POPnews - March 10th

[Today the Chinese occupiers of Tibet operate Lhasa's Potala Palace as a museum; until the flight into exile of the 14th Dalai Lama on this day in 1959 it served as his official residence. Begun by the 5th Dalai Lama, Lozang Gyatso, in 1645, it wouldn't be finished in 1694, 12 years after his death; it was the 6th Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, who was first to use it, which he did as a winter palace. Slightly damaged in the uprising of 1959, it was spared total destruction during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 by Zhou Enlai although as many 100,000 of its literary and artistic treasures were destroyed.]

1629 - England's King Charles I dissolved Parliament for the fourth and final time - which was nonetheless his Royal Prerogative - thereby beginning the Eleven Years Tyranny, during which era the King ruled without the advice of the 'people'.

1762 - French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son Marc-Antoine, died after being tortured on the Catherine wheel; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform, which would later lead to Calas' posthumous exoneration in March 1765, when it became clear the younger Calas had committed suicide and not been murdered.

1804 - A ceremony was conducted in St. Louis to formalize the Louisiana Purchase, thereby officially transferring ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.

1814 - Napoleon was defeated by the Prussian forces of Blücher at the Battle of Laon.

1831 - The French Foreign Legion was established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria.

1846 - Prince Osahito, fourth son of deceased Emperor Ninko of Japan, became Emperor Kōmei.

1848 - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified by the US Senate, thus ending the Mexican-American War.

1864 - The Red River Campaign began as Union troops under Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks reached Alexandria, Louisiana; there they would clash with a Confederate army led by Major-General Richard Taylor until May, with the aim of cutting off supply lines from Texas.

1893 - Côte d'Ivoire became a French colony.

1906 - The Courrières mine disaster - Europe's worst ever - killed 1099 miners in Northern France's Pas-de-Calais département.

1922 - Mahatma Gandhi was arrested in India; he was later tried for sedition and sentenced to six years in prison, although he would be released after only two years in February 1924 following an operation for appendicitis.

1945 - American forces conducted the firebombing of Tokyo; the resulting firestorm killed more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians.

1948 - The Indian Union Muslim League was founded by remnants of the old Muslim League.

1952 - Fulgencio Batista led a successful coup in Cuba.

1959 - An unsuccessful uprising against ten years of unlawful Chinese occupation in Lhasa - a pivotal moment in the Tibetan resistance movement - resulted in the massacre of thousands of Tibetans by occupying soldiers and the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama to the Indian city of Dharamsala. China continues its illegal occupation of Tibet to this day.

1969 - James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr; he recanted his guilty plea three days later, but pleaded guilty anyway and was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the crime, even though in later years the King family lobbied for his release.

1977 - Astronomers discovered rings around Uranus, which the planet's discoverer William Herschel first claimed to have seen in 1798; the same day those same scientists rediscovered how those jokes never gets old.

1990 - Prosper Avril was ousted 18 months after seizing power in Haiti following the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier; he was succeeded by Herard Abraham.

2006 - The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrived, appropriately enough, at Mars.
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POPnews - February 19th

[Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood is the longest-running series in the history of American public television; originally aired on National Educational Television, it transferred to PBS in 1970. Produced until August 2001, PBS removed it from its official programming schedule in September 2008, although some renegade stations continue to air the goings-on in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where the despotic rule of King Friday XIII still teaches the children of liberals to recognize actual tyranny when they see it - unlike the lessons they might glean from Fox News.]
197 CE - Roman Emperor Septimius Severus defeated the usurper Clodius Albinus at the Battle of Lugdunum (near modern-day Lyon); it was the bloodiest battle ever fought between Roman armies, but the Emperor's victory over his foe - who was killed in battle - assured him an uncontested throne.

1594 - Having already inherited the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through his mother Catherine Jagellonica, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa was crowned King of Sweden, succeeding his father John III.

1600 - The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina exploded in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.

1674 - England and the Netherlands signed the Peace of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War; one provision of note in the agreement transferred control of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, at which time it was renamed New York.

1807 - Former US Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested for treason in Alabama and confined to Fort Stoddert for his part in the Burr Conspiracy.

1819 - British explorer William Smith discovered the South Shetland Islands, claiming them in the name of King George III.

1846 - Following its annexation by the United States, the Republic of Texas formally transferred power, and the State of Texas was born.

1847 - The Donner Party was rescued.

1864 - The Knights of Pythias were founded in Washington, DC, by Justus H. Rathbone.

1878 - Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

1913 - For the first time prizes were included in boxes of Cracker Jack.

1937 - During a public ceremony at the Viceregal Palace (the former Imperial Residence) in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, two Eritrean nationalists named Abraha Deboch and Mogus Asgedom attempted to kill viceroy Rodolfo Graziani with a number of grenades; following the failure of the plot to kill Graziani he became known as 'the Butcher of Ethiopia'.

1942 - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, allowing the US military to relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps.

1963 - The publication of Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique launched the reawakening of the Feminist Movement in the United States as women's organizations and consciousness-raising groups began to spread.

1968 - Mister Rogers' Neighborhood made its television debut; in all, 895 episodes were made before the show went off the air in 2001. An earlier incarnation, called simply Mister Rogers, began airing on the CBC in 1962; one of the puppeteers on that show was Ernie Coombs, better known (at least among Canadians) as Mr. Dressup.

1985 - The British soap EastEnders made its television debut in the UK as part of a rebranding effort by BBC1; it was an instant success.

1986 - The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station; it remained aloft until March 2001, at which point it de-orbited.

2001 - A museum dedicated to its bombing opened at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City; a national monument was opened on the site of the 1995 attack in October 1997.

2006 - The Rolling Stones gave a free concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for an estimated 1.3 million people.
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POPnews - January 31st

[As seen from the air the island nation of Nauru doesn't look like much - and it isn't; still, the once-rich island, famed for its phosphate, remains a tropical paradise, and despite rudimentary health care and reticent locals it's still a better bet to visit than a lot of places I could name, but won't.]
314 CE - The papal reign of Sylvester I began; he succeeded Pope Miltiades, who'd died on January 10th.

1606 - Guy Fawkes was executed for his role in the Gunpowder Plot.

1746 - The first clinic specializing in the treatment of venereal disease was opened at London Lock Hospital.

1814 - Gervasio Antonio de Posadas became Supreme Director of Argentina.

1846 - Following the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown on the east bank of the Milwaukee River and Kilbourntown on the west were united as Milwaukee.

1919 - The Battle of George Square occurred in Glasgow between the Scottish TUC and Clyde Workers' Committee and City of Glasgow Police over the forty-hour work week; despite many injuries (some to women and children) no fatalities were reported, and afterwards workers were granted a 47-hour work week.

1929 - The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky to Alma Ata (now in Kazakhstan); he would be expelled to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and his son Lev Sedov.

1930 - 3M began marketing Scotch tape.

1936 - The Green Hornet debuted on the NBC Blue radio network.

1958 - The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit made the first space age discovery when Explorer 1 was used by James Van Allen to discover the Van Allen radiation belt.

1961 - Ham the Chimp traveled into outer space on board the Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket as part of NASA's Project Mercury.

1966 - The Soviet Union launched its unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.

1968 - Nauru declared its independence from Australia.

1969 - The body of nursing student Gail Miller was discovered by Larry Fisher; she had been raped then brutally murdered before being dumped in a Saskatoon alley. Arrested for the crime was a lodger of Fisher's, 17-year-old David Milgaard, who was convicted one year later to the day. Milgaard served 23 years in jail before his release in 1992; in 1997 he was exonerated by DNA evidence, and Fisher himself was convicted of the crime after more than 30 years.

1971 - Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off aboard a Saturn V rocket as part of the Apollo 14 Mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

2001 - In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicted one Libyan and acquitted another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which caused a December 1988 crash at Lockerbie, Scotland.

2003 - The Waterfall rail accident occurred near the Australian town of Waterfall, New South Wales.

2007 - Under the aegis of Operation Gamble, eight suspects (including mastermind Parviz Khan) were arrested in Birmingham, accused of plotting the kidnap, holding, and eventual beheading of a serving Muslim British soldier in Iraq. Khan would eventually be sentenced to life in prison for his role in the plot.

2009 - At least 113 people were killed and over 200 injured in Kenya following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.
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POPnews - January 28th

[An unfortunate allergy to the excessively mannered drawing-room comedies of Jane Austen has always prevented me from actually finishing a whole one of her novels, a dire situation only partially ameliorated by their numerous film and television adaptations; I can, without too much trouble, get through a whole one of them, however - such as Ang Lee's 1995 film Sense and Sensibility (which won an Oscar for its screenwriting star Emma Thompson) and this 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice starring the all-too lovely Keira Knightley - mainly because once my brain glazes over at the intricacies of Regency-era social discourse I can continue to admire the costumes, scenery, art direction and/or whatever bit of scrummy is portraying the cause of the heroine's busted corset stays, in this case Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy.]
814 CE - Charlemagne died; he was succeeded by his son Louis the Pious.

1077 - Following the Walk to Canossa, the excommunication of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV was lifted as easily as the gates to Canossa Castle were opened to him, settling the Investiture Controversy between himself and Pope Gregory VII.

1521 - The Diet of Worms began, presided over by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; it would last until May 25th, and in the process judge Martin Luther guilty of Protestantism for the heresies apparently contained in his 95 Theses, which had already been condemned by Pope Leo X in the papal bull Exsurge Domine, issued the year before.

1547 - England's King Henry VIII died; he was succeeded by his nine year old son, who became Edward VI, and the first of that country's truly Protestant Kings.

1573 - The articles of Warsaw Confederation were signed, sanctioning freedom of religion in Poland.

1621 - Pope Paul V died; he would be succeeded by Gregory XV on February 9th.

1624 - Britain's first Caribbean colony, at Saint Kitts, was founded by Sir Thomas Warner.

1754 - Horace Walpole coined the word 'serendipity' in a letter to Horace Mann.

1813 - Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, was first published in the United Kingdom by T. Egerton of Whitehall.

1846 - The Battle of Aliwal, marking a turning point in the First Anglo-Sikh War, saw Ranjodh Singh Majithia defeated by the British troops of Sir Harry Smith.

1878 - Yale Daily News became the first daily college newspaper in the United States.

1902 - The Carnegie Institution was founded in Washington, DC, with a $10 million gift from robber baron turned philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

1917 - The first municipally owned streetcars began service in San Francisco.

1922 - The Knickerbocker Storm - the worst snowfall in the history of Washington, DC - caused the roof of the Knickerbocker Theater to collapse, which is the single most fatal event in the city's history.

1932 - Japanese forces attacked Shanghai.

1933 - The name Pakistan was coined by Choudhary Rehmat Ali Khan and was accepted by the Indian Muslims, who then adopted it for the Pakistan Movement, which was seeking independence from the United Kingdom.

1965 - The current design of the Flag of Canada - chosen by an act of Parliament after several years of occasionally acrimonious debate - was proclaimed by Elizabeth II in her role as Queen of Canada; designed by George F. G. Stanley and John Matheson, it was first flown on February 15th of that year, which is marked by the little-celebrated holiday National Flag of Canada Day.

1977 - The first day of the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977 - which affected much of Upstate New York, but Buffalo, Syracuse, Watertown, and surrounding areas especially - with each of these areas accumulating close to 10 feet of snow in a single day.

1986 - The Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on mission STS-51-L.
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POPnews: September 23rd

[Nixon gave his so-called 'Checkers speech' to absolve President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the responsibility for removing him from the ticket owing to a financial scandal of Nixon's during that year's election campaign; Nixon's brilliant manipulation of the media is an object lesson in sleaze and therefore primo Republican porno. Only the first part is shown above... If you care to stomach the rest of it - like I did - here it is. Don't say I didn't warn you.]
1122 - The Concordat of Worms was signed by Pope Calixtus II and Holy Roman Emperor Henry V; it would later be confirmed by the First Council of the Lateran, which met in Rome in March 1123. Its purpose, of course, was to smooth over any wrinkles in the relationship between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, whilst one of its unintended benefits was in germinating the seed of nation-based sovereignty - as upheld by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

1459 - The Battle of Blore Heath - the first major battle in England's Wars of the Roses - was fought (appropriately enough) at Blore Heath in Staffordshire; it gave the forces of the House of York under Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury a victory over the House of Lancaster's John Sutton, 1st Baron Dudley and James Touchet, 5th Baron Audley (who perished in battle).

1641 - The Merchant Royal, carrying a treasure valued today at over $1 billion US, was lost at sea off Land's End en route from Cadiz to London; the treasure it carried included at least 100,000 pounds of gold, 400 bars of Mexican silver, and nearly 500,000 pieces of eight and other coins. Eighteen men also drowned in the sinking, while the ship's master Captain Limbrey and 40 of his crew got away in boats and were picked up by Dover Merchant... But was the treasure also taken aboard, or is it at the bottom of the ocean still?

1779 - During the American Revolution a squadron commanded by John Paul Jones on board the USS Bonhomme Richard won the Battle of Flamborough Head, off the Yorkshire coast of England, against two British warships, HMS Serapis and HMS Countess of Scarborough.

1780 - British Major John André was arrested as a spy by John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart and David Williams, exposing Benedict Arnold's change of sides and the plot to sell West Point to the British for £20,000. Upon learning of André's arrest, Arnold barely managed to escape aboard the Royal Navy's HMS Vulture.

1806 - Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis from their first expedition into the American West.

1818 - Border demarcation markers for Neutral Moresnet were formally installed; although the territory - wedged between Germany and Belgium - ceased to exist when it was absorbed by the latter in 1920, the World Congress of Esperanto wants to make it their homeland, with its capital at Kelmis.

1846 - The planet Neptune was discovered by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier and British astronomer John Couch Adams; their discovery was later confirmed by German Johann Gottfried Galle.

1868 - Puerto Rico's Grito de Lares (or 'Lares Revolt') occurred; the short-lived uprising against Spanish rule, planned by Ramón Emeterio Betances and Segundo Ruiz Belvis, was the first in that island's history.

1875 - Henry McCarty - aka Henry Antrim aka William Bonney aka Billy the Kid - was first arrested.

1932 - The Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd were merged, and renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1943 - Italy's so-called Salò Republic was born; technically a puppet state of Nazi Germany, it was headed by none other than Benito Mussolini.

1951 - Britain's King George VI underwent surgery to remove most of his left lung.

1952 - Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon made his Checkers speech.

1962 - The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts opened in New York City with the completion of its first building, the Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) home of the New York Philharmonic; the glittering evening was captured on videotape by CBS, and later broadcast as Opening Night at Lincoln Center.

1969 - The Chicago Eight trial opened; seven defendants - Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner - faced various charges arising from the acts of civil disobedience caused by them during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. An eighth defendant, Bobby Seale, was sent to jail in the midst of the proceedings by Judge Julius Hoffman due to Seale's various outbursts in court.

1973 - Juan Perón was returned to power in Argentina.

1980 - Bob Marley gave his final concert at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh.

2005 - The FBI killed terrorist Filiberto Ojeda Rios, head of the Boricua Popular Army or Los Macheteros, on Plan Bonito in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico; Ojeda Rios was wanted for his part in the September 1983 Wells Fargo depot robbery.
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Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett: What A Pair

If only drippy arch-sentimentalists Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett had been half as fun as Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson, who play them here during the second season of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, maybe they wouldn't need to be made fun of as much as they are in this.

Anyway, it was on this day in 1846 he spirited her out of her father's house in London's Wimpole Street, thence to St Marylebone Parish Church, and then off to Italy where she lived the bulk of the rest of her life in connubial bliss before dying in June 1861.
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POPnews: September 12th

[Since 1983 a replica of the cave at Lascaux has been open specifically for tourists - located 200m away from the original - in order to spare some 16,000 priceless images the worst ravages of tourism: namely creeping black mold, exposure to carbon dioxide, and having to spend 40 years in close proximity to a horde of unwashed mouth-breathers.]
1213 - During the Albigensian Crusade England's Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, killed King Peter II of Aragon during the Battle of Muret.

1846 - Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning.

1847 - The Mexican-American War's Battle of Chapultepec began, during which Chapultepec Castle was taken from Mexico's Nicolás Bravo by American commander Winfield Scott.

1848 - Switzerland became a Federal state.

1857 - The SS Central America sank about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon; the ship had been carrying 13-15 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush, and the loss of bullion triggered the Panic of 1857.

1874 - British Columbia's District of Maple Ridge was founded, a dozen years before Vancouver; now Vancouver is a world-class city and Maple Ridge... Uh... Isn't.

1910 - Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 received its world premiere in Munich (with a chorus of 852 singers and an orchestra of 171 players); Mahler's assistant conductor during rehearsals was Bruno Walter, who later made a name for himself as a maestro.

1940 - The world's single greatest trove of Paleolithic art was discovered near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne département, by four teenagers - Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas - as well as Ravidat's dog, Robot.

1943 - Benito Mussolini - Fascist dictator of Italy between October 1922 and July 1943 - was rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi during Operation Eiche by the German commando forces of Otto Skorzeny.

1959 - Bonanza, the first regularly-scheduled TV program presented in color, premiered on NBC; it would last until 1973 and make a star of Michael Landon - although it was Pernell Roberts who used to keep me up at night, if you know what I mean...

1964 - Utah's Canyonlands National Park was established.

1974 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by the Derg.

1977 - Steven Biko died of injuries received while in custody in South Africa; Biko's story came to light due to the work of the crusading journalist Helen Zille and, of course, crusading pop star Peter Gabriel.

1983 - A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, was robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros during an operation called Aguila Blanca (White Eagle).

1992 - NASA launched the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission; on board were Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark C. Lee and N. Jan Davis, the first married couple in space. So we pretty much know what their mission, um, entailed...

1994 - Frank Corder fatally crashed a stolen Cessna into the South Lawn of the White House; he'd intended to crash it directly into the Executive Mansion, but owing to his intoxication at the time he thankfully pulled off an epic fail and missed. He was the only casualty. President Bill Clinton and his family weren't even in residence at the time, due to renovations, and were staying instead across the street at Blair House; anyway, Corder's friends said he had no grudge against the President, and may only have wanted to commit a very high profile suicide.

2001 - US President George W. Bush declared War on Terror, marking the first time a nation ever declared war on a concept; tyranny, rather than hilarity, ensued...

2005 - Hong Kong Disneyland opened in Penny's Bay on Lantau Island.

2007 - Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada was convicted of the crime of plunder.
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POPnews: September 10th

[If this photo of Mike the Headless Chicken with his executioner-exploiter Lloyd Olsen doesn't turn you into a vegetarian, nothing will; the story behind the picture - literally, click on the picture, it's back there - is too crazy not to be true.]

506 CE - The bishops of Visigothic Gaul met at the Council of Agde under the stewardship of Caesarius of Arles to deal with 'ecclesiastical discipline' - which sounds way kinkier than it is.

1167 - Empress Matilda - daughter of England's King Henry I, widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, wife of Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, mother of another English King (Henry II), and would-be Queen-regnant of England herself, whose abortive attempts to claim her father's throne from her cousin King Stephen led to a civil war in England called The Anarchy - died.

1419 - John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was assassinated by adherents of the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France; turns out being fearless isn't so great for your health after all.

1547 - The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh - the last full scale military confrontation between England and Scotland - resulted in a decisive victory for the forces of Edward VI, commanded by the Duke of Somerset, over those of Scotland's Earl of Arran.

1608 - John Smith was elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia.

1823 - Simón Bolívar was named President of Peru.

1846 - Elias Howe was granted a patent for the sewing machine.

1858 - George Mary Searle discovered the asteroid 55 Pandora; however, it's not the largest object in our galaxy named Pandora, not by a long shot. There's a moon of Saturn named Pandora, and then there's this...

1897 - During the so-called Lattimer Massacre a sheriff's posse killed twenty unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania.

1919 - The Republic of Austria and the Allies of World War I signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which recognized the independence of the former Austro-Hungarian possessions of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs.

1945 - Mike the Headless Chicken was decapitated; he survived for another 18 months by being fed with an eyedropper via his neck before eventually choking to death at a motel in Phoenix.

1961 - At the Italian Grand Prix a crash caused the death of German driver Wolfgang von Trips and 15 spectators, who joined him when his Ferrari crashed into Jim Clark's Lotus.

1967 - Gibraltar voted to remain a British holding rather than join Spain.

1974 - Portugal recognized the independence of Guinea-Bissau, which had been declared in September 1973.

1977 - Hamida Djandoubi was the last person in France to be executed by the guillotine. [Insert tasteless Mike the Headless Chicken joke here.]

2000 - The musical Cats closed on Broadway; they've been trying to get that smell out of the Winter Garden Theatre ever since.

2001 - Ignorance was bliss.

2003 - Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was fatally stabbed while shopping outside the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in Stockholm by a man later identified as Mijailo Mijailović; she died the following day.

2008 - The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in the history of mankind, was powered up in Geneva, although it did not bring about the end of the universe as some nutjobs - the same ones who were to blame for all that Y2K mishegas, I'll bet - had feared.
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POPnews (US) - June 15th

[Arlington House - formerly the estate of the family of Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary Anna Lee (nee Custis, a descendant of Martha Washington) - was seized by the US government in 1864, which claimed that taxes hadn't been paid on it; it was then decided to bury the Union dead on its grounds to ensure that Lee would never return there to live. While neither General Lee nor his wife ever sued for the return of their property their eldest son Custis Lee did; despite $26,800 having already been paid for the property, after having the land returned to him in 1877 Lee turned around and sold it to the US government for a tidy profit - $150,000! The Greek Revival mansion with its views of the Potomac River and the National Mall is now the centerpiece of an idyllic tribute to the country's most illustrious dead, including President John F. Kennedy, and even serves as a memorial to Robert E. Lee himself.]
1752 - Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is electricity. 

1775 - George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. 

1804 - New Hampshire approved the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution, thereby ratifying it.

1836 - Arkansas became the 25th US state.

1846 - The Oregon Treaty established the 49th parallel as the border between the United States and Canada, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

1859 - Due to an ambiguity in the Oregon Treaty concerning the ownership of the San Juan Islands the 'Northwestern Boundary Dispute' - more colourfully known as the Pig War - erupted between American and British Columbian settlers on the treaty's 13th anniversary.

1864 - Arlington National Cemetery was established when 200 acres (0.8 km²) around Arlington House - formerly owned by Confederate general Robert E. Lee - were officially set aside for that use by US Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1867 - The Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode gold mine was located in Deer Lodge County, Montana.

1877 - Henry Ossian Flipper became the first African-American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1904 - A fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York City's East River killed more than 1000.

1920 - Three black employees of the James Robinson Circus - Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie - were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota - not only for a crime they didn't commit but for a crime that was never committed by anyone; needless to say, no one was ever convicted for the very real crimes which actually were committed that night, although three men were later sent up to Stillwater State Prison for rioting. A nine-year-old boy named Abram Zimmerman witnessed the murders and eventually passed the memory onto his son, who in 1965 wrote a song about the event entitled Desolation Row. The city took nearly 40 years more to finally build its own tribute to the victims; when it was unveiled in October 2003, though, the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial became the largest anti-lynching monument in the United States.

1934 - The Great Smoky Mountains National Park - on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina - was established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

1978 - Jordan's King Hussein married American Lisa Halaby, who took the name Noor-al-Hussein, or 'light of Hussein'.
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POPnews - June 14th

[As depicted by Jean Froissart in his famous Chronicles (which principally concerns itself with the events of the Hundred Years' War, albeit from a French perspective) peasants from Essex and Kent opposed to the poll tax stormed into the capital across London Bridge and temporarily seized the Tower of London - summarily executing Simon of Sudbury, the Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as the Lord Treasurer Robert de Hales, both of whom were behind the tax's implementation and had taken refuge there in the (mistaken, as it turns out) belief they would be safe within its sturdy walls; whether or not the rebels had been let in to the Tower by sympathetic keepers remains one of history's great unanswered questions... Meanwhile, in nearby Westminster, another group was responsible for destroying John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace on the Strand.]

1381 - England's 15 year-old King Richard II met with the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt - including a face-to-face confrontation with Wat Tyler - on Blackheath, near London; at the meeting Tyler was mortally wounded by London mayor William Walworth, and without Tyler's leadership the revolt soon dispersed.

1645 - At the Battle of Naseby - the key battle of the first English Civil War - 12,000 Cavalier troops loyal to King Charles I were badly beaten by 15,000 Roundheads of the New Model Army commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.

1775 - At the outset of the American Revolution the Continental Army was established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the US Army.

1777 - The Stars and Stripes was adopted by Congress for use as the American Flag, today the source of the little-observed Flag Day.

1807 - Emperor Napoleon I's French Grande Armee defeated its Russian counterpart at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (near the modern-day Russian enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1821 - Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrendered his throne and realm to Ismail Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, ending the existence of that Sudanese kingdom.

1846 - The Bear Flag Revolt began when English-speaking settlers in Sonoma, California, started a rebellion against the Mexican government of Alta California and proclaimed the California Republic.

1919 - John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown departed St. John's, Newfoundland, on the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

1934 - James J. Braddock scored one of the most upsetting victories of his boxing career - not to mention riveted an America deep in the throes of the Great Depression - by defeating the 'Ozark Cyclone' John 'Corn' Griffin in three rounds. The bout marked the beginning of one of boxing's greatest comeback stories - for Braddock, that is; for Griffin... Not so much. In the days after the fight noted wag Damon Runyon dubbed Braddock 'Cinderella Man', much to his manager Joe Gould's delight; and to think it only took seventy years to be made into a movie!

1937 - The US House of Representatives passed the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act effectively rendering pot illegal.

1941 - The Soviet Union's so-called June Deportation - a series of mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians - began.

1951 - UNIVAC I was dedicated by the US Census Bureau.

1952 - The keel of the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus was laid by US President Harry S. Truman.

1954 - US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill into law placing the words 'under God' into the Pledge of Allegiance, thereby ruining the nation and all it once stood for.

1962 - Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler, murdered his first victim, Anna Slesers.

1966 - The Vatican announced the abolition of its Index Librorum Prohibitorum - an index of prohibited books originally instituted in 1557.

1967 - Mariner 5 was launched toward Venus.

1982 - The Falklands War ended when Argentine forces in the capital Stanley unconditionally surrendered to Britain.

2002 - The near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN came within 75,000 miles (120,000 km) of the Earth, which is about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
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POPnews - May 13th

[Of all the things to be thrown onto pyres and consigned to oblivion by Savonarola and his cronies - from simple hair ribbons and cosmetics to priceless and irreplaceable works of art - the first and foremost, namely himself, was not; for daring to act in judgement against men (which by his own admission is ultimately the duty of God) his own bonfire would have to wait, but come it would, and it would make a very pretty flame indeed...]
1497 - Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola; a critic of the decadent papacy, Savonarola's crusade extended to whatever elements of Renaissance culture he considered immoral, leading him to engage in book burnings, undertaking the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities, and the destruction of paintings containing pagan imagery by the likes of Botticelli and Michelangelo. Far be it from me to agree with a Pope - especially such a decadent and corrupt one - but Savonarola was more a tyrant than a culture warrior, and his comeuppance just short of one year later came several years too late to save the numerous treasures he'd destroyed.

1568 - At the Battle of Langside the forces of Mary, Queen of Scots (commanded by the Duke of Chatelherault) were defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Regent of Scotland on behalf of Mary's infant son James VI and her half-brother.

1619 - Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was executed in The Hague after having been accused of treason for his support of William the Silent and efforts to liberate Holland from Spanish control.

1787 - Captain Arthur Phillip sailed from Portsmouth in command of the First Fleet, which was charged with establishing a penal colony in Australia with eleven ships full of convicts.

1846 - The Mexican-American War was declared by President James K. Polk with the approval of Congress, which was how they did it in those days.

1848 - Finland's national anthem, Maame - with music by Fredrik Pacius and lyrics by Finn Johan Ludvig Runeberg - was first performed.

1861 - The Great Comet of 1861 was discovered by John Tebbutt in Australia; it came so close to Earth the planet passed through its tail, obscuring the sun even in the daytime. It will next return in 2269.

1888 - With the passage of the Lei Áurea or 'Golden Law' Brazil unconditionally abolished slavery.

1909 - The first Giro d'Italia took place in Milan; Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna was the winner.

1912 - Britain's Royal Flying Corps - the forerunner of the Royal Air Force - was established.

1939 - The first commercial FM radio station in the United States was launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut; the station later became WDRC-FM.

1940 - As the German army crossed the Meuse River and the Battle of France began, Winston Churchill made his 'blood, toil, tears, and sweat' speech to the House of Commons. Meanwhile Queen Wilhelmina fled the Nazi invasion of Holland aboard the HMS Hereward to lead the Dutch government in exile from London while her daughter and heir Princess Juliana took her children (Princesses Beatrix and Irene) to live in Ottawa for their safety.

1948 - The Kfar Etzion massacre was committed by Arab infantry, the day before the state of Israel issued its Declaration of Independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War began.

1952 - The Rajya Sabha - the upper house of the Parliament of India - held its first sitting.

1954 - The Anti-National Service Riots in Singapore were led by Chinese students between the ages of 18 and 20 who were unwilling to be drafted into compulsory military service.

1967 - Dr. Zakir Hussain became 3rd President of India, and the first Muslim President of Indian Union.

1969 - A series of race riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur which later came to be known as the May 13 Incident.

1985 - Police in Philadelphia stormed the headquarters of an African-American anti-technology organization called MOVE in order to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members in the process; during the raid police also dropped a bomb from a helicopter, destroying the homes of 250 city residents in the process.

2000 - In the Dutch city of Enschede, a fireworks factory exploded, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage.
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