POPnews - May 13th

[Of all the things to be thrown onto pyres and consigned to oblivion by Savonarola and his cronies - from simple hair ribbons and cosmetics to priceless and irreplaceable works of art - the first and foremost, namely himself, was not; for daring to act in judgement against men (which by his own admission is ultimately the duty of God) his own bonfire would have to wait, but come it would, and it would make a very pretty flame indeed...]
1497 - Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola; a critic of the decadent papacy, Savonarola's crusade extended to whatever elements of Renaissance culture he considered immoral, leading him to engage in book burnings, undertaking the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities, and the destruction of paintings containing pagan imagery by the likes of Botticelli and Michelangelo. Far be it from me to agree with a Pope - especially such a decadent and corrupt one - but Savonarola was more a tyrant than a culture warrior, and his comeuppance just short of one year later came several years too late to save the numerous treasures he'd destroyed.

1568 - At the Battle of Langside the forces of Mary, Queen of Scots (commanded by the Duke of Chatelherault) were defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Regent of Scotland on behalf of Mary's infant son James VI and her half-brother.

1619 - Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was executed in The Hague after having been accused of treason for his support of William the Silent and efforts to liberate Holland from Spanish control.

1787 - Captain Arthur Phillip sailed from Portsmouth in command of the First Fleet, which was charged with establishing a penal colony in Australia with eleven ships full of convicts.

1846 - The Mexican-American War was declared by President James K. Polk with the approval of Congress, which was how they did it in those days.

1848 - Finland's national anthem, Maame - with music by Fredrik Pacius and lyrics by Finn Johan Ludvig Runeberg - was first performed.

1861 - The Great Comet of 1861 was discovered by John Tebbutt in Australia; it came so close to Earth the planet passed through its tail, obscuring the sun even in the daytime. It will next return in 2269.

1888 - With the passage of the Lei Áurea or 'Golden Law' Brazil unconditionally abolished slavery.

1909 - The first Giro d'Italia took place in Milan; Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna was the winner.

1912 - Britain's Royal Flying Corps - the forerunner of the Royal Air Force - was established.

1939 - The first commercial FM radio station in the United States was launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut; the station later became WDRC-FM.

1940 - As the German army crossed the Meuse River and the Battle of France began, Winston Churchill made his 'blood, toil, tears, and sweat' speech to the House of Commons. Meanwhile Queen Wilhelmina fled the Nazi invasion of Holland aboard the HMS Hereward to lead the Dutch government in exile from London while her daughter and heir Princess Juliana took her children (Princesses Beatrix and Irene) to live in Ottawa for their safety.

1948 - The Kfar Etzion massacre was committed by Arab infantry, the day before the state of Israel issued its Declaration of Independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War began.

1952 - The Rajya Sabha - the upper house of the Parliament of India - held its first sitting.

1954 - The Anti-National Service Riots in Singapore were led by Chinese students between the ages of 18 and 20 who were unwilling to be drafted into compulsory military service.

1967 - Dr. Zakir Hussain became 3rd President of India, and the first Muslim President of Indian Union.

1969 - A series of race riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur which later came to be known as the May 13 Incident.

1985 - Police in Philadelphia stormed the headquarters of an African-American anti-technology organization called MOVE in order to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members in the process; during the raid police also dropped a bomb from a helicopter, destroying the homes of 250 city residents in the process.

2000 - In the Dutch city of Enschede, a fireworks factory exploded, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage.
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Best Of The Best: Katharine Hepburn

Even at her worst (although I'm not sure there is such a thing) Katharine Hepburn's film roles are all eminently watchable; at their best they transcend the limitations of film, and become paragons of story-telling, regardless of medium. Acting with her whole being, she somehow manages to avoid the pitfalls that define her contemporaries by never being as obviously mannered as her impersonators would have you believe she is. Here, then, are nine of her best, representing one-fifth of her total output on the silver screen, and they are five-star performances all. To paraphrase something one of Spencer Tracy's characters said about one of her characters in one of the many films they made together: 'There ain't much of her, but what's there is cherce*!'

Little Women (1933) - Although the film itself (an early effort by George Cukor) feels a bit creaky today, I'm relatively certain that Louisa May Alcott's source material is at least partly to blame, at least as much as the still-primitive technology being used to capture Miss Hepburn's legendary youthful effervescence. As tomboy Jo March, Hepburn is a bundle of energy opposite the very suave Paul Lukas, and she outclasses her girly-girl sisters in every way.

Sylvia Scarlett (1935) - A critical and box office failure at the time of its release, the film is today considered one of the finest of her oeuvre, a film which is studied now rather than merely watched. Cukor's direction is far more accomplished here, and there's a particularly perverse pleasure in watching her, disguised as a boy, being seduced by Cary Grant.

Stage Door (1937) - Another of Hepburn's famous flops, this is one of those films that seems to get more popular with each passing year; I know from experience that it definitely gets better with repeated viewings - so much so that I'm reluctant to watch it as much as I'd like, for fear that it might make my head explode from its sheer fabulosity. The stellar cast - including would-be swain Adolphe Menjou, rival Ginger Rogers, and victim Andrea Leeds to name just three** - give it their all (which is a lot to give) and it just happens to contain one of the most famous lines of dialogue in her whole career: 'The calla lilies are in bloom again.'

The Philadelphia Story (1940) - Having been branded 'Box Office Poison' by an association of motion picture exhibitors (all men, it should be noted) Hepburn did what she would often do in the future - that is, she quit Hollywood for Broadway, found herself the ideal vehicle, and rode it all the way back to Hollywood, to great acclaim. Torn between James Stewart and Cary Grant (the lucky bitch) her Tracy Lord is every bit as aristocratic as Grace Kelly's (in its 1956 musical adaptation High Society) without ever being frigid in the least. The cast is young and beautiful, the dialogue sparkling and brisk, the entire experience a delight...

The African Queen (1951) - Kate and Bogey have the ideal chemistry to pull off this chalk-and-cheese romance, and their banter contrasts nicely with the struggle the two of them find themselves having with the Congo River. Although the scenes of the two of them in the water were filmed in a tank in England, the rest was shot on location in Africa, which demonstrates the fine line between madness and genius on the part of director John Huston.

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) - Not even Tennessee Williams at his creepiest can dampen the virtuosity of mid-career Hepburn (as Violet Venable) coming to terms with the murder of her son Sebastian, who remains unseen throughout yet is the main character. Her chilling stillness and brittle elegance makes an ideal counterpoint to the growing hysterics and lush femininity of Elizabeth Taylor. The film is also notable for being the first one Montgomery Clift worked on following the car crash that could have taken his life, but just ruined his looks instead. Hollywood lore has it that once she'd confirmed her role was completed Hepburn spat in the faces of producer Sam Spiegel and/or director Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - Hepburn's foray into race relations may be the finest film ever made on the subject; it's literally white guilt porn as she and Spencer Tracy come to terms with the fact that their daughter (played by Hepburn's real-life niece Katharine Houghton) is dating Sidney Poitier. Although Poitier's career was built on playing plaster saints, this one is both the saintliest and most plastery. So while great pains are made to show that neither parent is upset at their daughter marrying a black man, dealing with the reactions of others provides much of the film's conflict (and its best moments as well).

The Lion in Winter (1968) - As Eleanor of Aquitaine - the reviled/revered Queen of Henry II, mother of Richard the Lionhearted, and his hapless successor King John - Hepburn balances pathos and politics, history and humour with her usual aplomb, all the while sparring with Peter O'Toole, who lives up to the last syllable of his name in this one. The film marks the onscreen debut of Anthony Hopkins, whose scenes with a scrumptious Timothy Dalton (also in his debut) as France's King Philip II are the most shocking in the film - and indeed some of the most shocking ever filmed up to that date.

On Golden Pond (1981) - Late career Kate not only managed to reinvent herself, she did so in a way that gave rich fodder to impressionists such as Martin Short. Playing a feisty old lady opposite Henry Fonda, the film (as much as her role in it) did much to dispel the rumour that while life may begin at forty, it's far from over at 70. Offscreen their costar Jane Fonda credited the film with effecting a kind of reconciliation between father and daughter before his death the following year, mirroring their onscreen relationship.

* Cherce = choice; from the 1952 film Pat and Mike.
** Also Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Eve Arden, Constance Collier, and Gail Patrick... All this plus Andrea Leeds too!
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In Memoriam: Katharine Hepburn

There is a dreadful kind of sameness in the biographies of actors; one gets the impression that, for most of them, the greatest role they play is the person they eventually become, or that they only become interesting after exposure to a lot of famous people and exotic locales. The stars most beloved by the Pop Culture Institute, though, are the ones for whom the stage and screen roles they undertake - however good they are - are secondary to the lives they lead, both before and after they become famous.

Before she was famous, Katharine Hepburn (born on this day in 1907) was the product of a very forward thinking family indeed - to call them liberal is to ignore the fact that many liberals are as uptight as conservatives, but simply with the opposite world view. As a child, Hepburn confronted issues such as birth control and venereal disease as a matter of dinner table conversation; she invariably credited this frankness to making her the outspoken person she became.

While Hepburn became famous the moment she opened her mouth on screen, in the 1932 film A Bill of Divorcement, it seemed to take the public awhile to warm up to her when she was off screen. She was one of the first women in America to wear pants, for instance, which was a scandal on par with Britney Spears not wearing panties seventy years later. Fortunately her extraordinary beauty and unique voice opened more doors than her outrageous bohemianism closed; by the time society caught up to her she was already an icon, and she seems to have become even more famous now, seven years after her death and fifteen years after her last film role, than she was in life.

Of course, the reason Hepburn became so famous is that she couldn't have cared less for fame; when Hollywood stopped sending her scripts, or only sent her shitty scripts, she decamped to New York and went on the stage, or made films in London, or simply spent time in the country. The reason the scandalous behaviour in which she dabbled never seemed to ruin her is that she did what she did without shame, which is the best way to bleed the luridity out of anything.

The newest biography of Katharine Hepburn is William J. Mann's Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, published in 2006. Mann's exhaustive re-examination of her life and career seeks to explain the divergence between the actual woman and the various personas she either adopted or had projected onto her.
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Pop History Moment: The Coronation of George VI

On this day in 1937 George VI was crowned King of England alongside his queen; the day had originally been chosen for the coronation of his older brother, Edward VIII, and wasn't changed following his abdication in December 1936, leaving them little time to learn the complex ritual. Still, it went off without a hitch; the service was conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang, whose opinion (clerical and otherwise) of Mrs. Simpson was seen as a major reason for the last-minute change of sovereign.

Millions lined the route in a persistent drizzle to cheer as the Gold State Coach passed by - specially illuminated within to give everyone on the sidelines a good view of the passengers. In the midst of a worldwide Depression, and with war clouds forming on the horizon, the coronation gave everyone a much-needed spot of celebration, and the crowds responded with ardour.
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POPnews - May 12th

[Bianca was already four months pregnant with the baby who would grow up to become Jade Sheena Jezebel Jagger when she married Mick at the town hall in Saint-Tropez; she was later quoted as saying 'My marriage ended on the day of my wedding' but is all smiles in this photo despite a tussle with photographers and police delayed the ceremony for ninety minutes, threatening the whole event. The couple separated in 1977 after she discovered his adultery with Jerry Hall; their divorce became final in 1979.]
1191 - England's King Richard I married Berengaria of Navarre in the Chapel of St. George at Limassol in Cyprus while en route to the Third Crusade. Like his kingdom, Richard also neglected his Queen - preferring to make war, not love - although a scurrilous rumour floating around for the past eight centuries has it that His Majesty would've preferred to have married (or at least spent the wedding night with) her brother Sancho VII, the King of Navarre.

1328 - Antipope Nicholas V - a spurious claimant to the papacy who was largely the puppet of the excommunicated Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV the Bavarian - was consecrated at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome by the James Albertini, the Bishop of Venice; within a year the former Pietro Rainalducci would also be excommunicated by Pope John XXII, although upon confession he was absolved of his sins (like magic!) and forced to live out his days in elegant captivity in France, at Avignon's Palais des Papes.

1551 - The National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru - the oldest university in the Americas - was chartered by Spain's King Charles I.

1588 - During the French Wars of Religion France's King Henri III fled Paris after Henri, duc de Guise entered the city; theirs was a squabble over the succession, and in this they were perfectly matched - both of them being equally feckless and violent. Within two years their respective compatriots would see them both assassinated but alas, the best sovereign for the job - one Marguerite de Valois (shown, at right, circa 1572) - wasn't eligible due to the Salic Law; she had to settle for being Queen Consort to Henri IV, uniting the otherwise barren Valois line with that of the more vigourous Bourbon which superseded it. Their story (well, hers, anyway - along with that of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre) was later dramatized in the 1845 novel La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas, père as well as in the most recent of its three film adaptations, 1994's Queen Margot.

1780 - Near the end of the American Revolution, Charleston was taken by British forces under Sir Henry Clinton and Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot following the Siege of Charleston.

1870 - The Manitoba Act was given Royal Assent, allowing for Manitoba to become a province of Canada on July 15.

1885 - During the North-West Rebellion the four-day Battle of Batoche in Saskatchewan - pitting the rebellious Métis against the Canadian government's North West Mounted Police - came to an end with a decisive rebel defeat.

1926 - A nine-day General Strike in the United Kingdom - called in sympathy for coal miners by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and due in part to the recommendations of the Royal Commission chaired by Sir Herbert Samuel that miners' wages be reduced from 10-25% - ended, thanks in no small part to a passel of lies told by the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin and the duplicity of the TUC itself.

1932 - Ten weeks after his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh was found dead by a truck driver named William Allen in a roadside ditch near the Lindbergh home in Hopewell, New Jersey.

1941 - Konrad Zuse demonstrated the Z3 - the world's first working programmable, fully automatic, Turing-complete computer - to the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt in Berlin; it was used by the Nazis to perform statistical analyses of wing flutter in aircraft design. Though the original was destroyed during an Allied air raid in 1944, a replica was later built and is currently on display at the Deutsches Museum in München.

1955 - The last portion of the IRT's Third Avenue Elevated subway line serving Manhattan - from Chatham Square to East 149th Street in the Bronx - closed.

1962 - Douglas MacArthur delivered his famous Duty, Honor, Country valedictory speech at West Point.

1965 - The Soviet spacecraft Luna 5 crash-landed in the Sea of Clouds on the Moon as part of a project to study the lunar soft landing.

1971 - Mick Jagger married Bianca Perez Morena de Macias in Saint-Tropez.

1975 - During the Mayagüez Incident the Cambodian navy seized the American merchant ship SS Mayaguez in international waters; considered the final battle of the Vietnam War (despite its tenuous connection to it) the names of the 18 Marines killed in the action nonetheless appear at the very end of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

1981 - Francis Hughes starved to death during the second hunger strike at the HM Prison Maze in Ulster just one week after his compatriot Bobby Sands did the same; it was all part of a campaign for Special Category Status to be re-granted to IRA prisoners. In all, ten prisoners died before the British government relented.

1982 - During a procession outside the shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal, security guards overpowered Juan Fernandez Krohn before he could assassinate Pope John Paul II with a bayonet. Krohn, an ultraconservative Spanish priest opposed to the Vatican II reforms, decided that the Pope must be killed for being - get this! - 'an agent of Moscow'.

1994 - Head of Britain's Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition John Smith died at London's St. Bartholomew's Hospital after two serious heart attacks; he was succeeded by Tony Blair.

1999 - David Steel became the first Presiding Officer of the modern Scottish Parliament.
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Pop History Moment: Motion Picture Academy Founded

On this day in 1927 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - the same organization which annually bestows Academy Awards - was founded.

The 36 founding members read like a Who's Who of Early Hollywood*: actors Richard Barthelmess, Jack Holt, Conrad Nagel, Milton Sills, Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford; directors Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Lloyd, Henry King, Fred Niblo, John M. Stahl, Raoul Walsh; writers Joseph Farnham, Benjamin F. Glazer, Jeanie MacPherson, Bess Meredyth, Carey Wilson, Frank Woods; technicians J. Arthur Ball, Cedric Gibbons, Roy J. Pomeroy; producers Fred Beetson, Charles H. Christie, Sid Grauman, Milton E. Hoffman, Jesse L. Lasky, M. C. Levee, Louis B. Mayer, Joseph M. Schenck, Irving Thalberg, Harry Warner, Jack Warner, Harry Rapf; and lawyers Edwin Loeb and George W. Cohen.

It took just two years for the Academy to conceive of, design, have produced, and hand out the first batch of Oscars, although for the first few years the film community seemed distinctly underwhelmed by them, and it wasn't until the mid-1930s that competition for the little golden men really began heating up. Since the end of the studio era in the mid-1960s disdain for Oscar has once again become a favourite pastime of those wishing to be taken seriously as pretentious posers.

Ostensibly created to honour achievement in film - legend has it entirely at the behest of movie mogul Louis B. Mayer - from the beginning it has done so only in the most bourgeois way; the list of well-known actors and directors who never won an award (Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Burton, Glenn Close, Greta Garbo, and Robert Altman among them) is just as interesting a list as those who have, and has kept pundits - myself included - wondering as to why for years.

*Out of courtesy I've decided not to bold face all the bold face names displayed above, as it would be easier just to print the whole thing in blue.
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POPnews - May 11th

[1812 has been called the worst year in British history by BBC History magazine - not least because it saw the Prime Minister murdered... While readers of the Daily Mail may disagree, who gives a shit about them, their reactionary fascism, and shocking lack of historical perspective anyway?]

1502 - Christopher Columbus left Cadiz on his fourth and final voyage to the West Indies.

1812 - British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons - the only head of government in that country's history to have met such a fate - whereupon he was removed to 10 Downing Street for the five days prior to his burial. Bellingham shot the Prime Minister in retaliation for financial reverses he'd suffered; a week later he was hanged for his crime, after which his widow and children were provided with a hefty sum raised by public subscription.

1813 - William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth undertook an expedition westwards from Sydney through the Blue Mountains, looking to open up the interior of Australia for expansion.

1820 - The HMS Beagle was launched at Woolwich Dockyard near London; the vessel remained unused for six years, when it was refitted as survey barque in preparation for use by Charles Darwin on his scientific voyage.

1858 - Minnesota became the 32nd US state.

1867 - Following the Luxembourg Crisis that country gained its independence from Holland under the terms of the Second Treaty of London.

1894 - Four thousand employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company held a wildcat strike in Illinois following a 28% pay cut by the company in response to the Panic of 1893; the Pullman Strike and its ensuing lockout snarled rail traffic west of Chicago for months, and resulted in more than a dozen deaths.

1910 - Glacier National Park in Montana was established by an Act of Congress.

1934 - A two-day storm removed massive amounts of topsoil from the American Great Plains in one of the worst events of the Dust Bowl.

1944 - Axis Sally made her most infamous broadcast - prior to the D-Day invasion of Normandy - which was a play called Vision of Invasion. In it she played an American mother who dreamed that her son had died a horrific death in the English Channel, following which an announcer intoned, 'The D of D-Day stands for doom...disaster...death...defeat...Dunkerque or Dieppe.' It was intended as a warning to any soldiers who dared come ashore that day, although it failed to prevent anything except, ultimately, her post-war career.

1949 - Siam - which changed its name to Thailand in 1939, and changed its name back to Siam in 1945 - changed its name yet again to Thailand.

1960 - Four agents of Israel's Mossad (working in conjunction with the Shabak) - including Zvi Aharoni and led by Peter Malkin - captured fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who'd been living in Buenos Aires under the assumed name Ricardo Klement.

1970 - Henry 'Dickie' Marrow was murdered by Robert Teel and his sons Roger and Gerald (who had been a childhood friend of Marrow's) in Oxford, North Carolina - apparently for speaking to Teel's daughter. When an all-white jury exonerated all three murderers, the town's black community went on a rampage, burning and pillaging many of its buildings. The story is related in Timothy Tyson's book Blood Done Sign My Name, which is currently being made into a motion picture by writer-director Jeb Stuart.

1971 - The Daily Sketch - then Britain's oldest tabloid (having been founded in 1909 by Sir Edward Hulton) - closed.

1981 - The musical Cats premiered in the West End's glittering London; it closed 21 years later to the day in 2002.

1985 - 56 spectators died when a flash fire struck a football ground during a match in Bradford.

1987 - Klaus Barbie went on trial in Lyon for war crimes committed during World War II.

1997 - IBM Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeated Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player.

2002 - Dutch Princess Margriet unveiled the Man With Two Hats monument in Ottawa - having previously unveiled an identical one in Apeldoorn - symbolically linking the two countries, commemorating their relationship throughout World War II.
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"Catch The Wind" by Donovan

Birthday wishes go out today to Scotland's own Donovan, whose hippified folk sounds - in songs like Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, and the superlative Catch the Wind - virtually defined the Sixties for millions of people...

Catch the Wind was Donovan's first single, and appeared on his debut album What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid - which was released in the UK in May 1965 but not in the US until the following month; the song eventually reached #4 in the United Kingdom and #23 in the United States.  It was followed by Colours, which was equally as popular at home but didn't fare as well overseas.

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"Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" by U2

I have a theory that every time this song is played a conservative cries, which could account for why I play it so often. I know that Bono actually wrote Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own - from U2's 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb - for his father, but the sign of a good pop song is that the listener can bring a different meaning to it should they so choose - in this case, that the 'ownership society' trumpeted by neoconservatives is actually so much bullshit, and really only means that if any hardship should befall you, you're on your own*. I have been fortunate throughout my life at times of crisis to have had help - emotional, intellectual, even financial - to make it through, and will gladly devote my life to repaying and paying forward that generosity.

And so, to all of those who've dedicated their lives to shredding the social safety net, reversing decades of progressive reform, or generally trampling on the dreams and aspirations of those less fortunate, I dedicate this compassionate little ditty to you, in the hopes that some tiny particle of its message penetrates your greedy, empty hearts. Either that, or you die of compassion poisoning, which would technically be an act of mercy for all concerned...

Oh, and have a nice day. ; )

*Unless, of course, you're a huge multi-national company - in which case it's okay to go whining like a little bitch to the government for a bail out. Just as long as you're not a single mother trying to feed her kids. But I digress...
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Happy Birthday Bono

Like when a beautiful person writes a dating book, or a fatso campaigns to eliminate hunger*, whenever a jillionaire starts preaching about eliminating poverty, my finely-tuned bullshit detector starts to twitch. I mean, it's all well and good to blather on to governments about foreign aid when you're sitting on a pile of lucre yourself, especially when even a tiny portion of it could go towards starting thousands of micro-banks in the developing world.

Or maybe I'm just an old cynic.

Celebrities are great catalysts, and Bono in particular seems to have nonpartisan appeal, as comfortable talking to President Bush and the Pope as he is talking with regular humans. The thing about humanitarian efforts, unfortunately, is that they often don't show results for years. At least in this way, Bono seems to be in it for the long haul.

Plus, he's had the same mates his whole life and been married to the same woman (Ali Hewson) for nearly a quarter of a century. He's never had a tabloid scandal that my long memory can recall, nor does he splash out on bling. In this case, his actions more than his words point to his sincerity. I suspect he's not a dilettante, then, but an actual caring person. (Even if he refuses to pay tax in Ireland and can't count in Spanish...)

There you have it: what amounts to a ringing endorsement from the Pop Culture Institute.

*Yes I mean you, Sally Struthers...
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Pop History Moment: The Inauguration of Nelson Mandela

In a world where the all-too-normal progression is from politics to jail, on this day in 1994 Nelson Mandela (shown here with his predecessor and Vice-President, F. W. de Klerk) was sworn in as President of South Africa*, after spending 27 years in jail for the heinous crime of being black and unwilling to accept the strictures of apartheid in that country. Having been first held in the Fort on Johannesburg's Constitution Hill following his arrest in August 1962, he was then transferred to Robben Island, and later still at Pollsmoor Prison, Mandela was eventually released from Victor Verster Prison in February 1990 after de Klerk reversed a decades-long ban on the African National Congress (ANC), of which Mandela was the leader.

Mandela and de Klerk had previously shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for ending apartheid, but the real vindication for Mandela must have come when the ANC claimed 252 of the 400 seats in the country's National Assembly, forming what was known as the Government of National Unity, which was in force until February 1997. Their innovative approach taken to ensure a smooth transition to majority rule included the Truth and Reconciliation Commission - chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu - which sought neither to expunge the grievous injuries of apartheid from history or bathe the country in vengeful blood for them, but to help South Africans come to terms with what had transpired, and so move forward.

The entire story of Mandela's early life, activism, and rise to power is told in his memoir Long Walk to Freedom, published in 1994; for a slightly meatier version of the story, try Mandela: The Authorised Biography, in which Mandela discussed issues relating to Winnie Mandela and de Klerk with his friend, the journalist Anthony Sampson.

*Having been elected on April 27th - now a national holiday called Freedom Day.
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POPnews - May 10th

[Extensively restored, Fort Ticonderoga today plays host to some 90,000 visitors a year in Upstate New York.]

1503 - Christopher Columbus visited the Cayman Islands during his fourth and final voyage to the New World, naming them Las Tortugas for the numerous sea turtles he found there.

1534 - Jacques Cartier arrived at Newfoundland during his first voyage, under the commission of the French King François I.

1768 - British reformer John Wilkes was incarcerated at King's Bench Prison for writing an article in issue #45 of the radical newspaper The North Briton, which severely criticized England's King George III. Wilkes' arrest provoked rioting in London; as his unarmed supporters chanted 'No justice, no peace' troops opened fire on them, killing 7 and injuring 15.

1774 - Louis XVI became King of France following the death of his father Louis XV.

1775 - At the outset of the American Revolution the British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga was taken by a small force of Vermont's Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold; not a single shot was fired by either side during the raid.

1824 - London's National Gallery opened to the public at No. 100 Pall Mall; begun with just 36 paintings (purchased for the sum of £57,000) collected by John Julius Angerstein, the collection currently contains some 2,300 artworks.

1837 - Banks in New York City began to fail owing to a proliferation of paper money unsecured by gold and silver coinage, causing widespread unemployment and a five-year economic depression - an event which is now known as the Panic of 1837; although newly elected President Martin Van Buren took most of the blame for the disaster, he'd only been in office five weeks when the crisis hit, placing responsibility for the crisis firmly on the policies of his predecessor Andrew Jackson.

1865 - Confederate President Jefferson Davis was taken into custody by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia, having evaded capture for 37 days; following his arrest he was held for two years in appalling conditions at Fort Monroe, Virginia, an incarceration which even many Northerners felt was intended to be fatal.

1869 - The First Transcontinental Railroad - linking the eastern and western United States - was ceremonially completed at Utah's Promontory Summit when Leland Stanford drove in the Golden Spike; since 1957 the area has been preserved as the Golden Spike National Historic Site.

1872 - Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated to run for President of the United States when she accepted the honour from the Equal Rights Party; former slave Frederick Douglass was nominated to serve as her running mate. Try and imagine a white woman and a black man on the same Presidential ticket... It almost boggles the mind, doesn't it?

1908 - Mother's Day was observed for the first time in the United States in Grafton, West Virginia.

1922 - The United States annexed the Kingman Reef - located midway between Hawai'i and American Samoa in the Pacific Ocean. Its purpose then was largely strategic; originally touted as a stopover point for Pan Am flying boats between the US and New Zealand, that honour eventually went to the more substantial Canton Island.

1924 - J. Edgar Hoover was appointed the Director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation by President Calvin Coolidge - a post Hoover held until his death in May 1972.

1933 - Students staged massive public book burnings in 34 German cities as part of what was called the 'Action Against the Un-German Spirit'; the event was coordinated by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

1940 - Nazi Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on the same day Winston Churchill accepted the leadership of a wartime coalition government in the United Kingdom.

1960 - The nuclear submarine USS Triton completed the first underwater circumnavigation of the planet.

1978 - Italian politician Aldo Moro was buried; kidnapped in Rome in broad daylight by the Red Brigades 55 days earlier Moro was found dead on May 9th riddled with bullets in the trunk of a red Renault 5 midway between the headquarters of the Christian Democratic Party (of which he was the leader) and the Communist Party.

1994 - Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

2005 - A hand grenade allegedly thrown by Vladimir Arutinian landed about 65 feet (20 metres) from US President George W. Bush while he was giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia. The device, like the man, was a dud; unlike the man, however, the grenade did no damage.
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"Party Hard" by Andrew W.K.

In 2001 - the year his album I Get Wet was released - it seemed like Andrew W. K. was everywhere all at once; then, just as quickly, he was gone. There's nothing so strange about that, I guess, since for every Sheryl Crow and John Mayer I have taken to championing early and often there's been an Adam Cohen waiting to prove that even the most astute pundits among us are basically just grasping at straws when it comes to ascertaining the zeitgeist.

On the bright side, the music remains - in this case, a hybrid of dance and metal that was unusually fresh for its time and which, in my case at least, remains freighted with happy memories of my miserable job, crumbling relationship, and self-destructive frame of mind. Good times...

Best wishes on your 30th birthday, Andrew W. K. - wherever you are.
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Happy Birthday Candice Bergen

In the normal course of events, it's probably a bit weird to be jealous of a puppet*; then again, Candice Bergen's life could never be described as a 'normal course of events', which at least in this case gives her a convenient out. Of course, it's not so much that she was jealous of the puppet as she was offended at having been characterized so often as 'Charlie McCarthy's little sister' - as related in her 1984 memoir Knock Wood - that likely got her ire up.

The daughter of acclaimed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and Frances Westcott (at one time a well-known model), Bergen - born on this day in 1946 - made her first television appearance in 1958 on You Bet Your Life; when host Groucho Marx asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said 'a fashion designer'.

Well, she did eventually become a fashion model, at least, which led as it so often does down the primrose path to acting; in 1966 she appeared in the acclaimed movie The Sand Pebbles, after which her career took off. Despite roles in several high profile movies, she soon made the transition to television, which she seemed to love as much as it loved her. Offscreen, she became an accomplished photographer.

Bergen made history as the first female host of Saturday Night Live, appearing in that show's fourth episode in November 1975; she would go on to host four more times. It was her performance with the Land of Gorch characters there which the following year landed her a spot as host of Episode 115 in the first season of The Muppet Show, a move seen as clearing the way for her father's appearance as host of Episode 207.

A decade later is when I first remember seeing her in action (or should I say, 'inaction'); in February 1985 she played social climbing shoplifter Elaine Conti in the miniseries adaptation of Jackie Collins' salacious bestseller Hollywood Wives. Though at the time I knew she was known as an actress, her performance in it was as wooden as her ersatz 'brother' and my impersonation of her in it provided our circle with many hours of fun.

So I'm sure I was not alone in being pleasantly surprised when, four years later, she sprang ferociously from the TV like a mouthy liberal tornado in Murphy Brown, a mass of neuroses swaddled in Liz Claiborne separates. During that show's ten-year run she was nominated for seven Emmys and won five (she would have won more but after the last one she voluntarily opted herself out of consideration), tangled with US Vice President Dan 'Potatoe' Quayle over 'family values', and was generally as fabulous as humanly possible.

Long married to (and eventually widowed by) Louis Malle**, during a youthful relationship with Doris Day's son Terry Melcher she lived in the infamous house at 10050 Cielo Drive where Sharon Tate and her friends met their fate at the hands of Charles Manson and his 'family'; another incident in 1967 had her shutting down the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills onto the trading floor as part of a Yippie prank alongside Abbie Hoffman. Even more shocking is the revelation that she once went on a date with Henry Kissinger.

Having found her niche in television, she continues to be as fabulous as humanly possible, and maybe even more; subsequent appearances as Enid Frick in Sex and the City as well as her current role as Shirley Schmidt in Boston Legal - to name just two - have ensured her a lasting place in the pop culture firmament.

*Of course, I may be just a wee bit jealous of Chumley myself, so what do I know?
**1981-1995
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"Diva" by Dana International

On this day in 1998 Dana International did more than win the 43rd annual Eurovision Song Contest for Israel with Tzvika Pick and Yoav Ginai's song Diva - she shattered an untold number of misconceptions in the process. Since Dana was born a boy, conservatives in her homeland campaigned against her selection; their failure, though, was a greater inevitablity than her victory. In the end she and her song scored 174 points, edging out the UK entry Where Are You? by Imaani, which was only able to manage a nevertheless respectable 167.

Still, despite the bigotry she faced back in her at home, she took to the stage in Birmingham with her head held high and from there would take Europe and the world by storm by being a gifted performer, a positive person refusing to be held back by hatred, and an inspiration to everyone who's ever suffered judgement in the name of religion...
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POPnews - May 9th

[Although I've always been partial to the neo-classical designs of the Canadian legislatures and the Gothic pile on Ottawa's Parliament Hill, there's something to be said for the modernist home of Australia's government as well.]
1092 - Lincoln Cathedral was consecrated; from 1300 to 1549 (while its spire stood) it was the world's tallest building.

1450 - 'Abd al-Latif - Timurid monarch of Transoxiana - was assassinated; he was succeeded by his cousin ‘Abdullah, because he'd already killed his father Ulugh Beg and brother 'Abd al-'Aziz.

1671 - Thomas Blood attempted to steal the British Crown Jewels from the Tower of London while disguised as a clergyman.

1726 - Five men arrested during a raid on Mother Clap's molly house in London were executed at Tyburn; the house, once on Field Lane in Holborn, was demolished to make way for the Holborn Viaduct.

1868 - The city of Reno, Nevada, was founded by Myron C. Lake.

1873 - A crash on the Vienna stock market - known as Der Krach - heralded the so-called Long Depression.

1901 - Australia's Parliament convened for the first time, in Melbourne - first at the Royal Exhibition Building, then later at the Parliament House of the state of Victoria.

1904 - George Jackson Churchward's steam locomotive City of Truro became the first steam engine to exceed 100 mph (160 kph) during a special mail run from Plymouth to London's Paddington Station.

1927 - Australia's Parliament convened for the first time in Canberra, where it has sat ever since, although it has not been housed in what is now called the Old Parliament House since 1988.

1941 - The German submarine U-110 was captured by the Royal Navy's HMS Bulldog - not the US Navy, as implied by the Hollywood movie U-571 - as part of the Top Secret mission dubbed Operation Primrose; on board was the latest Enigma cryptography machine which Allied cryptographers working at Bletchley Park later used to break coded German messages.

1945 - As the Allied victory swept across Europe and the final German surrender was given to Marshal Georgy Zhukov at Berlin-Karlshorst - signed by Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as the representative of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine - former Nazi second-in-command Hermann Göring was captured by the US Army in Bavaria and Norway's collaborationist Minister-President Vidkun Quisling surrendered to police at Møllergata 19 in Oslo.

1946 - Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III abdicated in favour of his son, who became Umberto II.

1949 - Rainier III became Prince of Monaco following the death of his grandfather Louis II.

1950 - L. Ron Hubbard first published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

1955 - Jim Henson's Sam and Friends - a five-minute show which aired twice daily - made its debut on WRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Washington, DC. The program would air until 1961, and featured the nascent character Kermit, who was not as yet a frog.

1960 - The US Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of Enovid, the world's first oral contraceptive pill.

1974 - As the Watergate Scandal deepened, the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives opened formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard M. Nixon.

1988 - The new Australian Parliament House was opened in Canberra by the Queen of Australia.

1998 - Israeli transsexual Dana International won the Eurovision Song Contest with Tzvika Pick and Yoav Ginai's song Diva.
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