POPnews: September 21st

[When it was completed in January 2010, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill had given Dubai not only the biggest erection in the world but the biggest in history; fortunately, since the country is heavily favoured by the Saudi elite, it's unlikely anyone will fly a plane into it.]
454 CE - Roman Emperor Valentinian III assassinated his top general Aëtius in the Imperial throne room at Ravenna.

1217 - The Estonian tribal leader Lembitu of Lehola was killed in a battle against Teutonic Knights during the Battle of St. Matthew's Day, at a pivotal moment in the Livonian Crusade.

1745 - At the Battle of Prestonpans (near Edinburgh) a Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope was defeated - in ten minutes! - by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

1765 - Antoine de Beauterne announced that he had killed the Beast of Gévaudan - a claim which was later proven wrong when the attacks resumed.

1780 - Benedict Arnold delivered the plans for West Point to the British; the plot to seize the military academy and it's prime location alongside the Hudson River, however, failed - and his name has been synonymous with treachery in America ever since.

1792 - The French National Convention voted to abolish that country's monarchy.

1827 - According to Joseph Smith, Jr., the angel Moroni led him to a set of golden plates, some of which he later translated with the aid of a seer stone or stone spectacles into The Book of Mormon; the plates were found buried under Cumorah hill in upstate New York - Manchester, to be precise - and are supposedly the chronicle of the prophet Mormon, a Nephrite who, along with his son, visited America in the 4th Century CE.

1897 - Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the New York Sun - better known by its accompanying headline 'Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus' - was published; Francis Pharcellus Church's philosophical response has been a part of Christmas lore ever since.

1898 - China's Empress Dowager Cixi seized power and ended that country's Hundred Days' Reform.

1921 - During what came to be known as the Oppau explosion, a storage silo at a fertilizer plant in that German city exploded, killing between 500 and 600; even though only about 10% of the ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer at the facility was involved, a 90 m by 125 m crater - and 19 m deep - was created at the site, damage to nearby property was immense, and the blast was heard 300 kilometres away in München.

1937 - J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published in the UK by George Allen & Unwin.

1938 - The Great Hurricane of 1938 made landfall on Long Island, New York, killing between 500 and 700 as it roared up the Eastern Seaboard, before finally dissipating in New Hampshire.

1939 - Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu was assassinated in Bucharest by ultranationalist members of the Iron Guard, apparently on orders from Nazi Germany.

1964 - Malta became independent from the United Kingdom.

1970 - The Cleveland Browns beat the New York Jets at home on the first-ever showing of Monday Night Football.

1976 - Orlando Letelier - a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in September 1973 by Augusto Pinochet - was assassinated in Washington, D.C.

1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor's appointment to the US Supreme Court was unanimously approved by the Senate.

1995 - The Hindu milk miracle occurred, in which statues of the Hindu God Ganesh began drinking milk when spoonfuls were placed near their mouths.

2004 - Construction of the Burj Dubai (now known as the Burj Khalifa) began.
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POPnews - May 20th

[87 map-makers contributed to the 53 maps found in Abraham Ortelius' great work, and where it lacks accuracy - the outline of South America, for instance, and the lack of but potential for Australia - it excels at being as thorough as it is; 25 editions, some of them expanded and most of them corrected, were published before his death in 1598, and it was in demand as a general reference book until at least 1612.]
685 CE - The Battle of Dunnichen (at a village also known as Nechtansmere) was fought between a Pictish army under King Bridei III and the invading Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, who were decisively defeated. So decisively, in fact, that Ecgfrith was killed.

1217 - The Second Battle of Lincoln was fought, coincidentally near Lincoln, resulting in the defeat of France's Prince Louis (the future Louis VIII) by William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Louis had been invited to England, and even proclaimed King (although never crowned) at Old St. Paul's Cathedral at the behest of the same rebellious barons who were so famously opposed to the tyranny and general ickiness of King John.

1293 - King Sancho IV of Castile created the Studium Generale in the town of Alcalá de Henares, still in existence as the Universidad Complutense Madrid, making it one of the world's oldest universities.

1498 - Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrived at Kozhikode - previously known as Calicut - in India.

1521 - At the Battle of Pampeluna during the Italian War of 1521–1526 Ignatius Loyola was seriously wounded, causing him to rethink his military vocation in favour of a religious one; he later settled on a compromise, founding the Society of Jesus, a religious order with a decidedly militaristic flavour. Because that's what Jesus would have wanted*.

*NOT!

1570 - Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; containing 53 maps, it was published by Gilles Coppens de Diest of Antwerp, and was in general demand for the next forty years.

1902 - Cuba gained its independence from the United States, with Tomás Estrada Palma serving as the first President of Cuba.

1916 - The Saturday Evening Post published its first cover by Norman Rockwell, a painting entitled Boy with Baby Carriage (shown, at right); over the next forty-seven years - spanning an amazing 322 covers - Rockwell's work would become the quintessence of Americana.  Although derided as cornball and old-fashioned between the 1960s and 1980s for seemingly representing an America that never really existed, recent years have seen the work of Norman Rockwell return to favour and his artistry become appreciated once more for the consummate skill with which it was executed and the compassionate nature of its creator.

1920 - Montreal radio station XWA began broadcasting North America's first regularly scheduled radio programming.

1927 - Under the terms of the Treaty of Jedda, the United Kingdom recognized the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud of the House of Su'ūd over the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1932 - Amelia Earhart took off from the Newfoundland outport of Harbour Grace on the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot; she landed the following day in a pasture near the Ulster village of Culmore, having flown for 14 hours and 56 minutes. In recognition of her achievement she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by the US, the Legion of Honor from France, and the National Geographic Society's Gold Medal, which she received from the hand of US President Herbert Hoover himself.

1940 - The first prisoners arrived at the newly-built concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1941 - During the Battle of Crete Nazi paratroopers of the 7th Flieger Division invaded that island under the code name Unternehmen Merkur, or 'Operation Mercury'.

1969 - The Vietnam War's Battle of Hamburger Hill ended, events dramatized in the aptly named 1987 film Hamburger Hill.

1980 - Following a referendum the people of Quebec rejected a proposal from their government to move towards independence from Canada by a vote of 60-40; the federalist victory of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his Liberals did not deal the fatal blow to the Parti Québécois that had been hoped for, though, and Quebec Premier René Lévesque managed to hold onto power for five and a half more years, setting the stage for a second failed referendum in October 1995 under one of his successors, Jacques Parizeau.

1984 - The first line of the Miami Metrorail was opened.

1985 - Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, began broadcasting to Cuba with the aim of bringing down the government of Fidel Castro.

1996 - The US Supreme Court published its ruling in the case of Romer v. Evans, applying the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians. The usual suspects gave dissenting opinions - namely then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.

2002 - The independence of East Timor was recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of rule by Indonesia and 3 years of provisional administration by the United Nations; Portugal itself was the former colonizer of East Timor, and nominally in possession of the territory until 1976.
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