POPnews: February 9th

[Although named for Edmond Halley - who not only posited in 1705 that a comet he observed in 1682 was the same one recorded by Petrus Apianus in 1531 and in 1607 by Johannes Kepler but that it would return in 1758 (which it did, 16 years after his death) - Halley's Comet has been both delighting and scaring the crap out out of humans every seven decades or so since before recorded time. It's set to make its next perihelion in July 2061.]

474 CE - Zeno was crowned co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire by his seven-year-old son Leo II; the joint rule was instigated at the behest of the emperor's mother, Ariadne, and her mother Verina.

1450 - Agnès Sorel, mistress of France's King Charles VII, died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 28; although the nobleman and merchant Jacques Coeur has always taken the blame for what was suspected as a poisoning even then, history has largely exonerated him. Recent forensic analysis has revealed, however, that while the woman famed as Dame de beauté did probably die of mercury poisoning, mercury was then widely used in cosmetics, and her own vanity may have been to blame for her untimely demise.

1555 - John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, was burned at the stake as a Marian martyr during the reign of England's Queen Mary I; it's because of things like this she's better known as Bloody Mary.

1621 - Gregory XV became the last Pope to be elected by acclamation, following the death of Paul V.

1822 - The newly created Dominican Republic was invaded by Haiti's Jean-Pierre Boyer; the island of Hispaniola would remain thus united until 1843.

1825 - John Quincy Adams was appointed President by Congress when none of the four candidates in the running was able to claim a majority of Electoral College votes.

1861 - Jefferson Davis was elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America.

1870 - The US National Weather Service was established.

1904 - The Battle of Port Arthur - the opening engagement of the Russo-Japanese War - ended with Russia's Oskar Victorovich Stark having sustained the greater losses, giving Japan's Admiral Heihachiro Togo and Vice Admiral Shigeto Dewa no more victory than a tactical stalemate.

1934 - The Balkan Entente was formed between Greece, Turkey, Romania and Yugoslavia.

1950 - In a Second Red Scare US Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the State Department of being filled with Communists.

1960 - Joanne Woodward was the first recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1964 - The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show before a record-breaking television audience of 73 million.

1966 - The National Hockey League expansion doubled in size from its original six teams; the new franchises were Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota North Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Oakland Seals, and Pittsburgh Penguins.

1969 - The Boeing 747 made its first test flight, with test pilots Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle at the controls and Jess Wallick at the flight engineer's station.

1971 - Satchel Paige was admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first player from the Negro League and first African-American to be so honoured.

1986 - Halley's Comet reached perihelion - its closest approach to the sun - during its second visit to the inner solar system in the 20th century.

1995 - Space Shuttle astronauts Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and Michael Foale became the first African American and first Briton (respectively) to perform spacewalks as part of mission STS-63.

1996 - The Irish Republican Army declared an end to its 18-month ceasefire - which intention was made abundantly clear by the explosion of a large bomb in London's Canary Wharf.
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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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