"Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again ! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings : save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village ! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O ! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come !
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams !
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book :
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike !

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought !
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
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Remembering... Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Both the youngest and the favourite of 14 children, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (born on this day in 1772) took refuge in the place many bullied children do - the library; when not ensconced in a book he could be found rambling the Devonshire countryside, communing with Nature around Ottery St Mary where he was born.

At the age of 23 Coleridge hatched a plan with his fellow poet Robert Southey to move to America and start a commune in the wilds of Pennsylvania; although the plan failed before it could be brought to fruition, the friends did end up marrying a pair of sisters out of it. In this endeavour Southey seems to have made the better match, whereas Coleridge merely added a failed marriage and divorce to the list of his woes.

Alongside his friend William Wordsworth*, Coleridge founded the Romantic movement of poetry, which rooted itself in the classics, and concerned itself with experiencing the joys of Nature amidst a booming industrial expansion already blackening much of Britain by the time he was a young man.

Due to a well-documented battle with toothache and facial neuralgia, Coleridge sought relief in opium as early as age 26, blissfully unaware as everyone around him was of the addictive qualities of the poppy. Although credited with giving his work its ethereal imagery, opium was to be the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who died in the home of his physician, James Gillman, in the Highgate section of London in July 1834. He was 61.

*About which camaraderie Adam Sisman has written The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge - available at all fine links immediately preceding this statement and in the collection of the Pop Culture Institute, natch...
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"Oye Como Va" by Celia Cruz

No, it's not a Spanish song about Donald Trump; that one's called Oye Como Ver*.

It's actually Celia Cruz, Cuba's late-lamented Queen of Salsa, who died in July 2003; in her homeland she's still known as La guarachera de Cuba... Today would have been her 85th birthday.

Oye Como Va was written by Tito Puente in 1963, and has since been widely covered, including a more famous version by Santana, from their 1970 album Abraxas.

*Badump-tish!
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Happy Birthday Carrie Fisher

Although her first film appearance was in Shampoo (1975), five-year-old me was not the slightest bit interested in subtle comedy-dramas based in recent current events...

7 year-old me, however, was captivated by loud movies filled with space ships, princesses in distress, and wise-cracking robots; lucky me, that was the year Star Wars came out. Ever since then there's been a warm place in my heart for Carrie Fisher...

Even though she writes far more than she acts these days she still turns up occasionally onscreen; I remember a particularly hilarious moment when Carrie Bradshaw (of Sex and the City) met Carrie Fisher during a fling with Vince Vaughan, who was playing Fisher's assistant in a classic episode from 2000 entitled Sex and Another City - and Fisher thought she was a hooker! Oh my... I laughed until I stopped.

Fisher also turned up - again unexpectedly - in Stephen Fry's amazing 2006 documentary The Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive, in which she discusses the challenges she's faced achieving mental wellness. Of course, her novels have consistently addressed the difficulty of growing up (not to mention staying sane) in LA, a subject about which she is circumspect without placing blame - a refreshing position for the spawn of entertainers to take.
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POPnews - October 21st

[Frank Lloyd Wright's only New York Building was also his last commissioned work; the struggles involved in getting his design from the drawing board to the corner of Fifth Avenue and E. 89th Street are legendary, not least of which was challenging the orthodoxy of concrete boxes which were then the prevailing norm in Manhattan architecture.]
1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated the leaders of rival Japanese clans at the Battle of Sekigahara, marking the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, which would rule Japan until the mid-nineteenth century.

1797 - The 44-gun US Navy frigate USS Constitution was launched at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in Boston Harbor; named by US President George Washington and one of six authorized by the Naval Act of 1794, she is today the oldest commissioned vessel afloat in the world.

1805 - At the Battle of Trafalgar, the Royal Navy defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve; in striking at the heart of Napoleon Bonaparte's ambitions for the domination of Europe, Viscount Horatio Nelson inspired a burgeoning British Empire too fond of boats to have designs on European soil.

1816 - The Penang Free School - the oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia - was founded in George Town by the Reverend Sparke Hutchings.

1854 - Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were despatched to the Crimean War...  Although Nightingale's mission of mercy would prove a disaster - troops consigned to her field hospital at Scutari faced higher than normal mortality rates due mainly to the lack of hygiene - in her later years she learned much from the ordeal, and modern nursing would not exist in the form it does today were it not for her pioneering work.

1867 - The landmark Medicine Lodge Treaty was signed near the Kansas town of Medicine Lodge by leaders of Kiowa and Comanche nations, requiring them to relocate to a reservation in western Oklahoma. Another, with the Plains Apache, was signed later that day, while a third a week later sealed the Fates of the Southern Cheyenne, and Southern Arapaho.

1892 - Opening ceremonies for the World's Columbian Exposition were held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1893.

1895 - The short-lived Republic of Formosa collapsed as Japanese forces invaded the island now called Taiwan.

1921 - President Warren G. Harding delivered a speech which called for the abolition of lynching, apparently.

1944 - The first kamikaze attack was carried out when HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

1945 - Future tinpot dictator and flabby Argentinian strongman Juan Perón discovered what the term 'better half' meant when he married erstwhile actress Eva Duarte, a charisma monster soon to be renowned for her legendary portrayal of Evita.

1959 - Frank Lloyd Wright's only major New York City building - the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - opened to the public.

1966 - A coal tip avalanche devastated the Welsh town of Aberfan, killing 144, including 116 children aged 7 to 10.

1969 - A coup d'état in Somalia brought Siad Barre to power.

1977 - The European Patent Institute was founded.

1978 - Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanished while flying a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.

1987 - Formerly the first Jewish Miss America, Ed Koch's best fruit-fly Bess Myerson was arrested for her involvement in an alimony-fixing scam; she was later acquitted.

1990 - The first Apple Day was held in London's Covent Garden.

1994 - 32 people were killed and 17 injured when Seoul's Seongsu Bridge collapsed.
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"Real Cool (Cool Love)" by Wanda Jackson

When I was researching this post I was thrilled to discover there are so many great clips of birthday gal Wanda Jackson on YouTube, only then I didn't know what to do. Given my proclivity for the obscure, I'm not used to the Internet yielding such an embarrasses des riches. In the end, I chose this one mainly because it's got the best image quality. Plus I love the song...

Cool Love was released as a single in 1957, and appears on Wanda Jackson's 1960 album Rockin' with Wanda.
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Wanda Jackson: The Queen of Rockabilly

My pulse quickens when I hear the open strum, the bouncy beat, the distinctive twang that are all the hallmarks of a Wanda Jackson song... Today the Amazonian brunette with the uniquest twang turns 73.

Discovered while still in high school, Jackson's unique blend of gospel, country, and blues made for a potent new form of music called rockabilly; often called the first female rock star, the one-time girlfriend of Elvis Presley occupies an unparalleled place in pop culture.

I must admit, I was a little leery about posting this, seeing as Ms. Jackson is a born-again Christian; I wouldn't like my enthusiasm for her music and 1950s-era persona to be tainted by anything as boring as homophobia, since Jesus wouldn't have done it either. In the end I decided - as is my wont - to throw caution to the wind, and honour her anyway. Even if, for whatever reason, she can't or won't return the favour...
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In Memoriam: Sir Christopher Wren

Christopher Wren (born in Wiltshire on this day in 1632) was a gifted mathematician and scientist with a relentless curiosity and a polymathic mind, whose work was said to be admired by such contemporaries as Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.

Already noted for his architectural abilities (having built Cambridge's Pembroke Hall and Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre) - not to mention co-founding the Royal Society - when the City of London went up in flames in September 1666, Wren was the first to submit cogent plans for the rebuilding of the City; in 1669 he was named Surveyor-General of the King's Works, with the responsibility of making a modern capital out of the smoking ruins of a medieval maze.

That year he married Faith Coghill; they had two children, Gilbert (who died young) and Christopher Jr., whom Wren began training as an architect from a young age. Wren was knighted in November 1673 by King Charles II.

The first Lady Wren died of smallpox in September 1675; he was remarried less than 18 months later, this time to Jane Fitzwilliam. Again, two children were produced - a girl named Jane who died in 1702 and a son named named William, who was born retarded. The second Lady Wren died of tuberculosis in September 1680.

Although a sickly child, Wren lived to be 90 in an age when it was an achievement to turn 50. He died in London in February 1723, having lived to see it mostly reborn from the ashes of 1666. His tomb within St. Paul's Cathedral is suitably opulent; still, there are those (myself among them) who feel the entire place ought to be considered his tomb. The greatest of the 54 London churches he built, and universally recognized as his masterpiece since its completion on this day in 1708 - Wren's 76th birthday- bears a suitably confident epitaph:


Lector, Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice*
^{*Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.
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"Runnin' Down A Dream" by Tom Petty

Taken from birthday boy Tom Petty's 1989 solo album, Full Moon Fever - the same album that yielded such instant classics as Free Fallin' and I Won't Back Down - it's Runnin' Down A Dream, whose video was directed by Jim Lenahan, and features animation by Winsor McCay based on the classic comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.
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"The Tortured Heart" by Arthur Rimbaud

My sad heart slobbers at the poop,
My heart covered with tobacco-spit:
They spew streams of soup at it,
My sad heart drools at the poop:
Under the jeering of the soldiers
Who break out laughing
My sad heart drools at the poop,
My heart covered with tobacco-spit!

Ithyphallic and soldierish,
Their jeerings have depraved it!
On the rudder you see frescos
Ithyphallic and soldierish.
O abracadabra waves,
Take my heart, let it be washed!
Ithyphallic and soldierish,
Their jeerings have depraved it.

When they have used up their quid,
How will I act, O stolen heart?
There will be Bacchic hiccups,
I will have stomach retchings,
If my heart is degraded:
When they have used up their quid
How will I act, O stolen heart?

^{Translated by Wallace Fowlie
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Arthur Rimbaud: The Original Angertwink

It takes considerable verve to scandalize the French; that Arthur Rimbaud did it so young and so thoroughly is as much a testament to his dedication as it is to his anarchist spirit...

The writer - most famously of Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) and born on this day in 1854 - was a prolific poet as a young man, although by the time he was 20 he seems to have lost interest in poetry. He may in fact have burned out; he was soon better known as a prolific hellraiser, the quintessential enfant terrible. Even the French found him obnoxious, so you get some idea how fabulous he must have been.

Rimbaud's work defied the poetic conventions of the day (giving rise to both Symbolist and Surrealist movements) which outraged the intelligentsia, his unkempt appearance and penchant for opium and hashish chased with absinthe similarly shocked the bourgeoisie, and his brief, tempestuous love affair with the better-known married poet Paul Verlaine offended just about everyone else.

Their relationship lasted less than three years, taking them finally to London, and ended with Verlaine's arrest in Brussels. While imprisoned at Mons, Verlaine converted to Catholicism; they last met in Stuttgart in 1875 following Verlaine's release.

From 1875 until his death, Arthur Rimbaud seems to have cleaned up his act. Although he continued to explore much of Europe on foot, he also took regular jobs, and even managed to find time to join the Dutch Navy only to desert in Java. While working in Cyprus, Aden, and Ethiopia he seems to have kept only female lovers.

In May 1879 he contracted typhoid fever, but recovered. For Arthur Rimbaud the end of his rambles around Europe came in November 1891 following complications from the amputation of his right leg; he died in great agony at a hospital in Marseilles, attended by his sister Isabelle.
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Happy Birthday Your Imperial Majesty

Even more so than its events, it's the path a life takes that can provide the outside observer with the greatest insight into the person who lived it...

In another life Michiko Shoda - born this day in 1934 - could have married the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, and thus been his widow on the day in November 1970 when he committed suppuku. Instead, she met and married a shy, bookish man who in his own other life would have surely become a scientist instead of Emperor of Japan.

Certainly almost any life would have been easier than that of the first commoner to marry into the Japanese Imperial Household (or Kunaicho, which she did in April 1959), and almost any other mother-in-law would have been preferable to the formidable Nagako, who since her death in 2000 is known as Empress Kōjun. Though it is largely unknown within Japan, the rest of the world knows well enough how Nagako's constant bullying brought the ebullient young Michiko to the point of nervous breakdown in the early 1960s, and again as late as 1993.

Determined not to be such a dragon lady herself, the Empress has been entirely supportive of Crown Princess Masako throughout her decade-long struggle to adapt to her new life within the entirely conservative Imperial Household.
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"Gin & Juice" by Snoop Dogg

Bizzle wizzle* go out to Snoop Dogg, the West Coast rapper and porntrepreneur who began his career as a humble drug dealer and pimp before figuring out there was ten times the money and a chance to live past forty by going legit. Word!

Gin and Juice was Snoop's second single, and first appeared on his 1993 debut album Doggystyle; both the song and the video are the work of Dr. Dre. The video features early appearances by Lil Bow Wow and Eddie Griffin and cameos by Dre himself, as well as Warren G, Nate Dogg and Daz Dillinger.

*Birthday wishes, fo shizzle!
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POPnews - October 20th

[When HM The Queen of Australia formally opened the Sydney Opera House on this day in 1973 the performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 she attended there was far from the venue's first show; previously Jørn Utzon's impressionistic architectural masterpiece - which dominates Sydney Harbour from Bennelong Point dwarfed only by Sydney Harbour Bridge - had been host to a performance of Sergei Prokofiev's opera War and Peace, in addition to a concert of Wagner favourites featuring soloist Birgit Nilsson, a recital of lieder songs by Nilsson and Geoffrey Parsons, a violin and piano recital by Parsons and Wanda Wiłkomirska, as well as a series of lunchtime performances for the workers, the first of which was given by Paul Robeson in 1960.]
1740 - Upon the accession of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne, France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refused to honour the Pragmatic Sanction, triggering the War of the Austrian Succession.

1803 - The US Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

1818 - The Treaty of 1818 settled most of the border between Canada and the United States at the 49th Parallel.

1827 - At the Battle of Navarino a combined Turkish and Egyptian armada was destroyed by an allied British, French, and Russian naval force at a port now called Pylos on Navarino Bay; the victory marks the end of the Greek War of Independence and the affirmation of an independent, modern Greece.

1883 - Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, by which the Tarapacá province of the former was ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.

1905 - The Turkish football club Galatasaray was founded.

1941 - Thousands of civilians in the Nazi-occupied Serbian town of Kragujevac were killed, in what came to be known as the Kragujevac Massacre.

1947 - The US and Pakistan established diplomatic relations.

1951 - The Johnny Bright Incident enflamed the Oklahoma town of Stillwater.

1952 - Kenya's Governor Evelyn Baring declared a state of emergency and began arresting hundreds of suspected leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising, including Jomo Kenyatta, the future first President of Kenya.

1955 - J. R. R. Tolkien novel The Return of the King - the last part of The Lord of the Rings - was published.

1967 - A purported bigfoot was filmed by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin.

1968 - Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and became the emblematic mega-celebrity of the 1970s known as Jackie O.

1973 - During the so-called Saturday Night Massacre US President Richard M. Nixon fired his Attorney-General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney-General William Ruckelshaus after they refused to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was finally fired by Robert Bork.

1976 - The ferry George Prince was struck by a ship while crossing the Mississippi River between Destrehan and Luling, Louisiana; in all seventy-eight passengers and crew died, while only 18 people aboard the ferry survived.

1977 - An airplane carrying most of Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed in Mississippi; killed were lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines along with backup singer Cassie Gaines, as well as the band's road manager, pilot, and co-pilot.

1979 - The JFK Library opened in Boston.

1984 - California's Monterey Bay Aquarium opened.

1991 - The Oakland Hills firestorm killed 25 and destroyed 3,469 homes and apartments, causing more than $2 billion in damage.
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Pop History Moment: The Arrest of Frances Farmer

On this day in 1942 wild child and Hollywood actress Frances Farmer was arrested in Santa Monica; she did not go peacefully...

Farmer was pulled over by Santa Monica Police, driving with her lights on high despite a wartime blackout; reports have her as being drunk and disorderly at the time, as well as unable to produce a driver's license, at which time she was taken into custody and spent the night in jail. She was eventually fined $500 and given a 180-day suspended sentence; upon payment of half the fine she was put on probation.

Alas, her brush with the law wasn't the wake-up call it could have been, but merely a sign of the worsening of a mental illness (not helped at all by the concomitant abuse of alcohol) that would dominate the rest of her life...

For all its inaccuracies, the 1982 film Frances, starring Jessica Lange, remains the biopic of choice when considering the life of Frances farmer in pop cultural terms.
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A Public Service Announcement by John Lithgow

And finally, a cleansing dose of sincerity...

Birthday wishes to John Lithgow, and a word about a cause near to both our hearts: child literacy.
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"Walk Like A Man" by Divine

This is my all-time favourite Divine song, but until I first posted it here in 2007 I'd never seen the video.  All I can say is, me liiiike...

Of course, now I've seen it dozens of times, approaching what may be a lethal dose - I won't know until I can find the WHMIS sheet - but all I can say about that is 'What a way to go!'

Featuring scenes from Paul Bartel's 1985 epic parody oater Lust in the Dust, Walk Like A Man was written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio and originally recorded by The Four Seasons!  It appeared on Divine's album Maid in England.
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Divine By Name, Divine By Nature

What is it about a person's contradictions that render them most memorable? Is it that complexity breeds fascination, or is it merely that the more varied a person's appeal is the more varied their fan base will be?

Whatever it was, Harris Glenn Milstead (born this day in 1945) had it in abundance. As himself he is inevitably described by those who knew him as gentle, soft-spoken, and unfailingly generous; which makes his appearances as Divine all the more shocking, because Divine is, simply put, the filthiest thing ever seen in the American cinema, bar none*.

Visually, of course, Divine was the creation of John Waters and Van Smith, the hairdresser on many of Waters' earliest and trashiest films. Emotionally - even though the words belonged to John Waters - Divine was all Milstead. As trite as it is, there is truth to the stereotype that even the most sensitive person, when bullied, will act out against ill-treatment given the chance. For that reason alone, Divine ought to serve as a beacon to fat sissy-boys everywhere, as he always has for me...

*And all the more fabulous for it!
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Blast From The Past: John Waters on "Letterman"

John Waters is always hilarious; he's so verbally deft and loquacious, I could listen to him talk all day; if you have a couple of hours to kill one Sunday afternoon, you owe it to yourself to check him out in all his glory - say, on one of his commentary tracks... Try Cecil B. Demented (2000).

You'll learn so much your ears will hurt.

Here then is the man himself, talking with vintage Letterman (c.1986) - back when Dave was still a real prick; watch and marvel as Letterman is manipulated by a better conversationalist. The highlight is their discussion, early in the interview, of Divine.
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POPnews - October 19th

[Napoleon's invasion of Russia didn't go so well - for Napoleon, that is; for Russian culture, though, it proved a boon - being responsible for both Tolstoy's War and Peace and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture plus the above painting of the French dictator's calamitous retreat from Moscow by Adolph Northen.]
1216 - England's King John died; he was succeeded by his 9 year-old son Henry III, whose early reign would be guided by the regency of William Marshal.

1469 - Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella of Castile; famed as the sponsors of Christopher Columbus, their marriage would forge the modern nation of Spain under their grandson Charles I of Spain, who later became Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V.

1781 - At Yorktown, Virginia, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis' sword and formally surrendered in person to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, ending the American Revolutionary War.

1812 - Napoleon retreated from Moscow.

1813 - The Battle of Leipzig concluded, giving Napoleon one of the worst defeats of his military career.

1864 - At the Battle of Cedar Creek the Union Army under Philip Sheridan destroyed its Confederate rival under Jubal Early.

1914 - The First Battle of Ypres began in Belgium during the terrible conflict known at the time as the Great War, which we now know as World War I.

1917 - Love Field opened in Dallas, Texas; the smaller of two airports now serving the city was the only one in town until 1974. Love Field would later become famous for the role it played in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963.

1921 - António Granjo, the Prime Minister of Portugal, was one of three politicians killed during a coup in Lisbon, since known as Noite Sangrenta; the other two were Machado Santos and Carlos da Maia.

1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was isolated by Albert Schatz, a graduate student, in the laboratory of Selman Abraham Waksman at Rutgers University.

1954 - The first ascent of Cho Oyu - the sixth-highest peak on Earth - was made by Herbert Tichy, Joseph Jöchler, and Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama as part of an Austrian expedition.

1960 - The first partial embargo was put on Cuban goods by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1974 - Niue became a self-governing colony of New Zealand.

1983 - Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada, was overthrown and executed in a military coup d'état led by Bernard Coard.

1985 - The first Blockbuster Video opened in Dallas.

1986 - Samora Machel, President of Mozambique and a prominent leader of FRELIMO, died along with 33 others when their Tupolev 134 plane crashed into the Lebombo Mountains.

1987 - On the so-called Black Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22%, or 508 points, to 1738.74 in one day.

1989 - The convictions of the so-called Guildford Four were overturned by the Court of Appeal; by then the four - Paul Michael Hill, Gerard 'Gerry' Conlon, Patrick 'Paddy' Armstrong, and Carole Richardson - had already spent 15 years in prison owing to a miscarriage of justice.

2005 - Saddam Hussein went on trial, convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal.
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