POPnews - April 2nd

[Not that kind of panda crossing, silly!]

1453 - Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople; the city would finally fall on May 29th.

1513 - Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon became the first European to visit Florida; although it's known that he landed on the east coast of the peninsula, owing to shoddy 16th Century record-keeping there is much dispute over exactly where.

1755 - Commodore William James captured the pirate fortress of Suvarnadurg on India's west coast.

1792 - The Coinage Act was passed, establishing the United States Mint. Mmm... Mint...

1801 - During the Napoleonic Wars, at the Battle of Copenhagen, Britain's Royal Navy under Lord Nelson and Admiral Sir Hyde Parker destroyed the Danish fleet.

1804 - Forty ships in a convoy of 69 led by HMS Apollo were wrecked when they ran aground off Portugal's Cape Mondego.

1863 - During the Richmond Bread Riot food shortages incited hundreds of angry women to riot, demanding the governments of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Virginia governor John Letcher to release emergency supplies.

1917 - Jeannette Rankin became the first woman to take a seat in the US Congress as a member.

1930 - When Empress Zewditu I died suddenly and mysteriously Haile Selassie was proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia.

1956 - When As the World Turns and The Edge of Night premiered on CBS-TV, they became the first two daytime dramas to debut in the 30-minute format; while The Edge of Night transferred to ABC in December 1975 and went off the air nine years later, As The World Turns is still airing on CBS after more than 13,000 episodes.

1962 - The first official Panda crossing was opened outside London's Waterloo station, causing chaos.

1972 - Charlie Chaplin returned to the United States for the first time since the 1950s Red Scare forced him into exile in Switzerland; while in the US, he accepted an honorary Oscar for his body of work.

1975 - The CN Tower was completed, apparently.

1977 - Red Rum won the Grand National a record third time, having previously won in 1973 and 1974.

1984 - Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma was launched aboard Soyuz T-11, making him India's first astronaut.

1991 - The first female Premier of a Canadian province took office when Rita Johnston succeeded Bill Vander Zalm, who had resigned as Premier of British Columbia in scandal. In the subsequent provincial election that October Johnston's Social Credit Party was reduced from a majority of 74 seats to third-party status with just 7; she even lost her own.*

1998 - Maurice Papon - Cabinet minister in the government of French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing - was found guilty of war crimes.

2002 - Israeli forces surrounded Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity into which armed Palestinians had retreated following a fire-fight with the Israeli Defense Forces, who'd been carrying out Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank; the ensuing siege lasted until May 10th and resulted in the deaths of 8 militants affiliated with Fatah.

2005 - Pope John Paul II died; he was succeeded by Satan.

*The first and to date only woman to be elected premier of a Canadian province remains Liberal Catherine Callbeck of Prince Edward Island, who broke that barrier in 1993; Nellie Cournoyea became Premier of the Northwest Territories under a consensus government in November 1991, a month after Johnston was consigned to political oblivion.
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Pop History Moment: The Greatest Ever April Fool's Joke

On this day in 1957 the BBC's prestigious and respected current affairs programme Panorama decided to risk a measure of its journalistic prestige and respect in the name of that most favoured of British pastimes - namely, taking the piss...

Probably the greatest April Fools' Day joke in the history of media - itself the brainchild of BBC camera operator Charles de Jaeger - the report on that year's bumper crop of spaghetti narrated by Richard Dimbleby was watched by as many as 8 million, and seems to have fooled quite a fair number of them. Of course, it helps that spaghetti was then an exotic food in the UK, most frequently found in tins.

Some of the accompanying footage was shot at a factory in London, some in nearby St. Albans, and the rest at a hotel in the Swiss resort town of Castiglione.
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Remembering... Eleanor of Aquitaine

Once upon a time, when women were considered empty vessels, little better than furnishings designed for recreation, procreation, and doing all those little things men normally can't be bothered to do (like picking up around the castle) more than a few of them bucked the trend; they were learned, powerful, and far more politically capable than their male counterparts specifically because they had to navigate a seemingly endless shoal of misogyny in order to demonstrate their abilities without being accused of witchcraft or worse - being un-feminine.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one such woman. As one of the richest heiresses in the High Middle Ages, she brought to the throne of France (through her marriage to Louis VII) the duchies of Aquitaine, Gascony, and Poitou. Together they attended the Second Crusade, and while in Jerusalem Eleanor witnessed the coronation of her uncle Raymond of Antioch as King; the affection demonstrated between uncle and niece was very nearly the scandal of the age, and probably would have been if there'd been any media in those days aside from the occasional scribbling monk or wandering minstrel.

As Eleanor's French marriage had produced only two daughters, though (and much resultant animosity between husband and wife because of it) it was reluctantly annulled by Pope Eugenius III - since girls then didn't count as people; of course, no one then knew (or would have believed anyway) that it's the father who determines the sex of the babies, not the mother. Eleanor should have been the one to divorce Louis, and not the other way round; nevertheless, however it was done she was glad to be rid of him - it seems his piety got on her nerves in a big way.

She then turned around and married Louis' rival, Henry II, King of England, and proceeded to give him five sons and three daughters (in addition to holdings amounting to one-third of southern France). Louis was now boxed in by forces loyal to England, which was led by a man with access to intimate details of his life and character - a situation that must have rankled him almost as much as the procession of sons she then bore him.

Two of these sons eventually became kings - Richard I (even then better known as Richard the Lionhearted) and John (called 'Lackland', a snivelling weasel best remembered as the villain in the legends of Robin Hood); still, Eleanor's life in England was no less chaotic, coming as it did in tumultuous times. The murder of Thomas Becket by her husband's orders, bad as it was, couldn't have hurt Eleanor as deeply as her husband's open philandering with Rosamund Clifford; it was one thing for a King to have a mistress, but it was quite another to parade her around in the Queen's place, boasting about it. Coming as she did from the court of Aquitaine - the birthplace of courtly love - the coarse manners of her second husband must have seemed no improvement over the pusillanimity of her first.

Eleanor died, on this day in 1204, at the astonishing age of about 82 - having been been held in captivity by her second husband for 16 years of it. She was buried at Fontevraud Abbey - where, in the last years of her life, she'd taken the veil - next to the husband who'd imprisoned her and her favourite son, Richard, who'd released her. All that remains, though, is the tomb - her bones were scattered along with all of the other royal remains in France, during the French Revolution. One of the most widely traveled women of her age, she had seen and done more than many of her male 'betters' but alas, she left no memoirs; what a book that would have been!

Thanks to James Goldman, whose play The Lion in Winter has twice been adapted for film, Eleanor of Aquitaine has been played by Katharine Hepburn (who won her fourth Academy Award for the portrayal) and Glenn Close (who won a Golden Globe for her portrayal in a television miniseries). She's also been played by Rosemary Harris and Stockard Channing on stage. Eleanor is a character in William Shakespeare's play King John, and is somewhat erroneously depicted in Jean Anouilh's play Becket, from whence a film was made. She's also appeared as a character in numerous novels and both histories and herstories.
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"Tammy" by Debbie Reynolds

Jay Livingston and Ray Evans' song Tammy is given the star treatment here by no less of a star than Debbie Reynolds, who sang it in 1957's Tammy and the Bachelor. So effective was Reynolds' rendition that the sweet if slight ditty was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category. The song's success, however, was not limited to awards season; it hit #1 on just about every chart for which it was eligible, and remained Reynold's signature tune for many years.

Also featured in this clip is the esteemed actress Mildred Natwick as Aunt Renie...
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Happy Birthday Debbie Reynolds

There are few people I love more than those great ladies of Hollywood past; one such lady, Debbie Reynolds, is still very much singing and dancing and making us laugh in the present - well into the amazing sixth decade of her career. It is the sincere hope of the Pop Culture Institute that she will continue to do so for many years into the future as well...

Originally from Texas, the Reynolds clan moved to Southern California when little Mary Frances was just seven; fresh out of the Girl Scouts the sixteen year old student at Burbank High School won a beauty contest which can be said to have launched her career since, because of it, she was also awarded a contract with Warner Brothers.

The newly re-christened Debbie's first big movie role, though, came in an MGM picture - Singin' in the Rain, which is the closest to perfect a movie musical ever got. By then, of course, she was already as established a hit-maker as Francesco Nitto, having taken Aba Daba Honeymoon all the way to #3.

Of course, there's more to a show business career than singing and dancing and making people laugh; where Reynolds' celebrity mettle was really tested was in the scandal department. Once married to singer Eddie Fisher - who famously left her for Elizabeth Taylor in 1955 - the petite blonde who was then America's Sweetheart clearly emerged from that one the winner in the public's eyes. Of course, it's the children who suffer in divorce, and this case was no different; both Carrie Fisher and her brother Todd were left more or less fatherless, but worst of all Carrie became a writer, which is surely the worst possible fate to ever befall anyone.

Alas, the wandering eye of Eddie Fisher was the least of Reynolds' problems; the lack of financial acumen displayed by her second husband Harry Karl left her in dire straits following their 1973 divorce, which necessitated a career in the cabarets of Las Vegas. There she not only displayed the traits for which she was by then rightly famous but also demonstrated a flair for mimicry, including (if show business lore is correct - and why wouldn't it be) a dead-on impersonation of her one-time media rival, Elizabeth Taylor.

After a botched attempt at starring in her own show, The Debbie Reynolds Show - which NBC pulled from the air in 1970 after Reynolds objected to its being sponsored by a tobacco company - she managed a fair number of appearances on other shows, including a memorable turn in a two-part episode of The Golden Girls, and a recurring role on Will & Grace as the diva-esque mother of Grace Adler, which was surely a stretch for her to play*.

*Seeing as she had no real-life experience as the mother of a bundle of neuroses with a penchant for becoming romantically entangled with gay dudes... Much.
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Pop History Moment: Charles Dickens Published "Hard Times"

On this day in 1854 Charles Dickens sought to give his weekly newspaper Household Words a boost in circulation by serializing his tenth novel Hard Times within its pages; in the weeks that followed readership more than doubled, and by the time the serialization had run its course on August 12th the author had another fat* hit on his hands, despite the fact that it's the most incongruous of all his works...

In part a specific critique of utilitarianism** (rather than a general criticism of socioeconomic conditions), Hard Times eschews the London setting of all his other works in favour of the fictional Coketown - which was based, in part, on such northern mill towns as Preston. It also, interestingly, was not illustrated - although the illustration, shown at right (of the novel's protagonist Mr. Gradgrind, apprehending his children Louisa and Tom from the circus) was made by Harry French to accompany the serialization in Household Words.

Wildly popular with the reading public at the time, Hard Times has been receiving mixed reviews with critics ever since it first appeared; John Ruskin loved it, while Thomas Macaulay branded it 'sullen socialism', and George Bernard Shaw seemed to want it both ways by declaring it a 'passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the modern world'***. Dickens, of course, valued people over profits, and for this reason in general - as much as for his experimental zeal in this work specifically - Hard Times remains a stalwart of the stacks at the Pop Culture Institute.

*110,000 words, in fact!
**A typically harsh political ideology for the times, which was as antithetical to Dickens' nature as neoconservatism is to my own.
***Shaw's criticism, true to type, was eminently fair; he felt Dickens failed to grasp the reality of trade unionism in that era, inventing a typically middle-class bogeyman in the character of union leader Slackbridge which Shaw felt was inaccurate. That unions could be as heartless and rapacious and even corporate as those they were intended to rein in, however, wouldn't have occurred to Shaw.
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"The Bottle" by Gil Scott-Heron

Birthday wishes go out today to Gil Scott-Heron, the musical visionary who is credited as one of the fathers of spoken word poetry as well as a gifted musician in the jazz and soul idioms...

Best known for such deservedly incendiary works as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Whitey on the Moon (both taken from his 1970 debut album Small Talk at 125th & Lenox) The Bottle originally appeared on Scott-Heron's third album, Winter in America, from 1974. A trenchant commentary on alcohol abuse, The Bottle has been something of an underground hit ever since its release, although it did reach the #15 spot on the R& B Chart in America; its also been sampled by such diverse hip hop artists as De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Rachel Maddow

Not having access to MSNBC - since I, of all people, don't have cable television - I have come to rely upon sources like YouTube and Facebook for my occasional fixes of those powerful antidotes to the right-wing blowhards of cable media, namely Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow...

Olbermann, of course, has been fighting the good fight for some time now, doing more to disperse bilious gas (as emitted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly) than Febreze; Maddow is something of a Jane-come-lately to the profession of battling the dragons of the fascist press, being a protegee of Olbermann's. Recently she's taken to scrapping with Scott Brown, the pretty boy/empty suit elected to replace Massachusetts' long-time senator Ted Kennedy, who died in August 2009.

Born on this day in 1973*, Maddow was the first openly gay American to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship; in addition to her TV gig, The Rachel Maddow Show, she also hosts a radio show, creatively entitled The Rachel Maddow Show, which is broadcast on Air America Radio.

*She's half-Newfie on her mothers' side, dontcha know?!
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POPnews (UK) - April 1st

[The BBC's long-running current affairs programme Panorama risked its considerable credibility to take the piss out of a whole nation on this day in 1957 with an elaborate April Fools' Day prank; as narrated by Richard Dimbleby, 8 million British viewers were treated to images of a bumper crop of spaghetti, owing (it was said) to an unseasonably warm winter and the eradication of the spaghetti weevil. Oh... My sides... Ow...]

1293 - Following the death of John Peckham his successor Robert Winchelsey left England for Italy, where he would eventually be consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury at Aquila by Pope Celestine V in September 1294.

1854 - Charles Dickens began serializing his novel Hard Times in his magazine Household Words; the final installment was published on August 12th.

1873 - En route from Liverpool to New York City during her 19th voyage, the steamer SS Atlantic of the White Star Line sank after striking an underwater rock called Marr's Head 50 metres from Meagher's Island off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing 547.

1918 - The Royal Air Force was created by merging the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.

1946 - Uniting the Malay States and the Straits Settlements - but excluding Singapore - the Malayan Union was formed as a successor to British Malaya to unify the Malay Peninsula under a single government so as to simplify administration; the first governor was Sir Edward Gent and the capital was located at Kuala Lumpur.

1957 - A prank broadcast by the BBC had many Britons convinced that, among other things, spaghetti grew on trees in Switzerland.

1969 - The first Harrier jets entered service with the RAF.

1976 - The Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect was first reported on the BBC by astronomer Patrick Moore.

1990 - 1,000 prisoners at HM Prison Manchester, better known as Strangeways, rioted to protest overcrowding; actually a series of riots, the violence began in the prison chapel, spread to the roof, and eventually lasted 25 days, making it the longest prison riot in British history. During the hostilities one prisoner was killed and 47 others as well as 147 prison officers were injured.

2000 - The Enigma Machine was stolen from Bletchley Park; it was returned, anonymously, to BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman the following October with some of its crucial parts missing and a note demanding random. Antiques dealer Dennis Yates was later arrested, charged, and imprisoned for his part in the theft.

2006 - The Serious Organised Crime Agency, dubbed the 'British FBI', was created.
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"Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye

In previous years this video has been unavailable to me, and so I've had to make do with various live performances to commemorate this, the anniversary of Marvin Gaye's murder; today though - no fooling! - I found the actual video to his final hit, 1982's Sexual Healing, which had been intended as his comeback. The video itself was filmed at Casino-Kursaal in Ostend.

Gaye's death, at the hands of his father, shocked the entertainment industry; even more shocking were revelations which surfaced later, namely that the younger Gaye had been suicidal in the days and weeks leading up to his unfortunate death on this day in 1984 - the day before his 45th birthday - and that the murder weapon had actually been a gift from son to father.
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POPnews - April 1st

[Today - as millions of machines built under the malign influence of Bill Gates ruin millions of perfectly good days - we the righteous celebrate the technical savvy and creative genius of Woz and the Dear Leader, whose machines are simply better. Sure, there are fewer of them, but that's because the vast majority of people are drama queens, who seem to enjoy spending a portion of every day trying (and ultimately failing) to get their ugly terminals and crappy software to function properly. 'To each his own' we say, as we snicker behind our hands, gloating...]
1340 - Niels Ebbesen killed Gerhard III of Holstein in his bedroom, ending an interregnum in Denmark which had begun in 1332.

1572 - During the Eighty Years' War, the Watergeuzen captured Brielle from Spain, gaining the first foothold on land for what would eventually become the Dutch Republic.

1789 - In New York City, the US House of Representatives attained its first quorum and elected Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first House Speaker.

1857 - Herman Melville published The Confidence-Man, which would be his last novel-length work of fiction.

1891 - The Wrigley Company was founded in Chicago.

1924 - Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in jail for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch; he served just nine months, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf.

1939 - Francisco Franco declared an end to the Spanish Civil War after the last Republican forces surrendered.

1946 - A 7.8 magnitude earthquake off the Aleutian Islands created a tsunami that struck Hawai'i near Hilo, killing 159 there and six in Alaska and causing $26 million in damages including the destruction of the Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak Island.

1948 - Faroe Islands received their autonomy from Denmark.

1949 - The Irish Free State became the Republic of Ireland.

1967 - The United States Department of Transportation began operations.

1970 - President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States to begin on the first day of 1971.

1973 - Project Tiger - oddly enough, a tiger conservation project - was launched in India's Corbett National Park.

1976 - Apple Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.

1979 - The Shah of Iran was deposed and the Islamic Republic was declared.

1996 - Nova Scotia's Halifax Regional Municipality was created.

1999 - The Canadian territory of Nunavut was created.

2001 - The Netherlands became the first country in the world to recognize same-sex marriage.

2004 - Google introduced its Gmail product to the public; the launch was met with scepticism on account of the date.
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Pop History Moment: The Dalai Lama In Exile

On this day in 1959 Tibet's spiritual leader Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, crossed the border into India after an epic 15-day journey on foot over the Himalayan mountains... His Holiness' exile came after a failed uprising in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in March of that year during which thousands of civilians were slaughtered by the Chinese military.

Once settled in Dharamshala (known today as 'Little Lhasa' as much for his presence as for that of the 80,000 refugees who followed him into exile there) the Dalai Lama established the Government of Tibet in Exile; also established were the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts and the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, which is the foremost institution of higher learning for Tibetans in exile in India.
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"Come What May" by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman

Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film Moulin Rouge! is a frenzied mess - obviously edited in a Cuisinart - a purported musical in which the hard work of the dancers isn't effectively shown, lest a snippet of film longer than three seconds accidentally find its way into the print; believe me, when I say something is too busy it's too busy, and this makes Hong Kong on a Friday rush hour in summer look as activity-free as Paris Hilton's CAT scan.

I realize that in saying this I am leaving myself open to assassination, as I once made the same point (although far more diplomatically) at a gay dinner party, and was nearly defenestrated; fortunately there were only six of them, and the spindly buggers couldn't lift me. I stand by my original assessment, though: if you don't have ADD going into this film, you will when you come out!

Still, I love the song Come What May for the honeyed tones of Ewan McGregor... And what's-her-name; she's good in it too.
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Happy Birthday Ewan McGregor

They're subtle, these charms of his, or at least they were. He was amazing in Trainspotting, of course, but at the time it came out he didn't make much of an impression on me. I do remember thinking, 'Why would they use a real junkie?' Of course, he was just... ACTING!

He more than compensated for Jar-Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace, though, turning his Alec Guinness impression into the most gracious homage when it could have so easily been the same kind of grotesque Stepin Fetchit-esque burlesque his animated costar was.

But when McGregor opened his mouth to sing in Moulin Rouge...? I can't remember a moment in cinema for five years that electrified me like that, mainly, I guess, because I hadn't been prepared for it. Come What May indeed; by the time he'd finished singing it there wasn't a dry seat in the house.

Since I originally posted this two years ago today (!) I've also had the chance to see him in Down With Love, co-starring David Hyde Pierce and Squinty Fatface-McBonerack; as an homage to Sixties sex comedies of the Rock-and-Doris variety it was pretty good, but for all the time they took on costume, set design, and hair they got the lighting wrong. It was too dark to evoke the Technicolor gaudiness of the era, and since it didn't show Ewan bathed in the same golden light as my admiration for him it wasn't as good as it could have been.

Still, given the choices he makes, I have a feeling the Pop Culture Institute will be celebrating Ewan McGregor's birthday for many years, come what may...
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Pop History Moment: Newfoundland Enters Confederation

If you believe in omens, then the original date determined for the completion of the Canadian Confederation is a doozy; negotiations had already been concluded - and the date set - when someone pointed out that April 1st is also April Fool's Day. Only the quick-thinking diplomacy of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was able to literally save the day, by moving the moment at which the independent Dominion of Newfoundland became the subordinate Province of Newfoundland back one minute. Newfoundland, therefore, became part of Canada at 11:59 PM on March 31st rather than at midnight the following day as originally planned.

The province's first premier, Joey Smallwood (shown, at left), was vehemently pro-Canadian; so much so that for many years - and even unto this very day - he's been accused of employing much villainy to make his country's transformation into a province - via two national referendums, both in 1948 - a fait accompli. Rumours of vote rigging are the least of them; his own campaign speeches are masterworks of political bribery, promising jobs, pots of money, health care - everything, in fact, that the majority of Newfoundlanders had been struggling to obtain ever since John Cabot arrived in June 1497, or at least since John Guy's plantation opened at Cuper's Cove in 1610.

Smallwood's opponent Peter Cashin favoured a continuation of Dominion status, foreseeing a time when that would lead to independence for the island colony. Britain, on the other hand, was still reeling from the effects of World War II, and was glad to offload the money-sucking (albeit prestigious) holding, which Sir Humphrey Gilbert had claimed for Elizabeth I as Britain's first overseas possession in August 1583; the prevailing sentiment in London at the time was that if it must go, it should go to Canada all at once rather than to the United States by attrition.

If all this seems like the ideal recipe for a slew of conspiracy theories you're either as cynical as I am, or already familiar with the story; again and again the results of the final referendum have been investigated. Close as they were - 51% for Canada to 49% for Newfoundland - they seem to be legit. Yet legends persist of boxes of pro-independence ballots turning up in cellars and attics, even though surely evidence as damning as that would have been long ago burned.

Wayne Johnston's superlative 1998 novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams deals with the events of Joey Smallwood's life before, during, and after Confederation, and comes highly recommended; just as highly recommended is the film Secret Nation (1992), starring Cathy Jones as a doctoral candidate determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.
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POPnews - March 31st

[This 1901 map of Vancouver Island - which, at 32,134 km² (12,407 sq mi), is Canada's 11th and the world's 43rd largest island - doesn't even begin to demonstrate the myriad charms of the place, unlike the website it links to...]
1146 - In a field outside the French village of Vézelay and in the presence of France's King Louis VII Bernard of Clairvaux preached a sermon urging the necessity of a Second Crusade, which convinced the King if no one else.

1492 - Under the terms of the Alhambra Decree, Queen Isabella of Castile ordered her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.

1717 - In the presence of King George I the Bishop of Bangor - aka Benjamin Hoadly - delivered a sermon entitled The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ which argued that no temporal Church government had any spiritual authority, provoking the Bangorian Controversy.

1774 - In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party Parliament in London ordered the port of Boston closed with its passage of the Boston Port Act, one of the so-called Intolerable Acts which precipitated the American Revolutionary War.

1778 - Captain James Cook first landed on and then claimed what later came to be known as Vancouver Island for Great Britain.

1854 - Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Convention of Kanagawa with Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi as the representative of the Empire of Japan (on behalf of Emperor Kōmei, who by custom and temperament was neither allowed nor cared to interact with foreigners); the treaty opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade, albeit against their will and at the end of a cannon, ending a two-century period of insularity known as Sakoku.

1889 - The Eiffel Tower was inaugurated.

1917 - The United States took possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, renaming the territory the US Virgin Islands.

1959 - The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed the border into India and was granted political asylum at Dharamsala, where he established the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.

1964 - The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of General Castello Branco, began.

1968 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson shocked the nation when, in a televised address, he announced that he would not be running for re-election; although he would have been eligible for another term (since his 'first' term was technically the remainder of President Kennedy's) his health was poor and his popularity was suffering due to the ongoing Vietnam War.

1970 - Explorer 1 re-entered the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit; having discovered the Van Allen radiation belt, it made its last fiery flight over the southern Pacific Ocean.

1979 - The last British soldier left Malta upon that country's independence; the day is still celebrated as Freedom Day, or Jum il-Ħelsien, as well as being commemorated by a monument in the town of Birgu (Vittoriosa).

1986 - The Thatcher government abolished six metropolitan county councils under the terms of the Local Government Act 1985.

1990 - 200,000 protestors took to London's Trafalgar Square to show their displeasure at the Thatcher government's newly introduced Community Charge. The so-called Poll Tax Riots lasted more than ten hours, during which time 45 police officers were among the 113 people injured; 20 police horses were also hurt in the fracas.

1991 - In the Georgian independence referendum nearly 99 per cent of the voters supported that country's independence from the Soviet Union.

1992 - The US Navy's last active battleship - the USS Missouri (BB-63) - was decommissioned in Long Beach, California.

1995 - 23 year-old Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez - better known as Selena - was shot and killed in Corpus Christi, Texas, by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her own fan club.

2008 - Aloha Airlines permanently ended passenger service following bankruptcy.
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"Vincent" by Don McLean

I've published this before - in October, for Don McLean's birthday - but it's just as appropriate to publish it here, I think. Maybe even more...

The song Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) was written by McLean in 1971, after reading a biography of Vincent van Gogh, and it says a lot about the size of van Gogh's talent that even eighty years after his death he was inspiring others in their own acts of creation; it touches on van Gogh's struggle with mental illness which, as verboten a topic as it is even now, was a major no-no back then.

For that alone McLean ought to be entitled to every accolade he would earn for it, including the #1 spot on the UK pop chart.
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In Memoriam: Vincent van Gogh

I can't imagine what I could say about Vincent van Gogh that hasn't been said a hundred times already, but I'll sure give it a try; for a man whose brief life and prolific career were spent in utter obscurity, his posthumous fame has meant that almost anyone can provide a thumbnail sketch of him: unheralded in his lifetime, bit of a nutter, cut off his ear, committed suicide... This is the kind of Q rating many an art school brat would give, well, their left ear to a prostitute named Rachel to achieve...

Born on this day in 1853, van Gogh lived only 37 years; yet how many people on their fortieth, fiftieth, or sixtieth birthdays can say they've lived as much as he did in the short time he allotted to himself, felt as much, expressed as much... To many he is the quintessential artist, while to those who don't fully understand the mechanics of an artist's life and mind he may seem merely self-indulgent, as if that were a bad thing.

Van Gogh may have painted from madness, he may have acquired madness from painting - literally; the use of lead-based paints may have been his undoing. This is not so dangerous in itself, but the fact that he used to eat the paints (possibly in an ill-advised attempt to infuse himself with the colours) was. Nevertheless the uneasy balance he achieved, and was able to maintain - at least until he shot himself in July 1890 - had already fascinated the general public for a decade prior to 1934, when Irving Stone's biographical novel Lust for Life was published.

When the book was later adapted into a movie of the same name, many questioned the wisdom of casting tough-guy Kirk Douglas in the lead role; yet Douglas' personal vigour matched van Gogh's own workaholism (possibly induced by a manic condition known as hypergraphia, which is the overwhelming compulsion to write - a condition about which I know nothing) as much as the actor's appreciation for visual art, which is evident in the size of his own well-known art collection, housed at his home at Palm Springs. The artist has also been portrayed by Tchéky Karyo in the 1990 film Vincent and Me, Tim Roth in Robert Altman's film Vincent & Theo from the same year, and Jacques Dutronc in the following year's Van Gogh, directed by Maurice Pialat.

In the end, van Gogh could have had no better executor than his brother Theo who, along with Dr. Paul Gachet (as often described as van Gogh's patron as he is the man who failed to treat his depression) did as much to further the painter's reputation after his death as the painter himself did to earn it while still alive. English critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell (affiliated with the Bloomsbury Group, whose members knew a thing or two about the connection between creativity and madness) brought the life and works of van Gogh to the attention of the English-speaking world as early as 1924; publication of Vincent's letters to Theo in book form have allowed professionals and amateurs alike to delve into the complicated psyche of one of the greatest artists of all time, providing an array of medical and psychological diagnoses as well as the necessary lore to make Vincent van Gogh a genuine cultural - not to mention pop cultural - icon.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Warren Beatty

Having made his film debut opposite Natalie Wood in Elia Kazan's 1961 celluloid version of Splendor in the Grass - William Inge's paean to sexual repression, which he adapted from his own novel and in which he briefly appears - ought to have set Warren Beatty's career up nicely; instead, he spent the next six years drifting in and out of Hollywood's boudoirs, waiting for a second chance at a big break.

That opportunity came in 1967, when he played legendary bank robber Clyde Barrow opposite Faye Dunaway in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. Beatty's contributions to the film weren't merely confined to those on the screen; not only did he assist David Newman and Robert Benton on the screenplay (as did Robert Towne) Hollywood lore has it that this was the film that gave Beatty the producing bug.

Having been raised by teachers (alongside his sister, the incomparable Shirley MacLaine) ensured that Beatty was more than a pretty face, no matter how pretty that face was; he seems to have realized early in his career that the movie business really only benefits producers, and thereafter conducted himself accordingly. A string of hits - including McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Parallax View (1974), Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978) - gave him significant box-office clout, which he used to produce his magnum opus, Reds (1981). That he followed his greatest work with one of the greatest bombs in Hollywood history (1986's Ishtar, with Dustin Hoffman) was readily redeemed by 1990's colourful, campy Dick Tracy.

It was Warren Beatty's role as a Hollywood lothario, though, that always threatened to overshadow his reputation as an actor and director - especially since most of his relationships were with his leading ladies; it took one of such leading lady - Annette Bening, his costar in Bugsy - to make an honest man of him with their March 1992 marriage and the subsequent birth of their four children.
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"Sing For You" by Tracy Chapman

Having covered the early and middle part of Tracy Chapman's career thus far, what birthday video hat trick would be complete without an example of her more recent work...

Sing For You was the first single from Chapman's eighth studio album, Our Bright Future, released in November 2008; the album was co-produced by Larry Klein, whose previous claim to fame was having been the former Mr. Joni Mitchell.

She's seen here performing it live and acoustic...
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Pop History Moment: The Rosenbergs Are Convicted

On this day in 1951 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, an American electrical engineer and his wife, were found guilty by the Federal Court in New York of passing secrets about the atomic bomb to Russia. They would become the first American civilians executed for conspiracy to commit espionage.

In the history of frame-ups, this surely ranks as the first and foremost. It's also the only thing I ever saw my grandparents argue about. My grandfather was rabidly anti-communist; my grandmother was like me, and highly suspicious of the way governments witch-hunt minorities. Despite their agreement on the old maxim 'where there's smoke there's fire' my grandmother - an inveterate and critical media watcher - always had her doubts...
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Remembering... Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

For nearly eight decades the woman who began life in August 1900 as Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon epitomized the royal way... Although born the daughter of an Earl she was nevertheless a commoner; noble, yet possessed of the common touch which was all-too uncommon among others of her class and station. Elevated to royalty upon her marriage to a shy stammering Prince, she then returned the favour by elevating royalty in the public's eyes, ironically by bringing it down out of the clouds...

Following her marriage at Westminster Abbey in April 1923 - after which ceremony she laid her bridal bouquet upon the Tomb of the Unkown Warrior, thereby setting a precedent for all royal brides to come - she quickly became known as 'the smiling Duchess' for her benevolent demeanour during public engagements and functions of State alike. When her daughters Elizabeth and Margaret Rose were born - in 1926 and 1930 respectively - she broke the mould for being a hands-on mother; while her husband had seen his parents at most for an hour a day as a child, the Duchess of York (as she was then known) spent as many extra minutes as she could spare in the nursery.

The Abdication Crisis of 1936 thrust her and her husband onto the throne, a turn of events no one could have predicted and one which he himself admitted he would never have been able to handle without her assistance; yet for all her smiling and benevolence, there was concealed in her a spine of steel. As they hastily prepared for their coronation (the date of which hadn't changed when Edward VIII stepped aside) she helped to coach the stammer out of her husband's speech, so that as George VI he would be able to address his people during the difficult times which everyone knew were coming.

World War II shattered Europe even worse than had its predecessor a generation earlier; despite it, the King and Queen remained resolute. They were in residence when Buckingham Palace was bombed, and in her inimitable way she thumbed her nose at the entire affair simply by remaining unruffled. As a reward Hitler described her as 'the most dangerous woman in Europe', which remains the apogee of praise considering the source.

Whatever wounds the war left on Britain, it left its mark on the King as well; he died less than six years after the cessation of hostilities, in February 1952. At that time the newly styled 'Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother' contemplated a Victorian retirement at the remote Castle of Mey in Scotland; her daughter (and new sovereign) was having none of it. Though no one could have known it at the time, the dowager Queen was then merely at the mid-point of her long life, and still had half a century of service to render.

Over the next five decades, the Queen Mother earned her eventual position as the Nation's (and indeed the Commonwealth's) granny; she travelled widely and was greeted with unabashed affection wherever she went. As eras will do, though, hers came to its inevitable end; following the death of Princess Margaret in February the Queen Mother's indomitable spirit, which had seen her through so much, finally began to flag. At Windsor's Royal Lodge, shortly after 3:15 PM on this day in 2002, and with her remaining daughter by her side, she finally passed from this world, just five months shy of her 102nd birthday.

Still, she had a few more surprises left up her flowery, organza sleeve; pundits predicted that her lying-in-state - to be held as per usual in Westminster Hall - would be poorly attended. In fact, a great many of them seemed to want it that way, to confirm their own middle-class prejudices against the monarchy. Over the next three days more than 200,000 people filed past the royal casket, confounding the expectations of the punditocracy by simply confirming the public's respect as well as their desire to be there for her as she had been there for them so many times before.

In a final poignant tribute her four grandsons - Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Viscount Linley - stood the Vigil of the Princes on April 8th; the following day a million people stood their own vigil, silently grieving outside the Abbey and along the 23 km route to St George's Chapel, Windsor, where she was to be reunited with her husband. According to the Queen Mother's final wishes, as her coffin left the Abbey, the Queen placed the wreath that had lain atop it on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, a final poignant echo in a long life well-lived.

The official biography of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother - an impressive 1100-page brick of a book - was released in 2009, containing much material from previously unpublished private materiel held in the Royal Archives. Naturally enough, it wasn't long after its initial publication a copy found its way into the collection of the Pop Culture Institute.

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"Telling Stories" by Tracy Chapman

It's yet another theme song for the Pop Culture Institute, as telling stories is all I'm trying to do here; it's also the title track from Tracy Chapman's fifth album, 2000's Telling Stories, and the second in her birthday hat trick today.

Enjoy!
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There's Nothing Dull About Tom Sharpe

There are few novelists today willing to risk the infamy that comes with being entertaining, let alone amusing, which in turn makes the comic novel the literary world's one genre of endangered species; all this while comedy on television and in the movies is at an all-time zenith. Yet Canada's Todd Babiak, Carl Hiaasen in the United States, and the UK's Ben Elton toil in relative obscurity while their contemporaries churn out depress-a-thons (and scoop up awards) by the score. I forget who said it, but it bears repeating: making people cry is easy, but making them laugh is truly difficult. It must have been a comedian...

Born on this day in 1928, since 1971 Tom Sharpe has published more than a dozen insightful, angry, and philosophical novels which also happen to be hilariously funny. The English seem to excel at this sort of thing, or did anyway, once upon a time. Douglas Adams was practically a one-man industry during his all-too short life, and try as he might to continue his friend's legacy, Stephen Fry is simply too deep to maintain the level of glibness necessary. These days only Robert Rankin even comes close to achieving Sharpe's effortless absurdity, and in many cases overshoots it, landing in a literary cream pie in the process.

Yet it's funny (although not funny ha-ha) how many current titles in the stacks here at the Pop Culture Institute have covers with quotes promising 'funny' - from Will Self to Lisa Moore to Julian Barnes (fine writers all) - whose books could sooner crack a walnut than a smile. I buy them all - Nick Hornby, Jasper Fforde, even Wendy Holden - and while a few of their books are funny in passing, the humour in them is more wry, and either seems forced or accidental, rather than having anything to do with any effort on the part of their authors. I even bought Sorting Out Billy, a novel by Jo Brand (an actual comedian who's actually funny) while in search of a bit of a laugh, and never laughed once; in the meantime I continue to haunt secondhand stores looking to complete my Tom Sharpe collection.

Nowadays Sharpe is the grand-daddy of the comic novel, having limned the changes in society over the past four decades - be they in academe, the aristocracy, or apartheid. One of them - 1975's Blott on the Landscape - was even adapted into a sitcom; a similar treatment could easily be provided for The Great Pursuit (1977), Grantchester Grind (1995) or indeed any of them, without having to change much but the format. Although now 80, he continues to write, and so there may yet be another offering from Tom Sharpe in the years to come.
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Pop History Moment: The Shooting of President Reagan

On this day in 1981, shortly before 2:30 PM, President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest outside DC's Hilton Washington Hotel by John Hinckley, Jr. during an assassination attempt which severely injured White House Press Secretary James Brady; police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy were also shot in the attack, and that evening's planned telecast of the Academy Awards was postponed one day. Hinckley later claimed to have done it to get the attention of Jodie Foster, whom he'd been stalking.

The President was taken to George Washington University Hospital where he was operated on by the head surgeon Joseph Giordano, who it should be noted, was (and probably still is) a liberal Democrat; in the aftermath of the shooting Secretary of State Alexander Haig sparked what was at the time a major scandal by proclaiming 'I'm in control here', even though the Secretary of State is technically fourth in the presidential line of succession. Instead of allaying the nation's fear, the comments were seen as an attempt by Haig to overstep his authority, and some of the more hysterical elements of the Press likened it to a virtual coup by him, until First Lady Nancy Reagan offered them some of her Valium and they finally chilled the Hell out.

Pop culture reaction, though not swift, was sharp when it finally occurred; nearly two years later - on March 12th, 1983 - Saturday Night Live aired a sketch in which Buckwheat (played by Eddie Murphy) was assassinated by 'John David Stutts' (also played by Eddie Murphy); the sketch was a pointed satire on the killings of Lee Harvey Oswald and John Lennon and the attempt on the life of Reagan as covered with repetitive shrillness by the nascent 24-hours news media, then beginning to emerge thanks to networks like CNN.
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"Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman

As the centrepiece of her 1988 debut album Tracy Chapman, Fast Car is one of those songs that will always have certain memories for me; that was the first summer after I'd learned to drive, and because of my aversion to drink (not to mention my need to be needed) I'd fallen into the role of designated driver for the greatest group of lushes and reprobates I've ever had the privilege to pull over to the side of the road for so they could vomit - Matthew, Jonathan, Rhonda, and Tracy.

Despite the song's sad message, I took it as a warning to live for myself; for the first time in my life I was enjoying the camaraderie that had been denied to me all through high school, and despite the strain of coming out and having to do so in a Bible Belt town where I was still underaged - and therefore not allowed to attend the once a week gay dances - I still have fond memories of long moon-lit drives through the countryside on warm evenings, sitting on the hood of the burgundy station wagon and listening to this song while watching the Eastern horizon growing into a blue dome in advance of the sunrise, the smell of regurgitated Rockaberry wine cooler wafting past.

Good times...
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