; it was presided over by the Governor, George Yeardley, who appointed the journalist John Pory as speaker - although Pory was, in fact, little more than a recording secretary.

1729 - The city of Baltimore was founded, named after Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore; it then took the city more than 200 years to spawn John Waters, who would go on to immortalize it so memorably on film. Well worth the wait, I'd say...

1756 - Bartolomeo Rastrelli presented the newly-built Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo to Russia's Empress Elizabeth and her courtiers.

1811 - For having uttered the Grito de Dolores in September 1810 - thereby setting off the Mexican War of Independence - Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, leader of the insurgency, was executed by the Spanish outside the Government Palace of Chihuahua.

1825 - Malden Island was discovered by Captain George Anson, Lord Byron, of the HMS Blonde, who'd been charged with the solemn duty of repatriating the remains of the King and Queen of Hawai'i - Kamehameha II and Kamāmalu - after they died of measles during a state visit to Britain; the island was named for Lieutenant Charles Robert Malden, the ship's navigator, who first sighted it.

1859 - The first ascent of Grand Combin, one of the highest summits in the Alps, was made by Charles Sainte-Claire Deville with Basile Dorsaz and brothers Daniel, Emmanuel and Gaspard Balleys.

1871 - The Staten Island Ferry Westfield's boiler exploded, killing more than 85 people.

1916 - A series of small deliberately-set fires triggered an explosion at a munitions depot on New Jersey's Black Tom Island, in New York Harbor near Jersey City, killing 7 and injuring hundreds... Despite the low death count (which can be attributed to the fact that it occurred just after 2 AM) the explosion caused massive damage (valued at some $20 million*) lodging shrapnel in the Statue of Liberty** and the clock tower of the Jersey Journal building in Journal Square a mile away, as well as breaking windows all over Lower Manhattan (as far north as Times Square) and elsewhere in a radius estimated at 40 kilometres (25 miles). The initial blast - equivalent to an earthquake of between 5 and 5.5 on the Richter Scale - could be felt as far away as Philadelphia and Maryland, and as the fire continued to rage throughout the day there were dozens of smaller explosions at the site. While the crime remains officially unsolved, German saboteurs (such as Lothar Witzke and Franz von Papen) have been blamed for what is still one of the worst acts of terrorism to have ever been committed on US soil. The story has been thrillingly retold in The Detonators: The Secret Plot to Destroy America and an Epic Hunt for Justice by Chad Millman.

*Akin to $390 million in today's money! Imperial Germany was later sued for damages; a $50 million settlement (like, $976 million today) was ordered paid to the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company in 1953, and the last payment was finally made in 1979.
**The arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty closed as a result of the explosion, and have yet to reopen!

1932 - The Games of the X Olympiad (or the 10th Olympic Summer Games) opened in Los Angeles; plagued by the worsening Great Depression, the games had just half as many participants as the 1928 Games held in Amsterdam, and weren't even attended by US President Herbert Hoover.

1945 - The Japanese submarine I-58 sank the USS Indianapolis (CA-35), killing 883 seamen.

1954 - Elvis Presley made his first public performance at the Overton Park Shell in Memphis, Tennessee, performing as part of the Blue Moon Boys, who opened for Slim Whitman.

1956 - In God We Trust was made the official motto of the United States, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a Joint Resolution passed by Congress.

1966 - At Wembley Stadium, host England won the World Cup, defeating what was then West Germany 4-2.

1971 - David Scott and James Irwin - on board the Apollo Lunar Module module Falcon - landed on the moon with first Lunar Rover as part of the Apollo Program's Apollo 15 mission.

1980 - Vanuatu gained its independence from France and the UK.

2002 - The accounting law referred to as 'The Sarbanes Oxley Act' was signed into law by US President George W. Bush.

2006 - BBC Two aired the final broadcast of Top of the Pops after 42 years, during which time every notable (as well as many not) act in the music business appeared.
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POPnews - June 20th

[The arrest of France's King Louis XVI and his family in Varennes - the day after their audacious escape attempt, on this day in 1791 (an event rendered here in the most romantic terms by Thomas Falcon Marshall) - led to their imprisonment in the Tuileries Palace, the abolition of the French monarchy, and some of the most egregious excesses of the French Revolution - including the storming of the Tuileries by the good people of Paris in August 1792, plus the executions of the King and the Queen, and the death of the pre-teen Dauphin while in prison besides. At the time of their capture, though, they were within 10 km (6 miles) of their destination, having already made a nerve-wracking 241 km (150 mile) journey from Paris...]
451 CE - Roman General Flavius Aetius in alliance with King Theodoric I of the Visigoths defeated Attila the Hun at the Battle of Chalons, forcing his retreat from Gaul across the Rhine; the last major military engagement of the Western Roman Empire - and undoubtedly the high point of the reign of Valentinian III - the battle nevertheless only delayed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which came in September 476 CE.

1214 - Oxford University was granted its charter - making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world - although lectures were being given there as early as 1096.

1631 - During the Sack of Baltimore the coastal Irish village was attacked by Algerian pirates from the Barbary Coast under the command of Jan Janszoon; 108 English planters and Irish villagers were abducted in the raid, all but two of whom likely spent the rest of their lives as slaves.

1685 - As the Monmouth Rebellion gathered momentum in its campaign against his openly papist uncle James II, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth - the illegitimate son of Charles II and his mistress, Lucy Walter - declared himself King of England at the White Hart Inn in the Somerset village of Taunton.

1756 - A British garrison was imprisoned in the so-called Black Hole of Calcutta following the capture of Fort William by Siraj ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal.

1782 - The Great Seal of the United States was adopted by Congress.

1791 - Just after 10 pm France's King Louis XVI and his immediate family - Queen Marie Antoinette, their children the Dauphin and Madame Royale, and the King's sister Madame Élisabeth - set out on what came to be known as the Flight to Varennes, an attempt to escape their impending fate in the teeth of the French Revolution, by posing as the servants of their childrens' governess, the Marquise de Tourzel, who herself posed as a Russian baroness; although meticulously planned by Count Axel von Fersen and the Baron de Breteuil, the plot was botched by ineptitude in its execution, which ironically led to a couple of history's more successful executions - namely those of the King and Queen themselves. The royal family were arrested the following afternoon (the King having unfortunately been recognized in the town of Sainte-Menehould, by a postmaster named Jean-Baptiste Drouet) when the royal family were within easy reach of their intended destination, Montmédy.

The entire event is thrillingly recounted by Lady Antonia Fraser in her book Marie Antoinette: The Journey.

1819 - The U.S. vessel SS Savannah arrived at Liverpool; although it was the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, most of the journey was made under sail.

1837 - Queen Victoria ascended to the throne following the death of her uncle, William IV - having turned 18 just one day shy of four weeks earlier, on May 24th. She received the news from William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Conyngham just after 6 AM in her sitting room at Kensington Palace. For all the upheaval her young accession brought about, the fact that she was 18 at the time did spare the country from a regency - which would have been dominated by Victoria's overbearing mother, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duchess' closest advisor, the sinister John Conroy; the throne also delivered the young Queen from the personal influence of her mother as well, which would have been as much of a relief for Her Majesty as it was frustrating for the Duchess.

For further reading may the Pop Culture Institute recommend Her Little Majesty, by Carrolly Erickson.

1862 - Barbu Catargiu, the Prime Minister of Romania, was assassinated.

1863 - West Virginia became the 35th US state.

1877 - Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario.

1893 - Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the brutal axe murder of her father and stepmother.

1919 - 150 people died in a fire at the Teatro Yaguez in the Puerto Rican town of Mayagüez.

1948 - Toast of the Town - which later became The Ed Sullivan Show - made its television debut.

1960 - Mali and Senegal were granted independence from France.

1979 - ABC News correspondent Bill Stewart was shot dead by a Nicaraguan soldier under the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle; the murder was caught on tape and sparked an international outcry against the regime.

1991 - The German Parliament moved the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

2001 - Pervez Musharaff became President of Pakistan.
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