POPnews - March 12th

[It doesn't really matter what I write here, does it? In fact, I can even forego a caption altogether since the succulent image of this Girl Scout cookie - called a Samoa, probably because once you have one you want samoa - came on screen. Well, just click on the image and you can enjoy one or two (boxes, let's face it) as soon as those short little legs can carry her and her iconic badge-studded sash/unflattering green smock combo to your home or office.]
1832 - Filippo Taglioni's ballet La Sylphide had its première performance at the Paris Opéra.

1868 - Henry James O'Farrell attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria's second son Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, during a royal visit to a Sailor's Home at Clontarf (near Sydney) by firing a revolver into his back. Not only was he unsuccessful, it was only the quick actions of the Prince's police escort who saved O'Farrell from suffering rough justice on the spot; after two weeks in hospital the Prince returned to England, having made a full recovery, whereas his putative assassin wasn't so lucky. He was executed on April 21st despite the insanity plea of his barrister Butler Cole Aspinall and even the intercession of the Prince himself!

1881 - Andrew Watson made his Scotland debut as the world's first black international football player and captain.

1894 - Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time, allowing busy people the opportunity to get tooth decay and diabetes without having to waste time standing at a counter in a drug store.

1912 - The Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the United States.

1913 - On the first Canberra Day (today celebrated in the Australian Capital Territory on the second Monday in March - same as Commonwealth Day) the future capital of Australia was officially named Canberra by Lady Denman, wife of the Governor-General; Melbourne would remain the temporary capital until 1927 while the new capital was still under construction.

1928 - California's St. Francis Dam - built as part of the Los Angeles Aqueduct - failed, killing 400 people in Santa Clarita.

1930 - Mahatma Gandhi led the Dandi March 200 miles from Sabarmati Ashram to the sea at the village of Dandi to protest the British monopoly on salt.

1938 - Nazi troops occupied Austria during the Anschluss; the country's annexation was declared the following day.

1947 - The Truman Doctrine was proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism.

1967 - Suharto assumed the Presidency of Indonesia, having taken over from Sukarno.

1968 - Mauritius achieved its independence from Britain; on the same day in 1992 the country became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.

1969 - Beatle Paul McCartney married photographer Linda Eastman at London's Marylebone Register Office.

1971 - The March 12 Memorandum was sent to the Demirel government of Turkey, prompting their mass resignation; this second coup in the history of modern Turkey came 11 years after the first one.

1993 - 13 bombs exploded in Mumbai, killing about 300 and injuring hundreds more; the attacks are thought to have been plotted by Dawood Ibrahim, head of the organized crime syndicate D-Company.

1994 - The Church of England ordained its first female priests.

2003 - Zoran Đinđić, Prime Minister of Serbia, was assassinated in Belgrade.

2004 - South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun was impeached by its national assembly, a first in that country's history.

2005 - Tung Chee Hwa, the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong, stepped down from his post after his resignation was approved by the Chinese central government.
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"Stay (I Missed You)" by Lisa Loeb

Birthday wishes go out today to Lisa Loeb - the pixie-ish, bespectacled singer-songwriter whose breakthrough debut single Stay (I Missed You) marked the first time a performer hit the #1 spot without benefit of a recording contract.

Loeb has since parlayed her five best-selling albums into her own non-profit foundation; the Camp Lisa Foundation helps underprivileged kids have the experience of a lifetime by sending them to summer camp.
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POPnews - March 7th

[Thankfully, my inborn skepticism of Abrahamic religion allows me unlimited covetousness - which is now directed, in part, at an iPod Nano; but only because my iPod Shuffle (his name is L'il Freeek - ironic, since he's actually a big freak) is lonely and wants a friend. Oh, if only the Pop Culture Institute had a generous benefactor willing to buy me one. A black one. If only... Plus, think of how good it would be for the economy!]
161 CE - Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius died and was succeeded by co-Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, making for an unprecedented political arrangement in the history of the Roman Empire.

321 CE - The first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine I, decreed that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) would be a day of rest in the Empire.

1724 - Pope Innocent XIII died, only to be succeeded by Benedict XIII on May 29th.

1814 - Napoleon and Michel Ney defeated Prussia's Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Craonne.

1827 - Ellen Turner - a wealthy heiress in Cheshire, England - was abducted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a future politician in colonial New Zealand, in the so-called Shrigley Abduction.

1850 - US Senator Daniel Webster gave his Seventh of March speech in which he endorsed the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell was granted patent US 174,465 for an invention he called the telephone, beating Antonio Meucci - who couldn't afford the $10 fee - by just four hours; a similar controversy, involving Elisha Gray, has long dogged Bell's 'discovery' of the telephone.

1912 - Roald Amundsen announced that his expedition had reached the South Pole the previous December 14th, having arrived at Hobart.

1914 - Prince William of Wied arrived in Tirana to begin his long reign as Prince of Albania; 180 days later he went into exile, although his reign didn't officially end until the last day of January 1925, when the country was declared a republic.

1951 - United Nations troops led by American General Matthew Ridgeway launched Operation Ripper against Chinese troops during the Korean War.

1965 - In Selma, Alabama, state troopers and local law enforcement forcefully broke up a group of 600 civil rights marchers; the event was televised and was dubbed Bloody Sunday.

1971 - Sheikh Mujibur Rahman called for the independence of Bangladesh at a speech given at the Ramna Race Course in the capital, Dhaka.

1972 - Norah Willis Michener - wife of Canada's 20th Governor-General Roland Michener - gave 13 sq km to the Northwest Territories for the establishment of a park, which was later named the Norah Willis Michener Game Preserve in her honour.

1975 - 17-year-old Lesley Whittle was found, dead, hung by her neck from a wire at the bottom of a drainage shaft; the young heiress* had been abducted by Donald Neilson on January 14th, whereupon she was held for £50,000 ransom. Owing to a series of mix-ups the ransom wasn't delivered, and so Whittle was murdered.

*Her father George died in 1967, leaving her £82,000 - almost half a million pounds in today's money; prior to his death he'd owned one of England's most successful coach companies.

1985 - The charity single We Are the World - recorded on January 28th - was released internationally.

1986 - Six weeks after the Challenger Disaster, on January 28th, the USS Preserver located (via sonar) what they hoped was the crew cabin of Space Shuttle Challenger on the ocean floor; divers confirmed the find the following day, and then arranged for the remains of fallen astronauts Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik and Christa McAuliffe to be brought to the surface. NASA announced the discovery the day after that, March 9th.

1994 - The US Supreme Court ruled in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. that parodies of an original work are generally covered by the doctrine of fair use.

2004 - The centre-right New Democracy party, led by Kostas Karamanlis, won that year's national elections in Greece.

2006 - Apple Inc. was granted a patent - D516, 576 - for its latest incarnation of the greatest device of the 21st Century so far, the iPod; bless their hearts, and all hail the Dear Leader... The first iPods went on sale in October 2001, and have since saved untold lives by effectively drowning out who knows how many insipid cell phone conversations on public transit, for which its inventors deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
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POPnews (US) - March 4th: Yankee Doodle Dandy Special Edition

[Since March 4th was the Inauguration Day of every US President from Washington's second term in 1793 to FDR's first in 1933 - which point I've made about twelve times today by now - and since this is also the day that the fledgling Republic first began operating under its new Constitution in 1789, I felt smug enough to award this edition of POPnews (US) with a special subtitle. Despite having done this now two days in a row, the POPnews subtitle is actually a rare and prestigious thing; not like being named a Gratuitous Brunette or People's Sexiest Man Alive at all, but rather like earning a similar title from The New Yorker.]

1681 - England's King Charles II granted a land charter to William Penn for the area that would later become Pennsylvania.

1776 - During the American Revolution a force of 1200 under General George Washington 'fortified' Dorchester Heights - wresting control over the port of Boston from Great Britain's General William Howe.

1789 - The first US Congress met in New York City and declared the new US Constitution to be in effect, making this the first day the US government was in operation under the Constitution.

1791 - The Republic of Vermont became the 14th US state.

1794 - The 11th Amendment to the US Constitution - limiting judicial powers over foreign nationals as well as the rights of individuals to sue states - was passed by Congress.

1797 - In the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times, John Adams was inaugurated, succeeding George Washington.

1814 - American and British troops clashed in Ontario at the Battle of Longwoods, between London and Thamesville; the battle is considered an American victory, even though American Captain Andrew Holmes withdrew his forces to Detroit following the battle.

1837 - The city of Chicago was incorporated.

1845 - James Knox Polk was inaugurated as the 11th President.

1861 - The first national flag of the Confederate States of America (the Stars and Bars) was adopted - on the same day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th President.

1863 - The Idaho Territory was created by an Act of Congress and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, with its first capital at Lewiston.

1865 - The third (and last) national flag of the Confederate States of America was adopted, shortly before its surrender to the Union.

1925 - Calvin Coolidge became the first President to have his inauguration broadcast on radio.

1929 - Charles Curtis became the first Native-American Vice President on the occasion of Herbert Hoover's inauguration; despite this, Curtis' Indian name was not 'Executive Branch'.

1933 - Frances Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor, first female member of the Cabinet.

1959 - Pioneer 4, launched to detect lunar radiation, missed the Moon and thus detected no such thing, although as far as anyone knows it's still orbiting the sun.

1994 - Space Shuttle mission STS-62 (the 16th for NASA's ill-fated Columbia) launched into orbit; an otherwise routine mission, it was filmed for the Discovery Channel, rendered all the more poignant after Columbia's February 2003 disintegration.

1998 - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the case of Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services (with Justice Clarence Thomas concurring) that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.

2006 - A final contact attempt was made with Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network, 34 years and a day after its March 1972 launch; no response was received.
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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 14th

[When it came to tit-for-tat retaliations surely neither the the Allies nor the Nazis could have hoped for a worse Hell on Earth than Dresden; once the cultural and artistic capital of Germany, the morning after the city was relentlessly firebombed it was home to cinders and little more...
Yet from its ashes it has risen, reborn!]
842 CE - Charles the Bald and Louis the German swore the Oaths of Strasbourg in both German and French, allying West Francia and East Francia.

1556 - Protestant Thomas Cranmer - Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI - was declared a heretic by their Catholic successor, Mary I; he would be burned at the stake five weeks later.

1779 - Captain James Cook was killed by native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.

1859 - Oregon became the 33rd US state.

1912 - Arizona became the 48th US state.

1945 - On the second day of an intensive two-day operation Allied forces began a devastating aerial fire-bombing of Dresden; the event was later famously recounted in Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

1949 - The Asbestos Strike began, marking the beginning of Quebec's Quiet Revolution against the tyranny and cronyism of Union Nationale Premier Maurice Duplessis.

1962 - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on a tour of the White House.

1966 - The Australian dollar was introduced on the day that country's currency was decimalized.

1979 - In Kabul, Muslim terrorists kidnapped Adolph Dubs, the American ambassador to Afghanistan; Dubs was later killed during the ensuing gun battle between his kidnappers and police.

1981 - A fire at Dublin's Stardust Nightclub killed 48.

1990 - 92 people were killed when Indian Airlines Flight 605 crashed near Bengaluru.

1994 - Andrei Chikatilo - also known as the Rostov Ripper - a Russian serial killer convicted of murdering 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990, was executed by a single bullet to the back of the head.

2005 - Lebanon's former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, was assassinated, prompting the country to once again fall into chaos.

(Although by tradition POPnews items are always an odd number - and I try my best to always include 19 items - in honour of Valentine's Day, today there are 14. ~ MSM)
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Pop History Moment: The Theft Of 'The Scream'

On this day in 1994 one of the world's best-known paintings, Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893), was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway; the crime occurred on the same day as the opening festivities for the 1994 Winter Olympics, held in Lillehammer.

The painting was recovered unharmed on May 7th of the same year following a sting operation by Norwegian and British police.
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POPnews - February 8th

[The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, has long fascinated storytellers - likely because Her Majesty's own flair for the dramatic was very much on display that morning; emerging from her chamber shrouded in black and clutching a Bible, once on the dais she threw off her cloak to reveal a crimson dress and a vast expanse of white neck and shoulder, to audible gasps... And that was just for starters! The most vivid portrayal of this moment in history I've ever seen was enacted by Samantha Morton in the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age; only time will tell if Scarlett Johansson can go her one better when she becomes the latest in a string of beautiful ladies to assay the role.]
421 CE - Constantius III became co-Emperor of the Western Roman Empire alongside his brother-in-law Honorius, having married Galla Placidia in 417 CE.

1587 - Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle for suspicion of having been involved in the Babington Plot to murder her cousin, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

1601 - Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, marched out of London's York House at the head of an army determined to force an audience with Elizabeth I - as vividly depicted in the 2005 miniseries Elizabeth I, in which Essex was played by Hugh Dancy and the Queen by Helen Mirren. The abortive Essex Rebellion was quickly crushed and Essex was tried, convicted, and executed for treason within three weeks.

1807 - Following the Battle of Eylau Napoleon defeated a Russian army under General Count von Benigssen.

1817 - Juan Gregorio de las Heras crossed the Andes from Argentina with an army to join José de San Martín in liberating Chile from Spanish rule.

1855 - The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appeared in southern Devon.

1879 - Sandford Fleming first proposed the adoption of Universal Standard Time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute in Toronto.

1887 - The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land in Oklahoma and divide it into individual allotments. Named for Massachusetts Senator Henry L. Dawes, the act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act; it remained on the books until 1934.

1904 - The Battle of Port Arthur - a surprise torpedo attack by Japanese Admiral Heihachiro Togo and Vice Admiral Shigeto Dewa against a Russian fleet commanded by Oskar Victorovich Stark and anchored at China's Port Arthur - incited the Russo-Japanese War.

1915 - D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation (based on Thomas Dixon's novel-cum-play The Clansman) had its world premiere in Los Angeles; the film glorifies that fine Christian organization the Ku Klux Klan and their efforts to protect the flower of white womanhood from the black man, yet offers no solutions as to how to protect those same women from their far more dangerous white male relatives.

1949 -Hungary's Jószef Cardinal Mindszenty was sentenced to life in prison for having committed treason against that country's Communist government, which exacted 'proof' of his treason under torture. He remained imprisoned until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

1952 - Elizabeth II proclaimed herself Queen of the United Kingdom in a ceremony at St. James's Palace in London.

1962 - At the so-called Charonne Massacre 9 trade unionists were killed by police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of Paris' Prefecture of Police.

1969 - The Allende Meteorite fell near Pueblito de Allende, in Mexico's Chihuahua state.

1974 - After 84 days in space, the crew of the first American space station Skylab returned to Earth; Skylab itself joined them in July 1979, when it famously burned up following re-entry of the Earth's atmosphere and scattered debris on the town of Esperance in Western Australia.

1983 - A dust storm hit Australia's second largest city, Melbourne - a result of the worst drought on record and following a day of severe weather conditions; within an hour the 320m deep dust cloud had enveloped the city, turning day to night, and serving as an ominous precursor to the Ash Wednesday fires which occurred one week later.

1986 - Arleigh McCree and his partner Officer Ronald Ball of the LAPD's Firearms and Explosives unit were killed while trying to dismantle two pipe bombs when they responded to a call in North Hollywood; at the time of his death McCree was recognized as one of the top explosives experts in the world.

1994 - London's Metropolitan Police Service announced an investigation into the death of Stephen Milligan, the Conservative MP for Eastleigh, who'd been found dead the previous day.

1996 - The Communications Decency Act, passed by the US Congress a week earlier, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
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"Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs" by The Cramps

On this day in 2009 Lux Interior, vocalist for The Cramps, died of a heart condition called aortic dissection; along with his wife of 37 years Poison Ivy, the pair were the only permanent members of the band whose skillful blending of punk, garage, and rockabilly not only helped to bring about psychobilly but made them fixtures in the scene that coalesced around Manhattan's CBGB night club in the 1970s.

Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs originally appeared on the band's eleventh album Flamejob in 1994; the track also features the work of Slim Chance on bass and Harry Drumdini on - what else? - drums.
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POPnews - January 25th

[From a sleepy village located in the Brazilian Highlands beneath the Serra do Mar cliffs and centred around the Colégio de São Paulo de Piratininga (from whence the Roman Catholic Church would systematically rob the indigenous Tupi-Guarani people of their religion and way of life) São Paulo has grown into the richest, most populous city in the country - with a population above 11 million - as well as making itself home to many of the tallest buildings in Brazil.]
41 CE - After a night of negotiation, Claudius was accepted as Roman Emperor by the Senate.

1494 - Alfonso II became King of Naples.

1533 - England's King Henry VIII secretly married his second wife, Anne Boleyn.

1554 - The Brazilian city of São Paulo was founded by Jesuit missionaries Manuel da Nóbrega and José de Anchieta.

1573 - At the Battle of Mikatagahara Takeda Shingen defeated Tokugawa Ieyasu.

1792 - The London Corresponding Society was founded.

1858 - After the Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn was played at the marriage of Victoria, Princess Royal (Queen Victoria's eldest daughter) to Frederick of Prussia, it became the de rigeur recessional at most subsequent weddings.

1879 - The Bulgarian National Bank was founded.

1881 - Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company.

1890 - Nellie Bly completed the round-the-world journey she'd begun '72 days, six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds' earlier, in November 1889.

1909 - Richard Strauss' opera Elektra premiered at the Dresden State Opera.

1919 - The League of Nations was formed.

1924 - The first Olympic Winter Games were held at Chamonix, France.

1937 - The soap opera The Guiding Light made its debut - on NBC radio!

1949 - The first annual Emmy Awards were presented at the Hollywood Athletic Club.

1971 - Charles Manson - along with 'Family' members Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten - were found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.

1993 - Following a shooting outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, two employees - Lansing H. Bennett and Frank Darling - were killed and three others wounded by Mir Aimal Kasi; Kasi was executed for his crimes in November 2002.

1994 - The Clementine space probe was launched, with the intention of studying the Moon and the near-Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos.

1995 - During what has been rather blandly dubbed the Norwegian Rocket Incident Russia almost launched a nuclear attack after it mistook Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, for a US Trident missile.
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POPnews - January 20th

[While the city of Rio de Janeiro was founded in March 1565 by Estácio de Sá, the area where it was eventually established was first explored by Gaspar de Lemos on this day in 1502, 63 years earlier. Which begs the question: what the heck were they waiting for? More paradise?]
250 CE - Emperor Decius began a widespread persecution of Christians in Rome with the martyrdom of Pope Fabian; thanks to his efforts, not only do most Christians still have an entirely unfounded persecution complex but ever since then around the world they've been complicit in the persecution of millions of people over the past two millenia - what with the Crusades and the witch-burnings, missionaries and sectarianism and being all judgemental against the express orders of Jesus, leading to the murders and suicides of untold numbers, many of them their fellow Christians. So thanks for that half-assed effort, Emperor Decius, you shit... At least Diocletian put a little effort into it.*

*While it's not entirely tongue-in-cheek, my tongue was in the vicinity of my cheek when I wrote this. ~ MSM

1320 - Duke Wladyslaw Lokietek became King of Poland.

1356 - Scotland's Kind Edward Balliol abdicated.

1502 - The location of the present-day city of Rio de Janeiro was first explored, giving the area its name.

1523 - Christian II was forced to abdicate as King of Denmark and Norway; after he'd gone into exile the crown was offered to his uncle, Frederick of Holstein, who reigned as Frederick I.

1576 - The Mexican city of León was founded by order of the viceroy Don Martín Enríquez de Almanza.

1649 - England's King Charles I went on trial for treason and other 'high crimes'.

1839 - At the Battle of Yungay, Chile defeated an alliance between Peru and Bolivia.

1841 - Hong Kong Island was occupied by the British when Captain Charles Elliot of the Royal Navy landed at Possession Point; the occupation was formalized by the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842.

1921 - The first Constitution of Turkey was ratified; the country had until recently been part of the Ottoman Empire.

1936 - Edward VIII was proclaimed King of England following the death of his father, George V.

1942 - At the Wannsee Conference - held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee at the height of World War II - senior Nazi officials decided on the 'Final Solution to the Jewish Question', accelerating The Holocaust.

1972 - After British Prime Minister Edward Heath rose in the House of Commons and announced unemployment figures of 1,023,583 - the highest rate of joblessness in the United Kingdom since the 1930s - Speaker of the House of Commons Selwyn Lloyd was forced to suspend the sitting for ten minutes before order could be restored.

1987 - Church of England envoy Terry Waite was kidnapped in Lebanon, where he was held captive for 1,763 days; he was finally released in November 1991.

1990 - The Black January crackdown of Azerbaijani pro-independence demonstrations was undertaken by the Soviet army in Baku.

1994 - Telesat Canada's Anik E-1 communications satellite spun out of control, forcing newspapers and radio and TV broadcasters to scramble to re-establish their news feeds.

2001 - Philippine president Joseph Estrada was ousted in the EDSA II Revolution and was succeeded by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
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POPnews - January 18th

[Normally Tagish Lake in Canada's Yukon is as tranquil as this picture would suggest; certainly it was just before it was struck by a meteorite on this day in 2000, and indeed it would be again after more than 500 fragments - most the size and with the appearance of charcoal briquettes scattered over the lake's Taku Arm - had been gathered up and analyzed. Initially as large as 4 metres in diameter and weighing 56 tonnes, less than a quarter of the meteorite was ever recovered, suggesting it had experienced significant vaporization upon entering the Earth's atmosphere.]
474 CE - Leo II became Byzantine Emperor following the death of his grandfather Leo I; his reign would last just ten months, and after his suspicious death there were rumours he'd been poisoned by his mother Ariadne so her husband Zeno could become emperor, which he did.

1126 - Emperor Huizong abdicated the throne of China in favour of his son, Emperor Qinzong.

1213 - Georgia's Queen regnant Tamar died; she was succeeded by her son, George IV.

1471 - Japan's Emperor Go-Hanazono died; he'd already abdicated in favour of his son - who reigned as Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado - in 1464.

1591 - King Naresuan of Siam killed Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in hand-to-hand combat - albeit while riding war elephants - which event is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces Day.

1701 - Frederick I, formerly the Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, crowned himself the first King of Prussia - although to soothe the nerves of the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, he styled himself King in Prussia instead.

1871 - Wilhelm I was proclaimed the first German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles near the end of the Franco-Prussian War; the empire he commanded became known as the Second Reich.

1915 - Japan issued the Twenty-One Demands to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.

1919 - The Paris Peace Conference - whose mandate was to divvy up a world recently devastated by World War I - opened at the Palace of Versailles. The story of the conference, and the numerous egos that ran it, is brilliantly told in Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World.

1943 - The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto - oddly enough, known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - took place.

1955 - The Battle of Yijiangshan occurred on the Yijiangshan Islands, pitting the National Revolutionary Army of Wang Shen-Ming against the victorious Zhang Aiping's People's Liberation Army during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis.

1958 - Canadian Willie O'Ree, the first black player in the NHL, made his debut when he took to the ice for the Boston Bruins against the Montreal Canadiens.

1977 - The worst rail crash in Australian history occurred at Granville, near Sydney, killing 83.

1990 - Washington, DC mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession during an FBI sting.

1994 - During the Cando Event - a possible bolide impact over Cando, Spain - witnesses claim to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute.

1995 - Cave paintings estimated to be at least 17,000 years old were discovered at Vallon-Pont d'Arc in France.

1997 - Norway's Boerge Ousland became the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.

2000 - The Tagish Lake Meteorite impacted the Earth at Tagish Lake in Canada's Yukon.

2003 - A bushfire killed 4 people and destroyed more than 500 homes in the Australian capital of Canberra.
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POPnews - January 14th

[The Human Be-In expressed the highest ideals of the 1960s counterculture - ideals that would soon enough be undone by the highest members of the movement's leadership; still, people like artist Michael Bowen and poet Allen Ginsberg were definitely on to something... For liberating people unsuited to the treadmill of the bourgeoisie (myself included) they and their ilk will forever be considered heroes, at least by me.]
1301 - King Andrew III died, ending the Arpad dynasty in Hungary; he was succeeded there by Wenceslas III of Bohemia, who took the throne as Ladislaus V, and in Croatia by Charles I.

1639 - The Fundamental Orders, the first written constitution that created a government in Western history, was adopted by the council of the Connecticut Colony; to this day Connecticut is known as the Constitution State for this singular contribution to democracy.

1724 - Spain's King Philip V abdicated, only to be restored seven months later in August when his son and successor Louis died of smallpox six days after his 17th birthday.

1761 - The Third Battle of Panipat was fought in India between the Afghans under Ahmad Shah Durrani and the French-supplied Marathas; the Afghan victory changed the course of Indian history by allowing the British to gain a military advantage in the Subcontinent over the Marathas, who sustained heavy casualties.

1832 - Edgar Allan Poe published his first short story, Metzengerstein.

1858 - Emperor Napoleon III of France and his wife Eugénie escaped assassination while on their way to the opera in Paris; the botched attempt was plotted by Italian nationalist Felice Orsini and carried out with the assistance of Giuseppe Pieri, Antonio Gomez and Carlo di Rudio. While the royal couple were unhurt by the trio of bomb blasts, eight others were killed and 142 were injured in the attempt, including Orsini himself.

1939 - Norway claimed Queen Maud Land in Antarctica; this claim has never been universally recognized, and is subject to the Antarctic Treaty System.

1942 - The US government began its internment of Japanese-Americans; Japanese-Canadians experienced a similar atrocity on the same day in British Columbia.

1943 - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at the Casablanca Conference to discuss strategy and study the next phase of World War II.

1952 - The Today Show, the world's first morning/breakfast program, premiered on NBC.

1953 - Marshal Josip Broz Tito was elected President of Yugoslavia, replacing Ivan Ribar.

1954 - The Hudson Motor Car Company merged with Nash-Kelvinator Corporation to form the American Motors Corporation.

1967 - Between 20,000 and 30,000 people attended the Human Be-In in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the event which launched that year's Summer of Love.

1972 - Queen Margrethe II ascended the throne of Denmark following the death of her father Frederick IX, thanks to a referendum in May 1953 which changed the rules of succession; not only was she the first queen regnant in that country since Margrethe I died in October 1412, she was the first Danish monarch not named Frederick or Christian since the death of King John in February 1513.

1975 - Teenage heiress Lesley Whittle was kidnapped by serial killer Donald Neilson, who was known as the Black Panther; her body was discovered seven weeks later, in March 1975.

1990 - L. Douglas Wilder became the first elected African-American governor when he took office in Richmond, Virginia.

1994 - US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the Kremlin accords; on the same day, England's Duchess of Kent converted to Roman Catholicism, the first member of the Royal Family to do so for 300 years.

2004 - The so-called five cross flag of Georgia (the country, not the state) was restored to official use after a hiatus of some 500 years.

2005 - The European Space Agency's Huygens probe landed near the Xanadu region of Saturn's moon Titan, having been launched in October 1997.
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