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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POPnews - March 11th

[Try as they might to imagine they'd achieved dominion over the Earth, the Victorians were too often let down by their early attempts at civil engineering; one such event was the flood caused by a dam failure at Low Bradfield, which destroyed 800 houses and killed 240 as it swept inexorably down the River Loxley toward Sheffield.]
1708 - Queen Anne withheld Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill, apparently; it was the last time a British monarch vetoed legislation.

1801 - Eccentric, tyrannical Paul I (the son of Catherine the Great) was assassinated by a group of thirty Russian nobles led by Count von Benningsen (on the orders of the Tsar's most trusted advisor, Count Peter Alekseyevich Pahlen) after refusing to abdicate; he was succeeded by his son Alexander I.

1824 - The United States War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which ought to give one some idea of the US government's attitude towards its indigenous peoples.

1845 - In New Zealand, Chiefs Hone Heke and Kawiti led 700 Māoris to chop down the flagpole and drive settlers out of Kororareka owing to the British settlers there having breached 1840's Treaty of Waitangi; the incident would cause the so-called Flagstaff War.

1848 - Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin became the first Prime Ministers of the Province of Canada to be democratically elected under what was then a uniquely Canadian interpretation of the Westminster system known as responsible government.

1851 - Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto made its debut at La Fenice in Venice.

1861 - The Constitution of the Confederate States of America was adopted.

1864 - The Great Sheffield Flood - the worst man-made disaster in English history - killed over 240 people when the newly-built Dale Dyke Dam broke; these events have formed the basis for Phil Parkin's 2004 documentary The Forgotten Flood.

1867 - Giuseppe Verdi's opera Don Carlos debuted at the Paris Opéra.

1872 - Japan's Meiji government officially annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom into what would become the Okinawa prefecture.

1888 - What later became known as the Great Blizzard of '88 began along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, blanketing parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut in more than 100 cm of snow, shutting down commerce and killing more than 400.

1927 - Samuel Roxy Rothafel opened the Roxy Theatre in New York City.

1941 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act into law, allowing American-built war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan.

1959 - The original Broadway production of A Raisin In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry - and starring (among others) Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Louis Gossett Jr. - opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City.

1985 - Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader following the death of Konstantin Chernenko.

1990 - Lithuania declared itself independent from the Soviet Union during the so-called Singing Revolution.

1993 - Janet Reno was confirmed by the US Senate as the first female Attorney General of the United States; she was sworn in the following day.

1996 - John Winston Howard became the 25th Prime Minister of Australia; his would be the 2nd longest term in Australian history - only Sir Robert Menzies served longer - lasting until December 2007, when his Liberal/National coalition was defeated at the polls by the Australian Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd.

2006 - Michelle Bachelet was inaugurated as the first female president of Chile.
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POPnews - February 28th

[Waco's shoddily built Mount Carmel Center met its fiery end on April 19th after a fifty-one day standoff (begun on this day in 1993) along with 79 pseudo-Christian fanatics obsessed with Armageddon who more than got their wish; the worst of it was that 21 of those who died were children, whose brief lives had already been tainted by hateful rhetoric, religious brainwashing and, it was reported, sexual abuse.]

202 BCE - The coronation ceremony of Liu Bang as Emperor Gaozu of Han took place, initiating four centuries of the Han Dynasty's rule over China.

870 CE - The Fourth Council of Constantinople closed.

1827 - The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America to offer the commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1838 - Robert Nelson, leader of the Patriotes, proclaimed the independence of Lower Canada - better known today as Québec.

1844 - A gun on the USS Princeton exploded while on a cruise of the Potomac River, killing 8 US Cabinet members - Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer among them - and several others besides, including Colonel David Gardiner, the father of President John Tyler's fiance Julia Gardiner (both of whom had been lucky enough to escape injury).

1850 - The University of Utah opened in Salt Lake City.

1870 - The Bulgarian Exarchate was established by decree of Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz of the Ottoman Empire.

1897 - Queen Ranavalona III, Madagascar's last reigning monarch, was deposed by a French military force.

1935 - Nylon was discovered by Wallace Carothers.

1947 - In Taiwan, civil disorder was put down at a loss of 30,000 civilian lives; the event later became known as the 228 Incident.

1953 - James D. Watson and Francis Crick announced to friends that they'd determined the chemical structure of DNA, which would be formally announced the following April.

1975 - A major crash at London's Moorgate Tube station killed 43 people.

1983 - The final episode of the long-running TV sitcom M*A*S*H was domestically broadcast, becoming the most watched television episode in history to date, with 106 million viewers in the US; these figures have since been surpassed, by Super Bowl XLIV, which attracted 106.5 million viewers in February 2010.

1985 - The Provisional IRA carried out a mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary police station at Newry, killing nine officers; it was the the highest loss of life for a single day in the history of the RUC.

1993 - Who could have guessed that when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raided the Branch Davidian church with a warrant to arrest the group's leader David Koresh that it would all end so thrillingly? While four ATF agents and five Davidians died in this initial raid, a further 82 Davidians (including their leader) died in the brimstone-less fire shown above.

1997 - The North Hollywood shootout took place, in which bank robbers Larry Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu were killed in a shootout with police.

2001 - The Nisqually Earthquake - measuring 6.8 on the Richter Scale - affected the Nisqually Valley, Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia in Washington state.

2004 - Over 1 million Taiwanese took part in the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally, forming a 500-kilometre (300-mile) long human chain to commemorate that country's 228 Incident in 1947.

2007 - The New Horizons spacecraft - on its way to Pluto - flew past Jupiter.
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POPnews - February 26th

[The current incarnation of Christiansborg Palace is actually an amalgam of three... The oldest (and, sadly, least) parts date from 1733, when King Christian VI commissioned Elias David Häusser to create for him a Baroque splendour, only to have all but its showgrounds succumb to a major fire on this day in 1794. It was rebuilt by Christian Frederik Hansen in the French Empire style between 1803 and 1828, but King Frederik VI turned up his nose and decided he didn't want to live there, preferring to use it for entertaining only. The palace burnt again in 1884 and Thorvald Jørgensen's contest-winning Neo-Baroque design to replace it would rise between 1903 and 1928, exposing the ruins of the site's former occupants - Absalon's Castle and Copenhagen Castle, dating back to 1167 - in the process. The current design incorporates the north facade of its predecessor, facing Prins Jørgens Gård.]

364 CE - Valentinian I was proclaimed Roman Emperor following the death of his predecessor, Jovian.

1266 - At the Battle of Benevento an army led by Charles, Count of Anjou, defeated a combined German and Sicilian force led by Sicily's King Manfred, who was killed in the battle, following which Pope Clement IV invested Charles as King of Sicily and Naples.

1577 - Sweden's King Eric XIV died while imprisoned at Örbyhus Castle (legend has it from eating a bowl of poisoned pea soup) having already been dethroned in September 1568 after killing several of his rivals in the Sture family as a result of what is now thought to have been a schizophrenic incident and succeeded by his half-brother, who reigned as John III.

1794 - Copenhagen's Christiansborg Castle burnt to the ground, the first of two major fires to damage the home of executive, legislative, and judicial authority in Denmark.

1815 - Napoleon escaped from Elba.

1914 - HMHS Britannic, sister to the RMS Titanic, was launched at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.

1917 - The first jazz record - (Livery Stable Blues and Dixie Jass Band One Step) - was made by The Original Dixieland Jass Band for the Victor label.

1919 - Most of the Grand Canyon was included in the creation of Grand Canyon National Park.

1929 - Grand Teton National Park was created.

1935 - Germany's Luftwaffe - initially organized during the First World War as the Luftstreitkräfte - was re-formed.

1936 - In the February 26 Incident, young military officers with the ultranationalist Kōdō-ha faction of the Imperial Japanese Army attempted to stage a coup against the government of Prime Minister Keisuke Okada, going so far as to storm his official residence, the Kantei, in order to assassinate him.

1961 - Morocco's King Mohammed V died; he was succeeded by his son Hassan II.

1972 - The Buffalo Creek Flood, caused by a burst coal slurry impoundment dam, killed 125 in West Virginia - four days after it had received a passing grade from a federal mines inspector.

1986 - Robert Penn Warren was named US Poet Laureate.

1991 - Tim Berners-Lee introduced the first Internet browser - the World Wide Web.

1993 - A truck bomb rocked the foundations of the World Trade Center beneath its North Tower; six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in the blast.

1995 - The UK's oldest investment banking firm, Barings Bank, collapsed after a securities broker, Nick Leeson, lost $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange using futures contracts. As greedy douchebags go, he was truly a trailblazer...

2001 - Two giant Buddha statues were destroyed on orders of the Taliban at Bamyam, Afghanistan; they should be rebuilt by 2012.

2004 - Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski was killed in a plane crash near Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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POPnews - February 16th

[During the aptly named Ash Wednesday fires 2,080 sq. km (513,979 acres) in South Australia and 2,100 sq. km (518,921 acres) in Victoria burned in a single day, with 5,196 sq. km (1,284,000 acres) in all burnt throughout the 1982/83 season; Victoria had 47 deaths, with 28 in South Australia, and 2676 injuries reported in total.]
1279 - Portugal's King Afonso III died; he was succeeded by his son Denis.

1742 - Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, became British Prime Minister.

1804 - Stephen Decatur, Jr. led a successful raid from the ketch Intrepid in Tripoli harbor to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia during the First Barbary War.

1899 - France's President Félix Faure died of a fit of apoplexy following an assignation with his mistress Marguerite Steinheil.

1918 - The Council of Lithuania unanimously adopted the Act of Independence, declaring Lithuania an independent state.

1923 - Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber within the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1934 - The Commission of Government was sworn in as form of direct rule for the Dominion of Newfoundland; the Commission governed until March 1949, when Newfoundland 'voted' to join the Canadian Confederation.

1936 - Democratic elections brought a leftist coalition called Popular Front to power in Spain, under the leadership of Manuel Azaña; a right-wing coup staged by Francisco Franco the following July not only unseated them but instigated the Spanish Civil War.

1945 - American forces landed on the Philippine island of Corregidor - at the entrance of Manila Bay - with the intent of recapturing it from the Japanese.

1957 - The so-called Toddlers' Truce - a controversial television closedown between 6 and 7 PM - was abolished in the United Kingdom.

1959 - Fidel Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba following the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1st.

1968 - In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system went into service.

1983 - The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claimed the lives of 75 people; they remained the worst wildfires in Australian history until those of 2009.

1985 - The terrorist organization Hezbollah was founded.

1986 - The Soviet ocean liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground and then sank off New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds, resulting in the death of one crew member; resting at a depth of only 37 metres, the ship is now a popular reef for scuba divers.

1987 - The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi guard dubbed 'Ivan the Terrible' in Treblinka extermination camp, started in Jerusalem.

1991 - Enrique Bermúdez, leader of the Nicaraguan Contras, was assassinated in Managua by person or persons unknown.

1993 - Australia's first woman Premier, Western Australia's Carmen Lawrence, was voted out of office; she was succeeded by Richard Court.

2005 - The Kyoto Protocol came into force, following its ratification by Russia.
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POPnews - February 6th

[Given the scrupulously honest dealings the British have had with indigenous peoples in other parts of the world, it would have surprised me more if they hadn't tried to pull something on the Maoris of New Zealand on this day in 1840, with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi; they did, so my worldview is safe! It seems the wordings of the English and Maori versions differ, to such an extent that a legion of lawyers have been kept busy ever since trying to sort it out, which may be the greatest evil of all; since 1975 this has been the responsibility of the Waitangi Tribunal. Despite the inequities which remain between whites and indigenous peoples there, Waitangi Day is still celebrated as a national holiday in New Zealand, marked by the awarding of the Order of New Zealand honours.]
1685 - James II of England and VII of Scotland became King upon the death of his brother Charles II, unleashing a sectarian shit-storm of epic proportions which only ended when William of Orange succeeded in hounding him out of the country in December 1688 during the so-called Glorious Revolution.

1740 - Pope Clement XII died; he was succeeded by Benedict XIV on August 17th.

1788 - Massachusetts became the sixth US state.

1815 - The first American railroad charter was granted, to John Stevens for his New Jersey Railroad.

1819 - Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded Singapore.

1840 - The Treaty of Waitangi - drafted by William Hobson with the help of his secretary, James Freeman and Resident Minister James Busby - was signed by the British and the Māori at Busby's house (now known as Treaty House) marking the foundation of New Zealand.

1843 - The first ever minstrel show - starring a troupe calling itself the Virginia Minstrels - opened at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City.

1862 - During the American Civil War Union general Ulysses S. Grant gave the United States its first victory when he captured Fort Henry, Tennessee, following the Battle of Fort Henry.

1922 - Achille Ratti became Pope Pius XI.

1934 - A botched coup attempt by right-wing extremists at the Palais Bourbon failed to topple France's Third Republic.

1936 - The fourth Olympic Winter Games opened in Germany, at Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

1952 - England's King George VI died in his sleep at Sandringham House; he was succeeded by his daughter, who became Elizabeth II while staying at Treetops Hotel in Kenya.

1958 - Seven players for Manchester United were killed - Geoff Bent, Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, Mark Jones, David Pegg, Tommy Taylor, and Liam 'Billy' Whelan instantly, Duncan Edwards of his injuries 15 days later - in the Munich air disaster, along with co-pilot Kenneth 'Ken' Rayment, cabin steward Tom Cable, three members of Man United's staff, eight journalists, and two supporters; there were also 21 survivors.

1971 - Astronaut Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the Moon.

1987 - Justice Mary Gaudron became the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia.

1989 - The so-called Roundtable Talks began in Poland, oddly enough resulting in the Polish Roundtable Agreement; by May 1990, similar talks would be held in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Bulgaria, thus marking the onset of the overthrow of communist rule in Eastern Europe.

1993 - Tennis star Arthur Ashe died of complications arising from AIDS, which he contracted from a tainted blood sample received during open heart surgery in 1983.

1998 - Corsican prefect Claude Erignac was assassinated in Ajaccio, presumably by Yvan Colonna.

2005 - Britain's Tony Blair became the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister with his 2,838th day on the job - surpassing Harold Wilson, who was PM twice from 1964–1970 and 1974-1976.
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POPnews - January 26th

[The disappearance of Jane (9), Arnna (7), and Grant (4) - collectively known as the Beaumont Children - marked a major loss of innocence in Australian culture, as previously that country's parents had considered their children safe from human predators; prompting the largest and most prolonged investigation in Australian history, and despite the identification of four plausible suspects - including Bevan Spencer von Einem, Arthur Stanley Brown, James O'Neill, and Derek Percy - no trace of any of the children has ever been found.]
1531 - An estimated 30,000 people died when Lisbon was hit by an earthquake.

1700 - The magnitude 9 Cascadia Earthquake took place off the west coast of the North America, as evidenced by Japanese records of a tsunami which struck the east coast of that country and the carbon dating of tree rings in the affected area.

1736 - Poland's King Stanislaus I abdicated his throne.

1788 - The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sailed into Sydney Harbour to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent; today the event is commemorated as Australia Day.

1808 - The Rum Rebellion - the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australian history - occurred twenty years to the day after the colony was founded, when Governor William Bligh was deposed by forces loyal to John Macarthur.

1837 - Michigan became the 26th US state.

1856 - The first Battle of Seattle occurred when US Marines from the USS Decatur - commanded by Guert Gansevoort and anchored in Elliott Bay - fired upon Suquamish and Duwamish attackers after an all day battle with settlers; the Native Americans reported 28 dead and 80 wounded. Part of the Puget Sound War, the battle occurred one year to the day after Washington Territory governor Isaac Stevens imposed the Point No Point Treaty on the S'Klallam, the Chimacum and the Skokomish tribes at Point No Point, on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula. Stevens had only recently declared a 'war of extermination' against all the indigenous peoples of the region.

1861 - Louisiana seceded from the United States to join the Confederate States of America.

1905 - The Cullinan Diamond was discovered; it was later presented to King Edward VII and has been incorporated into the British Crown Jewels.

1911 - Richard Strauss' opera Der Rosenkavalier received its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera.

1934 - Harlem's Apollo Theater was reopened.

1950 - The Constitution of India was adopted, and India became a republic; the date is now celebrated in that country as Republic Day.

1966 - The Beaumont Children went missing from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, during a family picnic on that year's Australia Day.

1988 - Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera debuted on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre; it is currently the longest-running show in the history of the Great White Way, with more than 9,500 performances in that location alone, surpassing Lloyd Webber's other monster hit Cats in January 2006.

1993 - Vaclav Havel was elected President of the newly created Czech Republic.

1998 - During a televised press conference from the White House, US President Bill Clinton insisted he 'did not have sexual relations' with Monica Lewinsky; it was later revealed, however, that she'd had sexual relations with him, which is (regardless of what your definition of 'is' is) still none of our damn business - and hardly on a par with forcing the President to resign over the discovery that he'd authorized the burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate hotel, for which it was retaliation.

2001 - On India's Republic Day, an earthquake centered at Gujarat killed 30,000 and injured 55,000 more.

2004 - President Hamid Karzai signed the new constitution of Afghanistan.

2005 - Condoleezza Rice was sworn in as US Secretary of State.
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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 24th

[Caligula, Rome's third Emperor, began his reign in March 37 CE promisingly enough; after a couple of years, however, something hastened his descent into depravity. Possibly the job went to his head, or he may have developed some kind of mental illness. Whatever the reason, he comes down to us through history as a right perv, as famously portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in the 1979 film Caligula - aka 'the most expensive porno ever made'.]
41 CE - Caligula was assassinated by his Praetorian Guards.

1742 - Prince-elector Charles VII Albert of Bavaria became Holy Roman Emperor.

1848 - Gold was discovered by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill, near Sacramento, California.

1857 - The University of Calcutta was formally established, making it the first full-fledged university in south Asia.

1859 - Following the political union of Moldavia and Wallachia, Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected the first Domnitor or ruler of the aptly-named United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia.

1887 - At the Battle of Dogali Abyssinian troops under Ras Alula Engida defeated an Italian force commanded by Colonel Tommaso De Cristofori.

1907 - The Boy Scout movement was founded by Robert Baden-Powell.

1916 - In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the federal income tax constitutional.

1924 - Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg, was renamed Leningrad; Leningrad, formerly Petrograd, has since been renamed St. Petersburg.

1927 - The Pleasure Garden - the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock - opened in London, following the success of The Lodger, which was made after but released before.

1936 - Albert Sarraut began his second term as Prime Minister of France.

1943 - At the height of World War II US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluded a 10-day conference in Casablanca.

1961 - A B-52 Stratofortress bomber carrying two hydrogen bombs broke up and crashed over Goldsboro, North Carolina; one weapon nearly detonated, and its uranium core is still lost.

1966 - An Air India Boeing 707 jet named Kanchen-junga and piloted by J. T. D'Souza crashed into Mont Blanc, on the approach to Geneva airport, killing 117; among those killed was Dr. Homi J. Babha, who had recently been named chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission.

1977 - At the Massacre of Atocha in Madrid - during the Spanish transition to democracy - 5 were killed and four injured by members of the far-right group Alianza Apostólica Anticomunista.

1984 - The first Apple Macintosh was sold.

1986 - NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft passed Uranus; the usual jokes were made that are inevitably made whenever anyone mentions Uranus, most of them by me.

1993 - Turkish journalist and writer Uğur Mumcu was assassinated by a jihadist car bomb in Ankara.

2003 - The US Department of Homeland Security began its first day of business.
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POPnews (US) - January 18th

[It still boggles my mind that anyone could be stupid enough to believe terrorism in any form is even the slightest bit persuasive... Terrorism breeds defiance, not capitulation, you stupid fucks!]
1916 - A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri.

1964 - Plans for the new World Trade Center were unveiled.

1975 - Norman Lear's groundbreaking sitcom The Jeffersons made its television debut on CBS.

1993 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday was observed in all 50 states for the first time.

1998 - Matt Drudge broke the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal on his website, the Drudge Report; the Pop Culture Institute hopes to one day break a scandal regarding Matt Drudge on this website as a prime example of payback being a bitch.
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POPnews - January 7th

[Is Bill Clinton a liar? It doesn't even matter what your definition of 'is' is - yes, he is. Is lying about adultery grounds for impeachment? Certainly the Pop Culture Institute doesn't think so - at least not compared to lying about weapons of mass destruction in order to provoke a costly foreign war to make your buddies in Big Oil richer than even their greediest imaginations. Just as a strictly hypothetical for instance...]
1325 - Alfonso IV became King of Portugal following the death of his father Denis.

1558 - Calais - a seaport on the English Channel/La Manche which was the final British holding on the Continent - was seized by Francis, duc de Guise, as England's Queen Mary I lay dying in London.

1598 - Boris Godunov seized the throne of Russia.

1608 - Fire destroyed Jamestown, Virginia.

1610 - Galileo Galilei observed the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time; they were named after the lovers of Zeus (aka Jupiter) - Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto - by Simon Marius, but are referred to as the Galilean moons.

1782 - The first American commercial bank - the Bank of North America - opened, at the prodding of Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris, having received its charter from the Congress of the Confederation on the last day of December 1781.

1785 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries crossed the English Channel from Dover Castle to Guînes (near Calais) in a gas balloon, taking about 2½ hours in which to do it; following their feat of derring-do Blanchard was granted a substantial pension by King Louis XVI.

1835 - The HMS Beagle - with Charles Darwin aboard - anchored off the Chonos Archipelago.

1904 - The distress signal CQD was established - only to be replaced two years later by SOS.

1920 - Republican Speaker of the New York State Assembly Thaddeus C. Sweet refused to seat five duly elected Socialist Party assemblymen - Samuel A. DeWitt, Samuel Orr, Louis Waldman, Charles Solomon, and August Claessens - in direct contravention of the democratic principles he'd only just been sworn to uphold.

1922 - Ireland's Dáil Éireann ratified the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64-57 vote.

1924 - George Gershwin completed his famed composition Rhapsody in Blue, which combined elements of classical music and jazz.

1927 - The Savoy Big Five, created by Abe Saperstein of Chicago, played their first game; later that year he changed their name to the Harlem Globetrotters, and a legend was born...

1931 - Guy Menzies made the first solo non-stop flight across the Tasman Sea (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing near Hari Hari, on New Zealand's west coast - shaving 2½ hours off the time taken by Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm during their historic first-ever trans-Tasman flight on board the Southern Cross in September 1928.

1935 - Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval signed the Franco–Italian Agreement.

1959 - The United States recognized the government of Fidel Castro.

1973 - Twenty-three year-old Mark Essex fatally shot 9 people and wounded 13 others at the Howard Johnson's hotel on Loyola Avenue in New Orleans before himself being shot to death by police officers; he did forego killing blacks, though, and allowed several to escape during the rampage. At one time a gentle soul who aspired to the ministry, a two-year hitch in the US Navy exposed him to such graphic racism that he snapped... Yet further proof that racism hurts us all.

1993 - The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as President.

1999 - The impeachment trial of US President Bill Clinton began.
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