Happy Birthday Tracy Chapman

Partly because of the songs she sings (issue-oriented) and the style in which she sings them (folky) - but mainly because she hasn't emerged from some music industry cookie cutter, instead earning her cred performing on the coffee-house circuit of Cambridge, Massachusetts, while attending Tufts University - Tracy Chapman was never going to have one of those Top 40 careers; still, to those who admire her work (like the Pop Culture Institute) her every smoky utterance is a welcome dose of content in an increasingly content-free world.

Born on this day in 1964, Tracy Chapman's first big media exposure was her performance at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute in 1988, following which her first single Fast Car - from her debut album, Tracy Chapman (1988) - drove straight to the top of the charts and parked there; Give Me One Reason, from her fourth release New Beginning (1995), was a bonafide smash, and remains her biggest single to date in terms of sales. Since then she has remained consistent, retaining her cadre of loyal fans by writing thoughtful lyrics and elegant melodies well-played and beautifully sung.

Eight albums and twenty years later, Tracy Chapman still tours extensively, rarely gives interviews - the one at left, for Rolling Stone, being a remarkable exception - and continues to work on behalf of causes dear to her, namely AIDS and human rights; in 2006 Chapman was outed by novelist Alice Walker, who discussed Chapman's relationship with Walker's daughter in The Guardian.
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POPnews - March 30th

[Russia's sale of Alaska to the United States was accompanied by this cheque for $7.2 million, the equivalent of $104 million in today's money; it is said the sale went ahead because Russia feared losing the territory without compensation, either to the Americans or the British, who were then pretty firmly entrenched in Canada.]
1282 - On Easter Monday the people of Sicily had finally had enough, and undertook a popular rebellion against their hated Angevin king Charles I during what became known as the War of the Sicilian Vespers; Giuseppe Verdi's opera Les vêpres siciliennes would later be based on this conflict.

1296 - England's King Edward I sacked the border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed (now in Northumberland but then in Scotland) during his strenuous effort to subdue that country; in all some 8,000 residents fell beneath English swords - even those who had sheltered in churches - laying the groundwork for the First War of Scottish Independence.

1822 - The US Government created the Florida Territory.

1842 - Anesthesia was used for the first time in an operation when Dr. Crawford Long used diethyl ether while removing a tumour from the neck of James M. Venable in Jefferson, Georgia.

1855 - So-called Border Ruffians from Missouri invaded Kansas and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature during the Bleeding Kansas era which led directly to the American Civil War.

1856 - The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War.

1858 - Hymen Lipman patented a pencil with an attached eraser.

1863 - Danish prince Wilhelm Georg was chosen to serve as King George I of Greece.

1867 - Alaska was purchased from Russia for $7.2 million - about 2 cents an acre or $4.19/km² - by US Secretary of State William H. Seward; the news media instantly dubbed it Seward's Folly, but history would make them eat their words. There's thought to be some $450 billion in oil still to be found beneath its surface, in addition to a rich natural wilderness above it, although how much of the latter will be spared in the unremitting zeal to get at the former is anybody's guess.

1870 - Texas was readmitted to the Union during the period of US history known as Reconstruction.

1885 - The Battle for Kushka triggered the Pandjeh Incident which nearly gave rise to war between the British and Russian empires.

1909 - The Queensboro Bridge opened linking Manhattan and Queens.

1912 - Sultan Abdelhafid signed the Treaty of Fez, making Morocco a French protectorate.

1939 - The Heinkel He 100 fighter jet set the world airspeed record of 463 mph.

1949 - A riot broke out in Reykjavík's Austurvöllur Square when Iceland joined NATO.

1954 - Toronto's Yonge Street subway line opened, making it the first of its kind in Canada.

1979 - British politician Airey Neave was killed by a car bomb as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster car park; a group calling itself the Irish National Liberation Army later claimed responsibility. As Shadow Secretary for Northern Ireland (and poised to become the minister in that post in the upcoming general election) Neave was an unremitting hardliner who many felt would have brought The Troubles to an abrupt end with savage tyranny - or, more likely, made the situation much, much worse.

1997 - Channel Five began broadcasting in the UK.

2006 - Marcos Pontes became the first Brazilian astronaut.
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Pop History Moment: The Shooting of Spain's Infante Alfonso

[This photograph shows the Countess of Barcelona with her four children - from left Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz, Infanta Margarita, Duchess of Soria, the ill-fated Infante Alfonso seated on her lap, and the future King Juan Carlos I beside her - at some point in the late 1940s. ]

On this day in 1956 Spain's then-exiled House of Bourbon was rocked by tragedy when the second son and fourth child of the Count and Countess of Barcelona - the 14-year-old Infante Alfonso - was killed by a gunshot wound to the head... At the time of the accident the royal family were on holiday at their home, Villa Giralda in the Portugese resort of Estoril, and had just returned from Maundy Thursday church service; His Royal Highness had earlier in the day won a junior golf tournament, and was excited to see his elder brother, who was home from military school for an Easter visit.

As with any accident of this type, rumours and conjecture have run rife over the years; the official story, predictably, failed utterly in satisfying the chattering classes. One thing the various versions do have in common, however, is that the prince's death was clearly an accident. Whether he shot himself while cleaning a pistol or whether his older brother did it either in an act of horseplay (believing the weapon to be unloaded*) or because he was startled or bumped by an opening door and whether the bullet struck the prince directly or following a ricochet scarcely matters at this point. The princes had been exceptionally close as children, during their shared exile, and the elder has been said to have never quite gotten over the loss of his brother.

Despite the fact that the news got very little coverage in Spain under the regime of Francisco Franco, many hundreds of royalist Spaniards braved crossing the border to bring Spanish soil with which to cover Prince Alfonso's coffin lid when he was buried the following Saturday, Holy Saturday, in the nearby municipal cemetery in Cascais. In October 1992 his remains were re-interred at the Pantheon of the Princes of El Escorial, near Madrid, where they lie to this day surrounded by those of his illustrious ancestors.

*A highly unlikely scenario, given the royal brothers' training in marksmanship and acuity with firearms.
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Standup by Mitch Hedberg

I could write at length about the unique comedy stylings of the late Mitch Hedberg, who died on this day in 2005; I could even quote him extensively if I was up for the thrill ride (and publicity bonanza) of a lawsuit by his estate... Or, I could simply post a clip of him doing what he does best and shut my mouth for once.

Here then is one of Hedberg's last television appearances, on The Late Show with David Letterman.
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Remembering... Mitch Hedberg

On this day in 2005 the world of comedy lost one of its best and brightest; born with a congenital heart defect - as well as being a recreational drug user - a New Jersey coroner nevertheless ruled his cause of death as being due to 'multiple drug toxicity'. It seems unlikely his death was a suicide, and indeed his condition may have been exacerbated by his habit one time too many.

Hedberg's standup was different from the rest, mainly due to its having been performed despite crippling stage fright. He often wore sunglasses onstage, and even then refrained from looking at the audience as he bombarded them with some of the most whimsical material out there - a cross between Steven Wright and Emo Philips. His act was also considerably more self-aware than usual; when a joke bombed he would acknowledge it, and rather than skating over an instance of bad delivery or timing, he'd make a joke of it instead, and repeat it until it got the desired effect. Overall, the effect of Mitch Hedberg's persona was lovability, and indeed he is fondly remembered by colleagues such as Dave Attell.

Hedberg is survived by his fellow comedian Lynn Shawcroft, whom he married in February 1999; his website remains active as a tribute to him. At the time of his death Hedberg was 37.
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Happy Birthday Amy Sedaris

That anyone could take this lovely visage and bury it under the slag heap of Jerri Blank during three seasons of Strangers with Candy on Comedy Central (plus in a feature film) strikes my shallow heart as simultaneously brave and cruel; nonetheless, her refreshing lack of ego means she will remain lovely while her contemporaries manage to worry their looks away fretting over how they'll keep them.

Currently living in Greenwich Village with the ghost of her murdered imaginary boyfriend Ricky and a pet rabbit, Sedaris (sister of humourist and fellow Pop Culture Institute favourite David Sedaris) is also the author of I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence as well as the co-author of numerous plays; she's also a fixture on the talk-show circuit, her subversively bubbly demeanour frequently livening up the proceedings at Late Show with David Letterman or merely adding her own personal nuance to the anarchy at Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
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"Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" by Eric Idle

Birthday wishes go out today to Eric Idle, founding member of Monty Python, singer-songwriter and all around douchebag - er, good egg. That's what I meant to say, obviously.

Having been firmly grounded in comedy by his experience at public school, Idle earned himself a seat in Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge, a rich font of comedic talent that is also known for occasionally producing academics as well; invited to join the Footlights Club, there he met such comedy lights (and future collaborators) as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Graham Chapman, and John Cleese. Before his time there was up, Idle had been made President of the Footlights Club, an honour so prestigious it has been sought by literally no one, and was subsequently held by such no ones as Clive Anderson, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, and David Mitchell (all of whom you'd know about if you regularly perused the Pop Culture Institute).

Released from the grind of an English degree, Idle made his way to London where in no time he was appearing in a subversive children's programme Do Not Adjust Your Set, alongside future Python costars Terry Jones and Michael Palin, who were also funny, despite having gone to Oxford. There he also met Terry Gilliam - who was, of all things, an American - who'd provided bizarre animations for both the previous and future shows.

Following the success of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Idle threw himself into the creation of Rutland Weekend Television, film projects such as All You Need Is Cash (a sentimental look at a fictional band called The Rutles) as well as various Python movies - only the latter of which has anything to do with the matter at hand, namely Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a spritely ditty from the utterly blasphemous (although equally spritely) film Life of Brian.
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Pop History Moment: "Some Like It Hot" Premieres

On this day in 1959 the movie Some Like It Hot had its world premiere in Hollywood; directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe, it was hailed as a classic from the start. Just for good measure, the Catholic Legion of Decency slapped it with a C (for 'Condemned') rating, ensuring massive attendance.

Originally intended as a colour film (which Monroe would have preferred) it was later decided to film it in black & white to conceal a greenish pallor from the makeup worn by the male leads. The result is a visual splendour to match the utter verve of the script and the amazing onscreen chemistry of the actors.

During its production stories about onset antics filled the celebrity press, not all of them positive; as good as Marilyn was when she was good, when she was bad she was worse, and Wilder apparently had to harangue her into take after take to say the simplest line: 'Bourbon?'. On the positive side, a location shoot at the Hotel Del Coronado generated a huge amount of buzz for the movie.

Good gossip or bad, none of that mattered as the film unspooled that night, and a captivated audience became the first in history to witness what, in 2000, the American Film Institute named the greatest American comedy film of all time.
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POPnews - March 29th

[Located in the town of Mariefred beside Lake Mälaren 60 km (37.5 miles) west of Stockholm, Gripsholm Castle has the kind of long and storied history one might expect from such a place... Originally built by Bo Jonsson in 1380, the fortress was seized and then rebuilt by Gustav I (known as Gustav Vasa) in 1526; used as a residence by the Swedish Royal Family until 1731, Gripsholm was controversially renovated by Fredrik Lilljekvist between 1889 and 1894, although in the end his renovations weren't as extreme as planned. Today it houses Sweden's National Collection of Portraits (Statens porträttsamlingar), thought to be the oldest portrait collection in the world.]
1461 - At the Battle of Towton - during England's Wars of the Roses - Edward of York defeated the Lancastrian Queen Margaret of Anjou (wife of Henry VI) to become King Edward IV.

1632 - The Treaty of Saint-Germain was signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629.

1638 - Swedish colonists established the first settlement in Delaware, calling it New Sweden; they then proceeded to build Fort Christina (named for Queen Christina) where today the city of Wilmington stands.

1792 - King Gustav III of Sweden died after being shot in the back at a midnight masquerade at Stockholm's Royal Opera just 13 days earlier; he was succeeded by Gustav IV Adolf.

1806 - Construction of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, was authorized by President Thomas Jefferson; it would become the first federal highway in the United States.

1809 - King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden abdicated following a coup d'état by his military officers, who seized him and his family and imprisoned them in Gripsholm Castle; he was eventually succeeded by his uncle Charles XIII.

1847 - During the Mexican-American War US forces led by General Winfield Scott took the city of Veracruz following a siege.

1867 - Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the British North America Act, which would establish the Dominion of Canada the following July 1st.

1871 - The Royal Albert Hall was opened by Queen Victoria.

1879 - During the Anglo-Zulu War British forces led by Evelyn Wood defeated 20,000 Zulus under Ntshingwayo Khoza at the Battle of Kambula.

1882 - The Knights of Columbus were established.

1930 - Heinrich Brüning was appointed Germany's Reichskanzler.

1951 - Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage by Judge Irving Kaufman; the prosecutor in the case had been the notorious Roy Cohn.

1961 - The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, allowing residents of Washington, DC, to vote in presidential elections.

1971 - A Los Angeles jury recommended the death penalty for Charles Manson and three female followers - Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten - for their role in 1969's Tate-LaBianca murders.

1974 - NASA's Mariner 10 became the first space probe to fly past Mercury, having been launched in November 1973.

1981 - The first London Marathon was run, in which 6,700 participants turned out to brave the drizzle along a 41.84 km (26 mile) route from Blackheath in Greenwich to Buckingham Palace in The Mall; because it begins on one side of the Prime Meridian and ends on the other, it is the only marathon in the world to take place in two hemispheres.

1982 - The Canada Act 1982 (U.K.) received Royal Assent from Elizabeth II, setting the stage for her in her role as the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982.

1993 - Catherine Callbeck became premier of Prince Edward Island, the first and so far only woman in Canadian history to be elected to such a post in a general election.
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Remembering... Dwight D. Eisenhower

I've published this before, and no doubt I'll publish it again, simply because it needs to be said again and again: the military-industrial complex (a phrase first coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower) is the only real menace to the progress of peace - having, as it does, a vested interest in seeing that the copious quantities of ordnance and materiel it produces is occasionally destroyed and replaced with more of the same (or preferably more of a slightly better kind) in the name of consumerist fascism.

On this day in 1969 the man who first warned Americans about the military-industrial complex, the 34th President of the United States, passed away at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC, at the age of 78; upon leaving office in January 1960 Eisenhower made the speech from which the above clip is derived. It was undoubtedly the high point of a decidedly mixed legacy.

While on the one hand a career military man - at one point the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II - it was on his Presidential watch that the ill-considered police action known popularly as the Korean War was ended. A supporter of human rights and instrumental in beginning the process of integrating black and white students in schools across the Nation, he was also behind implementation of In God We Trust as the national motto of the United States in 1956 over the more inclusive E Pluribus Unum.

This single act as President not only breached the sacred separation of Church and State so favoured by the Founders of his nation - a concept which allowed the land of the free and the home of the brave to become just that - but it likely marked the beginning of the end for the American Empire as well. Nothing has caused so much bigotry in the United States over the past half century as Christianity, and people like Matthew Shepard and Lawrence King owe their eventual fates to the hatred inherent in those four vicious little words.
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Pop History Moment: Three Mile Island Melts Down

On this day in 1979, a pump in the reactor cooling system at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island failed, resulting in the evaporation of some contaminated water into the atmosphere and causing a partial nuclear meltdown in the facility's Unit 2, which has been shut down ever since.

Immediate reaction to the accident was hysterical, likely because it had been perfectly timed to coincide with the release of The China Syndrome just twelve days earlier, in which a far worse accident occurred at the fictional Ventana Nuclear Power Plant in California (itself based on both the Santa Susana Field Laboratory - which had melted down in July 1959 - and Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, both in that state).

The film starred Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas; following the real-life events near Harrisburg only Jane Fonda became politically active against nuclear power. Still, her agitiating may have had some effect - either that or she timed her activism to coincide perfectly with pre-existing government plans - because there has been no subsequent expansion of nuclear power capabilities in the United States (except in Springfield). Producers of The China Syndrome, unwilling to be seen as capitalizing on the accident, pulled the movie from certain theatres in the area; nonetheless, the movie's timeliness - not to mention its solid acting and story elements - made the film a blockbuster at the box office, earning it 4 Academy Award nominations in the process.

Unlike the far worse events at Chernobyl in April 1986, the 25,000 people living in the vicinity of Three Mile Island have reported no elevated incidence of diseases like cancer in the three decades since the accident, although stress-related illnesses haven't been factored in; physicist Edward Teller claimed to have been the only victim of Three Mile Island when he suffered a heart attack the following May. 'You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous,' he said, in a pro-nuclear ad placed in the Wall Street Journal.

More hysterical reaction followed, this time in the form of laughter; in April 1979 Saturday Night Live aired a sketch entitled The Pepsi Syndrome in which President Jimmy Carter (played by Dan Aykroyd) was adversely (or not, depending on your outlook) affected by radiation while touring the accident site at 'Two Mile Island'; that accident had been caused by a technician (played by Bill Murray) carelessly spilled a cola onto his control panel, after which he opined: 'I coulda had a V8!'
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POPnews - March 28th

[The greed of the unions was as much to blame for the fall of James Callaghan and thus the rise of Thatcherism as the ruthlessness of the Conservative leader herself; is it any wonder it took 18 years to elect the next Labour Prime Minister and that he had to abandon the party's traditional principles to do it?]

37 CE - Having only recently succeeded Tiberius Gemellus as Roman Emperor, Caligula accepted the titles of the Principate, which were conferred on him by the Senate.

193 CE - Roman Emperor Pertinax - first to rule during the Year of the Five Emperors - was assassinated by Praetorian Guards after a reign of 87 days; he was succeeded by Didius Julianus, who'd bought the job in an auction, having offered to pay every guard 25,000 sestertii to the 20,000 offered by his nearest rival Titus Flavius Sulpicianus. His reign would be even shorter than that of his predecessor.

364 CE - Roman Emperor Valentinian I appointed his brother Flavius Valens co-emperor.

845 CE - Paris was sacked by a Viking fleet of 120 ships, probably under the leadership of Ragnar Lodbrok, who collected a huge ransom from Charles the Bald - as much as 7,000 pounds of silver - in exchange for leaving.

1285 - Pope Martin IV died; he was succeeded by Honorius IV on April 2nd.

1776 - Juan Bautista de Anza found the site for the Presidio of San Francisco and the Mission San Francisco de Asis.

1802 - Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovered 2 Pallas, only the second asteroid known to man.

1809 - During the Peninsular War French Imperial troops commanded by Claude Victor defeated those of Spain under Gregorio de la Cuesta at the Battle of Medelin.

1834 - The US Senate censured President Andrew Jackson for his actions in defunding the Second Bank of the United States; his censure was later expunged from the record.

1854 - France and Britain declared war on Russia at the outset of the Crimean War.

1910 - Henri Fabre became the first person to fly a seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion, after taking off from a water runway near the French coastal town of Martigues.

1920 - The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak affected the American Great Lakes region and states of the Deep South, when as many as 38 individual tornadoes formed and wreaked havoc in a single day.

1930 - Constantinople and Angora changed their names to Istanbul and Ankara.

1939 - Nationalist forces led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco conquered Madrid, effectively ending the Spanish Civil War.

1941 - Having just completed the manuscript of her final novel Between the Acts, and fearing an imminent nervous breakdown (not her first), novelist Virginia Woolf filled her overcoat pockets with stones and waded into the River Ouse near Monk's House, her home in Rodmell, Sussex; Woolf's body would not be found for three weeks, at which point it was badly decomposed - or 'skeletonized' in the euphemism of the times - after which her remains were cremated and buried in her garden. Woolf had only recently witnessed the destruction of her long-time London home at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury by bombs during the Blitz, as well as the cool reception of her biography of friend Roger Fry. 'I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time...' began the final note she sent to her husband, Leonard Woolf.

1946 - Juan Peron was formally elected President of Argentina by that country's electoral college, having swept to power on February 24th.

1969 - Greek poet and Nobel Prize laureate Giorgos Seferis made a famous statement on the BBC World Service opposing the Greek junta known as the Regime of the Colonels.

1979 - Following the so-called Winter of Discontent, Britain's Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan was defeated by one vote in a Motion of No Confidence - resulting in the dissolution of Parliament and the tendering of his government's resignation to The Queen, who then called a General Election.

1994 - BBC Radio Five Live began broadcasting in the UK.

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"Where The Streets Have No Name" by U2

On this day in 1987 U2 paid homage to The Beatles Final Concert by shooting their video for Where the Streets Have No Name on the rooftop of the Republic Liquor Store at East 7th Street and South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. Director Meiert Avis managed to get enough usable footage despite the growing chaos in the street below and more police officers than one could expect to find at an actual liquour store shooting before the plug was pulled on the whole affair.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Paula Trickey

Once upon a time yours truly was enamoured of a silly little show called Pacific Blue...

It may have been the late hour in which the USA Network show was rerun in my market, or it might have been the copious quantities of Entertainment Helper I was smoking at the time*, but there was something in the beautifully photographed scenes of Santa Monica I really liked, and it wasn't the frankly ludicrous police procedural story-lines. If only I knew what it was I so loved about it...

Oh, that's right. Oodles of hotness owing to such cast members as Rick Rossovich, Jim Davidson, Mario Lopez - and of course Paula Trickey here. Besides which, it was the show that launched Shanna Moakler, who practiced the mad skillz she later employed so effectively against Paris Hilton on Trickey's character.

Trickey, of course, is a showbiz veteran, with appearances on Beverly Hills 90210, Walker, Texas Ranger, and The OC under her belt.

*Amazingly, even more than I'm smoking now!
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"In The Navy" by The Muppets

How could I not mark the US Navy's anniversary without this video of The Muppets, from Episode 524 of The Muppet Show, performing the Village People's anthemic disco favourite In the Navy as Viking pigs? I mean, after all, I'm only ostensibly human am I not?
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Pop History Moment: The US Navy Was Founded

On this day in 1794 the United States Navy was founded, as a replacement for the Continental Navy. The first of the vessels of the Continental Navy - Hannah, which was launched at Beverly, Massachusetts, in September 1775 - was even paid for out of George Washington's own pocket!

After passage of the Naval Act of 1794, six frigates were ordered and built: USS United States, USS President, USS Constellation, USS Chesapeake, USS Congress, and USS Constitution. The last of these - nicknamed 'Old Ironsides' - famously saw action during the First Barbary War, and is still in existence; it remains moored at Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor and today serves as a museum thanks to the efforts of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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POPnews - March 27th

[The Paiute and Sierra Miwok peoples had lived in the vicinity of the Yosemite Valley for centuries before Lafayette Bunnell first clapped eyes on it; to his credit, he named the area Yosemite following discussions with Chief Tenaya of the Ahwahneechee, whose territoriality and allegedly violent natures soon led to their extermination.]
1329 - Pope John XXII issued his papal bull In Agro Dominico condemning some of the writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical.

1513 - While searching for the Fountain of Youth explorer Juan Ponce de León became the first European on record to sight Florida.

1613 - A son born to Nicholas Guy and his wife at the English plantation at Cuper's Cove, in Newfoundland's Conception Bay, was the first white child born in Newfoundland (and thus Canada).

1625 - Charles I became King of England, Scotland and Ireland (and claimed the title King of France for good measure) upon the death of his father, King James VI and I.

1794 - The US government passed the Naval Act of 1794, which established a permanent Navy to replace the Continental Navy which had served during the American Revolution and authorized the building of six frigates.

1851 - Dr. Lafayette Bunnell - physician with the Mariposa Battalion - became the first European to describe the Yosemite Valley.

1868 - The Lake Ontario Shore Railroad Company was organized in Oswego, New York.

1958 - Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union after forcing his predecessor, Nikolai Bulganin, to resign from the position following a purge of hardliners from the Politburo.

1963 - Wielding the so-called Beeching Axe British Railways chairman Dr. Richard Beeching issued a report calling for huge cuts to the United Kingdom's rail network for God knows what real reason but which he claimed was for efficiency and profitability's sake.

1964 - The Good Friday Earthquake - at a magnitude of 9.2 the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history - struck south central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.

1968 - Yuri Gagarin - Soviet cosmonaut and the first human in space - died during an aircraft training accident.

1969 - Mariner 7 was launched as part of NASA's Mariner Program, the second of a two-part mission to explore Mars.

1976 - The first 7 km (4.6 miles) of the Washington Metro opened; since then the system has grown to include five lines, 86 stations, and 171.1 km (106.3 miles) of track.

1980 - The Norwegian oil platform Alexander Kielland collapsed in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.

1986 - A car bomb concealed in a 1979 Holden Commodore exploded outside the Russell Street Police HQ in Melbourne, killing Constable Angela Taylor and injuring 21 others; the motive and perpetrator remain unknown.

1994 - The Eurofighter took its first flight over the German municipality of Manching.

1998 - The Food and Drug Administration approved Viagra for use as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.

2002 - At the so-called Passover Massacre a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 29 people and injured 140 partaking of the Passover meal at a hotel in Netanya; many of the dead were over the age of 70.

2004 - HMS Scylla - a decommissioned Leander-class vessel and the last Royal Navy frigate to have been built at the Devonport Royal Dockyard - was intentionally sunk for use as an artificial reef (the first of its kind in Europe) off Whitsand Bay in Cornwall.
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Nobody Puts Jennifer Grey In A Corner

Okay, okay... So the title's a bit twee, even for me - especially since I may be the only person of my generation who hasn't seen the movie Dirty Dancing. But hey, I'm running a business here, and my instincts have been pretty good so far, so there you have it.

A n y w a y... It goes without saying that today is Jennifer Grey's birthday and that, given my previous revelation, I'm most familiar with the work she did in Ferris Bueller's Day Off - which I saw eleven times in theatrical release, owing to a certain schoolboy crush I once had (and may still have) on one Mr Matthew Broderick.

In the mid-1990s she portrayed Mindy, the best friend of Rachel's who took up with Barry after he was left at the altar - which incident had been the plot device for the greatest American sitcom ever, Friends.

Practically the only other thing I know about Jennifer Grey is that she had a nose job which changed her appearance to such a degree that even casting directors stopped recognizing her; such a scandal was this that it was the lead story on Entertainment Tonight several days running. Ever intrepid, Grey spun the story into a short-lived sitcom, 1999's It's Like, You Know... in which she poked fun at herself and her career; she's recently appeared on the dramedy John from Cincinnati, which is all about surfers or something and may one day make my personal watchlist since a) I get into a very LA head space during the Vancouver winter, and b) surfers are hot.
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"Jaded" by Aerosmith

I would be remiss if I let today pass without marking the birthday of rock and roll legend Steven Tyler, lead singer and founding member of Boston-based rockers Aerosmith; amazingly, Tyler is still rocking out despite his eligibility for AARP membership, which bodes well for me as I scream - and I do mean scream - past the big 4-0.

Although the band had their first hit as long ago as 1975, with Sweet Emotion, as recently as 2001 Aerosmith were still on the charts with Jaded, which Tyler co-wrote with Marti Frederiksen for the band's 13th studio album Just Push Play. Jaded was rolled out with considerable hype at both that year's American Music Awards and Super Bowl XXXV.
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Gratuitous Brunette: T. R. Knight

In the interest of full disclosure I am compelled to confess that I've never seen an episode of Grey's Anatomy - not even a partial one* - although I have had several dreams featuring one of its stars, Eric Dane, which I am nonetheless unable to discuss under the terms of the Access to Too Much Information Act; what I know of birthday boy T. R. Knight, then, is what I know owing to a seeming inability to avert my eyes from celebrity media...

All of which means that T. R. Knight owes his prestigious appearance here as a Gratuitous Brunette - and a fair measure of his current fame besides - to the scandal frenzy whipped up by Isaiah Washington in 2006-7 over Washington's use of some unfortunate vocabulary during a heated onset argument with their co-star, Patrick Dempsey.

Still, even though it seemed for awhile like it was going to be the scandal that wouldn't die, and while I don't approve of Washington's use of 'the other f-word' (since I have no doubt he would have shouted loudest and longest if Knight had used the n-word against him, after all) Washington - a straight man - had played a gay man in Spike Lee's 1996 film Get on the Bus long before Knight had even bothered to come out. Oddly enough, none of this emerged during the extended furore - which was less about homophobia than African-American homophobia**.

Anyway, the entire event is about to pass into the annals of pop culture lore... Knight's portrayal of George O'Malley came to an end following the 2008-9 season of the show, and only time will tell whether either of their careers will survive - with or without another beneficial injection of scandal.

*I don't seem to have the attention span to watch an hour-long drama, even though I can watch an entire box set of a sitcom in one ten-hour sitting. Maybe it's the soap opera histrionics I don't like, although that doesn't seem likely either. I guess it comes down to the sluices of fake blood inherent in a medical drama, which in me at least induce genuine nausea.
**Yes, there is a difference.
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POPnews - March 26th

[You see, kids... Once upon a time there was an American president who cared about peace in the Middle East. I know, I know, you think I'm shitting you, but it's really true! Look - here's a picture to prove it.]
1026 - Pope John XIX crowned Conrad II - first King of the Salian Dynasty - as Holy Roman Emperor.

1130 - Norway's King Sigurd I died without a legitimate male heir, precipitating a civil war that persisted until 1240; in the meantime he was succeeded by his illegitimate son Magnus IV and his half-brother Harald IV.

1212 - Portugal's King Sancho I died, at which time he was succeeded by his eldest son, who reigned as Afonso II.

1552 - Guru Amar Das became the third of eleven Sikh Gurus, following in the footsteps of Guru Angad Dev.

1636 - Holland's Utrecht University was founded.

1812 - An earthquake destroyed Caracas in the midst of the Venezuelan War of Independence.

1839 - The Henley Royal Regatta was first proposed by Captain Edmund Gardiner.

1958 - The US Army launched Explorer 3 to explore the Van Allen radiation belt.

1969 - American novelist John Kennedy Toole - best remembered today for his epic work A Confederacy of Dunces, for which he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 - committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning near Biloxi, Mississippi.

1971 - East Pakistan declared its independence from Pakistan to form the People's Republic of Bangladesh, inciting the Bangladesh Liberation War.

1975 - The Biological Weapons Convention entered into force.

1976 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sent out the first royal email - from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment - apparently.

1979 - Following the Camp David Accords Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington, DC.

1982 - The groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was held on Washington, DC's National Mall.

1990 - American fashion designer Halston - an icon of the 1970s - died in San Francisco of AIDS-related complications following a lifetime of legendary debauchery.

1997 - Thirty-nine bodies were found in a rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, belonging to members of the Heaven's Gate cult; the followers of Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles had been brainwashed into believing that a spaceship following the Comet Hale-Bopp would take their souls with them. Whatever you believe, they were definitely taken for a ride...

1998 - During Algeria's Oued Bouaicha massacre 52 people were killed with axes and knives, 32 of them babies under the age of 2.

1999 - The so-called Melissa worm infected Microsoft word processing and e-mail systems around the world, but not those of Apple. Suckers...

2005 - The Taiwanese government called on 1 million of its citizens to demonstrate in Taipei, in opposition to the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China; between 200,000 and 300,000 actually attended the walk.
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Pop History Moment: The Assassination of King Faisal

On this day in 1975 Saudi Arabia's King Faisal died following a gun attack by his half-brother's son Faisal bin Musa'id during a majlis, a kind of mass audience in which the King opens his palace to his subjects to hear their grievances; despite the efforts of doctors to keep him alive he'd been shot point-blank, and died soon after.

As for the King's assailant, he attempted to flee but was captured, imprisoned, tried, declared insane, and executed in fairly short order. The reason he gave for shooting the King was his brother's having been killed by members of the Saudi Defense Force during a demonstration in 1965.

King Faisal was succeeded by his half-brother Khalid, who reigned until his own death in June 1982.
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Happy Birthday Sarah Jessica Parker

Of course, to me she will always be Carrie Bradshaw, one of the few writer characters on TV you actually saw writing; but I first saw her in Square Pegs, so in my own little twisted pop culture way Patty Greene will always be Carrie Bradshaw in high school...

In the intervening years SJP made memorable turns in movies such as when she ran amok amok amok in Hocus Pocus and was so charming in Steve Martin's winsome L.A. Story, in which she played SanDeE*, likely the only character in the history of film with an asterisk in her name. And of course, who could forget her performance under the villainous tutelage of Maggie Smith in The First Wives Club, playing a second wife?

She's had a lot on her plate since I first published these birthday wishes three years ago; in addition to wife-and-motherhood - celebrating a thirteenth anniversary with Matthew Broderick in May and little James' eighth birthday in October as well as the arrival of twin daughters Marion and Tabitha (delivered by surrogate) in June 2009 - she's already finished a second much-anticipated Sex and the City movie following the monster success of the first one in 2008.

On a more cruel note, 2007 also saw her winning the un-coveted title of Maxim magazine's Unsexiest Woman on the Planet; Mrs. Broderick spoke out against the award, an unusual move for a celebrity put into such a position. The Pop Culture Institute would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sarah Jessica Parker for somehow managing to maintain her individuality in a profession where many of her contemporaries seem determined to morph into each other; although we're a little peeved that she had her signature mole removed, we're also sure she had her reasons.
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Pop History Moment: The Scottsboro Nine Are Arrested

On this day in 1931 nine black men (Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Roy Wright, Willie Roberson, Charles Weems, Ozie Powell, Olen Montgomery, and Eugene Williams) were accused of raping two white women on a Southern Railroad freight train, somewhere between Chattanooga and Memphis...

What actually happened will likely never be known, but the picture that emerges from various testimonies is that among the many illegal passengers in that boxcar was a similar group of white youths, out to make trouble, and a pair of white prostitutes named Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. After the white group was ousted by the black one it seems the two women wanted to show their gratitude, and did so in their best manner.

Unbeknownst to them, the white youths complained to the stationmaster, who wired ahead to the next stop - which was Paint Rock, Arkansas - and all were taken into custody; before the day was out, they'd been taken to nearby Scottsboro, and by nightfall the National Guard was protecting the jail from an ever-growing lynch mob.

The ensuing trials - for there were many - kept the Depression-era public well entertained; along with the Lindbergh Baby trial, the cases of Sacco & Vanzetti and Leopold & Loeb in the 1920s, and numerous tales of outlawry from John Dillinger to Bonnie & Clyde the general lawlessness and cruelty of the times makes for a fascinating study. Thought to have at least partially inspired Harper Lee's masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird, the convoluted story of what happened next to the Scottsboro Nine (also known as the Scottsboro Boys) is better illuminated in James Goodman's book Stories of Scottsboro than I could ever hope to do in the space allotted to me here...
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"Come On And Get My Love" by Cathy Dennis (with D-Mob)

Birthday wishes go out today to Cathy Dennis, the British singer-songwriter and Simon Fuller acolyte who scored a major dance floor sensation of her own in 1990 with D Mob, providing guest vocals for the single C'mon and Get My Love; the song provided my friends and me with some superlative cardio for the two months or so it held the DJ's attention at Top Drawer, which is the club in Ottawa I used to frequent, way back in the day.

Taken from the album Move To This, it got as high as #15 on the UK singles chart, and even higher - #10 - in the US on Billboard's Hot 100.

She's had much better luck as a songwriter, with seven of her compositions attaining the #1 spot in the UK, including Toxic (recorded by someone named Britney Spears) and Can't Get You out of My Head, which made Kylie Minogue a big deal in the United States again after twenty years of massive success everywhere in the English-speaking world but there.
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