POPnews - February 7th

 [Richard Brydges Beechey - one of 18 children of the painter Sir William Beechey - was serving as an admiral in the Royal Navy at the time he painted the foundering of the HMS Orpheus in 1863.]
457 CE - Leo I was crowned emperor of the Byzantine Empire following the death of Marcian.

1045 - Japan's Emperor Go-Suzaku died; he was succeeded by his son, who would reign as Emperor Go-Reizei.

1074 - Pandulf IV of Benevento was killed by invading Norman forces at a battle outside the Italian castle town of Montesarchio.

1497 - The so-called bonfire of the vanities occurred, in which supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burned thousands of objects like cosmetics, art, and books in the central piazza in Firenze.

1799 - Qianlong, Emperor of China, died; he was succeeded by his son, who reigned as Jiaqing Emperor.

1807 - During the Napoleonic Wars, at the Battle of Eylau, troops of Napoléon's French Empire began fighting against Russian and Prussian forces of the Fourth Coalition at Eylau in Poland; by the time the battle ended the following day the Grande Armée would sustain massive casualties to send the much larger force commanded by Generals Bennigsen and L'Estocq into retreat and gain nothing but a muddy, blood-soaked field for their trouble.

1837 - King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden - who'd been forced to abdicate in March 1809 - died; he'd been succeeded by his uncle, who reigned as Charles XIII, in June 1809.

1842 - At the Battle of Debre Tabor Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia, defeated warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien.

1863 - HMS Orpheus sank off the New Zealand coast near Auckland, killing 189 of the 259 crew on board.

1878 - Blessed Pope Pius IX - with a papacy of nearly 32 years the longest serving pontiff in history - died; he was succeeded by Leo XIII on February 20th.

1898 - Émile Zola was brought to trial for libel for publishing J'Accuse, which condemned the government of Félix Faure for its anti-Semitism in the court-martial and unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus on charges of espionage.

1979 - The final session of the Iranian National Consultative Assembly prior to the Islamic Revolution was held.

1984 - The XIV Winter Olympic Games were opened in Sarajevo (which was then in Yugoslavia and is now in Bosnia and Herzegovina); only the second Olympic Games in history to be held in a Communist country (the first being the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which were boycotted by some 64 countries including the US in protest of the 1979 Soviet war in Afghanistan), they were nonetheless dominated by athletes from Communist countries - namely East Germany and the Soviet Union.

1986 - Twenty-eight years of one-family rule ended in Haiti when President Jean-Claude Duvalier and his wife Michèle fled the Caribbean nation they'd spent years plundering; Duvalier was succeeded by Henri Namphy, who served as President of the country's National Council of Government.

1991 - Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sworn in.

1992 - The Maastricht Treaty was signed, which led to the creation of the European Union from the European Community.

1995 - Ramzi Yousef - mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center - was arrested in the Pakistani city of Islamabad.

1999 - Crown Prince Abdullah become the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein.

2009 - Bushfires in Victoria left 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in Australia's history.

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POPnews - July 15th

^{[Containing the same passage written in classical Greek,
demotic and hieroglyphic Egyptian, the Rosetta Stone
enabled scholars to finally understand hieroglyphics,whose meaning had hitherto stymied them.]}

1099 - The First Crusade achieved its goal when a Christian army commanded by Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon took the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem following the final assault in a difficult siege.

1207 - England's King John expelled the Canterbury monks for their support of Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton.

1240 - A Novgorodian army led by Alexander Nevsky defeated the Swedes - legend has it commanded by Birger Magnusson - at the Battle of the Neva.

1381 - John Ball, a leader in the Peasants' Revolt, was hanged, drawn, and quartered in the presence of King Richard II, in what was surely the goriest Royal Variety Performance ever.

1685 - James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, was executed at London's Tower Hill following his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemore on July 6th.

1741 - When Alexei Chirikov sighted land, possibly at what is now Prince of Wales Island, the men he sent ashore in a longboat to investigate became the first Europeans to visit Alaska.

1789 - Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, was named colonel-general of the new National Guard of Paris by acclamation.

1799 - The Rosetta Stone was found in an Egyptian village by Pierre-Francois Bouchard; the stone was later seized by the British Army in 1801 and brought to London, where today it resides in the British Museum.

1806 - When US Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike embarked upon the Pike Expedition from Fort Bellefontaine near St. Louis his stated aim was to explore the American West; Colorado's majestic Pikes Peak today bears his name as a tribute to that brave endeavour.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to the British aboard the HMS Bellerophon.

1823 - A fire destroyed the ancient Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.

1870 - The Hudson's Bay Company transferred control of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to the Dominion of Canada, out of which was created Manitoba and the Northwest Territories.

1931 - Kid Chocolate became Cuba's first world boxing champion.

1954 - The maiden flight of the Boeing 707, the first passenger jet liner, ushered in the age of jet travel.

1957 - Full-scale production of the Ford Edsel began; though in production for three years from 1958 to 1960, the Edsel was a famous flop.

1974 - Florida television personality Christine Chubbuck committed suicide live on the air.

1995 - Amazon.com sold its first item.

1997 - Andrew Cunanan murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps of Versace's palatial Florida home.

2004 - Monorail service opened along the Las Vegas Strip.
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