"Spaceman" by Bif Naked

Taken from Bif Naked's second studio album, 1998's I Bificus, Spaceman concerns a young woman recalling a childhood encounter with an extra-terrestrial; the song made it all the way to #2 on the Canadian charts, the album as much as its single establishing Bif's cred in her adoptive country, which is proud to call her its own.
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Pop History Moment: The Signing of Magna Carta

On this day in 1215, England's unpopular King John was forced to sign Magna Carta by what can best be described as a passel* of disaffected nobles; the document was affixed with the Great Seal in a meadow at Runnymede, outside London. Said to be the first piece of legislation designed to curb the powers of a monarch, it is today considered the basis of English common law and is symbolically the load-bearing wall of the British Constitution, even though it was copied almost verbatim from the earlier Charter of Liberties, issued by Henry I in 1100**.

Its preamble - to be followed by 63 fun-filled clauses - reads: JOHN, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, Greeting.

The document was signed by many prominent nobles and clergymen thusly:

KNOW THAT BEFORE GOD, for the health of our soul and those of our ancestors and heirs, to the honour of God, the exaltation of the holy Church, and the better ordering of our kingdom, at the advice of our reverend fathers Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and cardinal of the holy Roman Church, Henry archbishop of Dublin, William bishop of London, Peter bishop of Winchester, Jocelin bishop of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh bishop of Lincoln, Walter Bishop of Worcester, William bishop of Coventry, Benedict bishop of Rochester, Master Pandulf subdeacon and member of the papal household, Brother Aymeric master of the knighthood of the Temple in England, William Marshal earl of Pembroke, William earl of Salisbury, William earl of Warren, William earl of Arundel, Alan de Galloway constable of Scotland, Warin Fitz Gerald, Peter Fitz Herbert, Hubert de Burgh seneschal of Poitou, Hugh de Neville, Matthew Fitz Herbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip Daubeny, Robert de Roppeley, John Marshal, John Fitz Hugh, and other loyal subjects...

Clearly, the whole 'separation of church and state' thing came later; in fact, any day now...

*If you know a better collective noun for a whole bunch of riled up aristocrats, feel free to suggest one...
**Also, the version still on the books in England and Wales isn't the one signed on this day at all, but one reaffirmed by Edward I in 1297.
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Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" by Ella Fitzgerald

When Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut in November 1934 not even she could have known when she died - on this day in 1996, three years after her retirement - that her career would one day span 57 years, surviving and even thriving despite the vagaries of various culture wars and an increasingly capricious audience; when she stepped out onto the stage of Harlem's famed Apollo Theater on that fateful night all she wanted to do was dance. Intimidated by a previous dance act - the Edwards Sisters - Ella decided to sing instead; the rest, as we like to say around here, is pop culture...

Here she is, joined on piano by her fellow legend Duke Ellington, from a television special circa 1968; the song is one of his all-time classics, Don't Get Around Much Anymore*. In total, Ella and Duke recorded two live (Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur and The Stockholm Concert - both 1966) and two studio (1957's The Duke Ellington Songbook and 1967's Ella at Duke's Place) albums together, and this clip demonstrates the total ease with which they worked together.

*Also known as Never No Lament; lyrics by Bob Russell.
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POPnews (US) - June 15th

[Arlington House - formerly the estate of the family of Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary Anna Lee (nee Custis, a descendant of Martha Washington) - was seized by the US government in 1864, which claimed that taxes hadn't been paid on it; it was then decided to bury the Union dead on its grounds to ensure that Lee would never return there to live. While neither General Lee nor his wife ever sued for the return of their property their eldest son Custis Lee did; despite $26,800 having already been paid for the property, after having the land returned to him in 1877 Lee turned around and sold it to the US government for a tidy profit - $150,000! The Greek Revival mansion with its views of the Potomac River and the National Mall is now the centerpiece of an idyllic tribute to the country's most illustrious dead, including President John F. Kennedy, and even serves as a memorial to Robert E. Lee himself.]
1752 - Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is electricity. 

1775 - George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. 

1804 - New Hampshire approved the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution, thereby ratifying it.

1836 - Arkansas became the 25th US state.

1846 - The Oregon Treaty established the 49th parallel as the border between the United States and Canada, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

1859 - Due to an ambiguity in the Oregon Treaty concerning the ownership of the San Juan Islands the 'Northwestern Boundary Dispute' - more colourfully known as the Pig War - erupted between American and British Columbian settlers on the treaty's 13th anniversary.

1864 - Arlington National Cemetery was established when 200 acres (0.8 km²) around Arlington House - formerly owned by Confederate general Robert E. Lee - were officially set aside for that use by US Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

1867 - The Atlantic Cable Quartz Lode gold mine was located in Deer Lodge County, Montana.

1877 - Henry Ossian Flipper became the first African-American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1904 - A fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York City's East River killed more than 1000.

1920 - Three black employees of the James Robinson Circus - Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie - were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota - not only for a crime they didn't commit but for a crime that was never committed by anyone; needless to say, no one was ever convicted for the very real crimes which actually were committed that night, although three men were later sent up to Stillwater State Prison for rioting. A nine-year-old boy named Abram Zimmerman witnessed the murders and eventually passed the memory onto his son, who in 1965 wrote a song about the event entitled Desolation Row. The city took nearly 40 years more to finally build its own tribute to the victims; when it was unveiled in October 2003, though, the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial became the largest anti-lynching monument in the United States.

1934 - The Great Smoky Mountains National Park - on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina - was established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

1978 - Jordan's King Hussein married American Lisa Halaby, who took the name Noor-al-Hussein, or 'light of Hussein'.
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POPnews - June 15th

[The above scene of King John signing the Magna Carta was engraved by William Ryland after a picture by 18th Century neo-classicist painter John Hamilton Mortimer, whose romanticism was often wrought at the expense of accuracy; upon embiggening, please observe Exhibit A: a portrait of His Majesty looking altogether more handsome than he actually did in real life.]

923 CE - At the Battle of Soissons France's King Robert I was killed (legend has it by the usurper King Charles III himself); the so-called Charles the Simple was later arrested and imprisoned by Rudolph, Duke of Burgundy, who himself became king.

1184 - Norway's King Magnus V was killed at the Battle of Fimreite.

1215 - King John of England put his seal to the Magna Carta at the Thames-side meadow of Runnymede in order to thwart a rebellion by his aristocracy.

1219 - According to legend Dannebrog - the flag of Denmark and the oldest national flag in the world - fell from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse near Estonia's Toompea Castle, turning the Danes' luck.

1246 - With the death of Duke Frederick II, Austria's Babenberg dynasty ended.

1520 - Pope Leo X threatened to excommunicate Martin Luther in a papal bull entitled Exsurge Domine.

1667 - The first human blood transfusion was administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.

1785 - Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier - co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight - and his companion, Pierre Romain, became the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon exploded during an attempt to cross the English Channel.

1888 - Germany's Crown Prince Wilhelm became Kaiser Wilhelm II following the death of his father Frederick III, making him third in the so-called Year of Three Emperors; he was also to be the last emperor of the German Empire.

1905 - Britain's Princess Margaret of Connaught married Gustav, Crown Prince of Sweden.

1913 - The Battle of Bud Bagsak in the Philippines concluded with a decisive US victory for General John 'Black Jack' Pershing over the Moro Rebellion.

1919 - John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight at Clifden, in Ireland's County Galway.

1944 - In Saskatchewan, the CCF Party of Tommy Douglas was elected, forming North America's first socialist government.

1945 - The General Dutch Youth League (ANJV) was founded in Amsterdam.

1954 - The UEFA (Union des Associations Européennes de Football) was formed in Basle, Switzerland.

1978 - Jordan's King Hussein married American Lisa Halaby, who took the name Queen Noor; at the time of their meeting Halaby - an architect and urban planner - was working on the Jordanian capital's Amman Intercontinental Airport.

1985 - Rembrandt's painting Danaë was attacked at St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum by a man later judged insane, who threw sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with his knife. Restoration of the eight by ten foot masterpiece took nearly 12 years.

1991 - The first federal political party in Canada that supported Quebec nationalism, the Bloc Québécois, was founded by former Conservative MP Lucien Bouchard.

1996 - A terrorist bomb in the UK injured over 200 people and devastated a large part of Manchester's city centre.
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"Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" by Culture Club

Part of the appeal of Culture Club to little 12 year-old me was the fact that Boy George used to drive my father crazy; we'd been rocking out to this song on the radio for months before he finally saw a picture of the Boy, at which point my father's full-on closet-case hypocrisy revealed itself for what it was. Fortunately it happened in the TV room and not on the highway.

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? was a huge smash all over the world, propelling the band to stardom and their debut album, Kissing to Be Clever, along with them; fame being what it is - namely a hideous bitch goddess - the band's success proved to be its undoing, not that the inevitable descent into tabloid ignominy wasn't as hugely entertaining as it was tragic. While revelations of George's heroin abuse didn't much interest me, the stories about his affair with bandmate Jon Moss* did add an element to the scandal which was then quite unique.

*The object and subject of one of my most long-standing schoolboy crushes.
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Happy Birthday Boy George

I prefer to remember Boy George this way, before the toxic effects of fame really took effect...

Once upon a time he was a nelly bloke who wrote cryptic poems; now he's a rude bitch, mincing his way to oblivion.

Oh wait... I forget. Were we just talking about me or Boy George?

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In Memoriam: Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

How cool is that? A New Yorker cartoon featuring an iconic image of Che Guevara wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt... It's so pop, I think I'm gonna pop!

Seriously though, there are plutocrats and robber barons of all kinds who can't sleep at night (and not just because of their coke habit) who wish they could cram their memes as deep into the culture as this snapshot of a communist by Alberto Korda. I see Che t-shirts all over Vancouver, often layered with Calvin Klein, and the irony fairly makes me quiver.

Oh, and in case you're a plutocrat and a robber baron yourself, the story has a happy capitalist ending. Señor Korda shot his most famous image (some have called it the most famous image of the 20th century) for the Cuban newspaper Revolucion and never received a penny in royalties for it; entitled Guerrillero Heroico, it was taken in March 1960 at a memorial in Havana for the victims of the La Coubre explosion and not published internationally until seven years later.

A great many people have gotten rich with this image, just not the author or the subject... Vive la marketplace!

Born on this day in 1928, Guevara was executed by Mario Terán in October 1967, a day after his capture in Bolivia by CIA operative Félix Rodríguez.
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POPnews - June 14th

[As depicted by Jean Froissart in his famous Chronicles (which principally concerns itself with the events of the Hundred Years' War, albeit from a French perspective) peasants from Essex and Kent opposed to the poll tax stormed into the capital across London Bridge and temporarily seized the Tower of London - summarily executing Simon of Sudbury, the Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as the Lord Treasurer Robert de Hales, both of whom were behind the tax's implementation and had taken refuge there in the (mistaken, as it turns out) belief they would be safe within its sturdy walls; whether or not the rebels had been let in to the Tower by sympathetic keepers remains one of history's great unanswered questions... Meanwhile, in nearby Westminster, another group was responsible for destroying John of Gaunt's Savoy Palace on the Strand.]

1381 - England's 15 year-old King Richard II met with the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt - including a face-to-face confrontation with Wat Tyler - on Blackheath, near London; at the meeting Tyler was mortally wounded by London mayor William Walworth, and without Tyler's leadership the revolt soon dispersed.

1645 - At the Battle of Naseby - the key battle of the first English Civil War - 12,000 Cavalier troops loyal to King Charles I were badly beaten by 15,000 Roundheads of the New Model Army commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.

1775 - At the outset of the American Revolution the Continental Army was established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the US Army.

1777 - The Stars and Stripes was adopted by Congress for use as the American Flag, today the source of the little-observed Flag Day.

1807 - Emperor Napoleon I's French Grande Armee defeated its Russian counterpart at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (near the modern-day Russian enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1821 - Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrendered his throne and realm to Ismail Pasha, general of the Ottoman Empire, ending the existence of that Sudanese kingdom.

1846 - The Bear Flag Revolt began when English-speaking settlers in Sonoma, California, started a rebellion against the Mexican government of Alta California and proclaimed the California Republic.

1919 - John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown departed St. John's, Newfoundland, on the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

1934 - James J. Braddock scored one of the most upsetting victories of his boxing career - not to mention riveted an America deep in the throes of the Great Depression - by defeating the 'Ozark Cyclone' John 'Corn' Griffin in three rounds. The bout marked the beginning of one of boxing's greatest comeback stories - for Braddock, that is; for Griffin... Not so much. In the days after the fight noted wag Damon Runyon dubbed Braddock 'Cinderella Man', much to his manager Joe Gould's delight; and to think it only took seventy years to be made into a movie!

1937 - The US House of Representatives passed the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act effectively rendering pot illegal.

1941 - The Soviet Union's so-called June Deportation - a series of mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians - began.

1951 - UNIVAC I was dedicated by the US Census Bureau.

1952 - The keel of the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus was laid by US President Harry S. Truman.

1954 - US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill into law placing the words 'under God' into the Pledge of Allegiance, thereby ruining the nation and all it once stood for.

1962 - Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler, murdered his first victim, Anna Slesers.

1966 - The Vatican announced the abolition of its Index Librorum Prohibitorum - an index of prohibited books originally instituted in 1557.

1967 - Mariner 5 was launched toward Venus.

1982 - The Falklands War ended when Argentine forces in the capital Stanley unconditionally surrendered to Britain.

2002 - The near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN came within 75,000 miles (120,000 km) of the Earth, which is about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
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"Sing, Sing, Sing" by Benny Goodman Orchestra

Musically, the 1930s truly was the age of giants. Here is the Benny Goodman Orchestra performing their signature tune Sing, Sing, Sing at the Hollywood Hotel in 1937; in addition to Benny Goodman himself on the licorice stick, Gene Krupa plays a mad beat (seemingly with two golden arms*) and Harry James a cool trumpet solo as well. It is said - and not just by me, either - that this song is the anthem of the Swing Era, a song which is continually being rediscovered by subsequent generations, one whose frantic patter has been quickening heartbeats for 70 years.

Goodman died on this day in 1986, but lives on thanks to the miracle of technology.

*Krupa, of course, being the subject of the 1955 film The Man With the Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra as the man who liked him some drumming but liked him some heroin more.
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"Sharing The Night Together" by Dr. Hook

This smooth bit of AM Gold is in honour of Dennis Locorriere, who crooned Dr Hook to chart dominance in the Seventies; Sharing The Night Together appeared on the band's 1978 album Pleasure and Pain, eventually spending 22 weeks on the US charts, peaking at #6.

Now, when it comes to sharing nights together, that's what I call stamina...
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"Countless lives inhabit us..." by Fernando Pessoa as Ricardo Reis

Countless lives inhabit us.
I don’t know, when I think or feel,
Who it is that thinks or feels.
I am merely the place
Where things are thought or felt.

I have more than just one soul.
There are more I’s than I myself.
I exist, nevertheless,
Indifferent to them all.
I silence them: I speak.

The crossing urges of what
I feel or do not feel
Struggle in who I am, but I
Ignore them. They dictate nothing
To the I I know: I write.

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Vivem em nós inúmeros;
Se penso ou sinto, ignoro
Quem é que pensa ou sente.
Sou somente o lugar
Onde se sente ou pensa.

Tenho mais almas que uma.
Há mais eus do que eu mesmo.
Existo todavia
Indiferente a todos.
Faço-os calar: eu falo.

Os impulsos cruzados
Do que sinto ou não sinto
Disputam em quem sou.
Ignoro-os. Nada ditam
A quem me sei: eu escrevo.
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In Memoriam: Fernando Pessoa

Of all the oddball poets (admittedly, quite a large group) Fernando Pessoa's reputation as one of the oddest of them all is well-earned; while many writers ply their craft under false names, Pessoa assumed entire false identities, which he called heteronyms.

Personally, I had never even heard of him (obscure Portugese poets who've been dead for 70 years get so little press in Canada) until I was introduced to him by my friend Laura Cardoso, who was in the same writing group as me. She referenced him in a poem she wrote for me, in part because she'd noticed I did something similar.

Thanks to these heteronyms, it's virtually impossible to know anything about his real life, which may have been the point. One of these personae is obviously homoerotic; so is that Pessoa, attempting to flesh out that part of human experience, or is it a sad closet case's plea for help?

It may be both; it may be neither... Who the fuck knows with a poet, eh?
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"Buddy Holly" by Weezer

Birthday wishes go out today to Rivers Cuomo, uber-cute front man for alt-rock wunderkinds Weezer; here they perform their 1994 single Buddy Holly in the kind of pop cultur-iffic alt-universe of which we at the Pop Culture Institute can't get enough. Art house auteur Spike Jonze has dropped the band into an episode of Happy Days, complete with a cameo by original cast member Al Molinaro!

Released on what would have been Buddy Holly's 58th birthday (had the musician survived The Day the Music Died) the single appears on the band's debut album Weezer, sometimes called The Blue Album; despite what is in every sense an artistic tour de force*, though, according to Cuomo himself the song almost didn't make it onto the album.

*The single was produced by New Wave legend Ric Ocasek, after all!
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Pop History Moment: Elizabeth II Shot At

On this day in 1981 17-year-old Marcus Sarjeant shot at Queen Elizabeth II as she rode Burmese* during the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony in London. The Queen never lost her composure, and easily quieted her equally reliable mount.

The would-be assassin was readily apprehended, at which time it was revealed he had been shooting blanks; he was later sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served three, and was released in 1984.

'I did it because I wanted to be famous,' he said, apparently in his own defense.

*A gift to Her Majesty from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1969, Burmese was bred at the RCMP Stud in Regina - home of the famed Musical Ride. Since 2005 the Queen can be seen riding Burmese in perpetuity; a statue in front of the Saskatchewan Legislature commemorates their special friendship. Burmese was retired in 1986, and died in 1990.
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POPnews - June 13th

[The daughter of France's King Henri IV and his second wife Marie de Medici, through her daughter Henrietta, Duchess of Orléans Charles I's queen is related to French monarchs Louis XV, Louis XVI, Louis XVII, Louis XVIII & Charles X plus such modern-day luminaries as Diana, Princess of Wales , Prince William, Prince Harry, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall as well through the illegitimate children of her son, Charles II. Despite being such a pivotal figure in history - every bit as much as Queen Victoria if not more - Henrietta Maria has been written about very little, and understood even less...]
1525 - Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, openly defying the celibacy doctrine decreed by the Roman Catholic Church on priests and nuns in the most boring way imaginable.

1625 - England's King Charles I married French princess Henrietta Maria; not only would she become the mother of two kings (Charles II and James II) she would also be the grandmother of two queens (Mary II and Queen Anne) as well as William III - who, according to rumour was both a king and a queen - besides.

1777 - At the outset of the American Revolution the Marquis de Lafayette (who during the subsequent French Revolution renounced his title in a fit of Republicanism and became plain-old Gilbert de Motier) landed near Charleston in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army, which he did as an unpaid volunteer. Some idea of the closeness between the has-been Marquis and the would-be President George Washington can be gleaned from David A. Barry's book Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship That Saved the Revolution, which will have to do until I decide* to take up writing slash fiction.

*Or am driven, out of sheer desperation, more like...

1798 - The Mission San Luis Rey de Francia was founded in what is now Oceanside, California.

1881 - The USS Jeannette was crushed in an Arctic Ocean ice pack and sunk under the command of George W. DeLong; owned by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald, the Jeannette had been sent North to look for an overdue expedition aboard the Vega.

1886 - A fire devastated much of Vancouver; on the same day Bavaria's King Ludwig II was found dead in Lake Starnberg, south of Munich. Most historians feel the two events aren't related - and even a paranoid bastard such as myself can't force any connection, but I'll probably keep trying anyway...

1898 - Yukon Territory was formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital; the capital was moved to Whitehorse following World War II, to little effect.

1927 - A ticker-tape parade was held for aviator Charles Lindbergh down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue upon his return to New York City from Paris following his historic transatlantic flight on May 20th.

1935 - In one of the biggest upsets in championship boxing, the 10 to 1 underdog James J. Braddock (shown, at right) defeated Max Baer at the Madison Square Garden Bowl in Long Island City, New York, making him the heavyweight champion of the world. Braddock's life was reverently inhabited by Russell Crowe in Ron Howard's 2005 biopic Cinderella Man; he was joined by Paul Giamatti as Braddock's manager Joe Gould and for once Squinty McCokeface doesn't ruin the film by playing Braddock's long-suffering wife Mae, although the unflattering - and inaccurate - portrayal of Max Baer (otherwise well-played by Craig Bierko) nearly does. 

1942 - The US government opened its Office of War Information.

1955 - Mir Mine - the Soviet Union's first diamond mine - was discovered.

1966 - The US Supreme Court ruled, in Miranda v. Arizona, that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them; Justice John Marshall Harlan II didn't agree, nor did Justice Tom C. Clark, or Justices Potter Stewart and Byron White for that matter. Oh that wacky Warren Court!

1967 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the US Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark.

1977 - Convicted Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray was recaptured after escaping from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary three days earlier. 

1982 - Fahd became King of Saudi Arabia upon the death of his brother, Khalid. 

1983 - Pioneer 10 became the first man-made object to leave the solar system when it left the orbit of Neptune. 

1991 - Boris Yeltsin became Russia's first popularly elected President.

1996 - The Montana Freemen surrendered after an 81-day standoff with FBI agents.

1997 - A jury sentenced Timothy McVeigh to the death penalty for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
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"Born With a Broken Heart" by Kenny Wayne Shepherd

This song is a favourite of mine, which explains so much; shown here recorded before a live audience in 1996, Born With a Broken Heart is the first song on Kenny Wayne Shepherd's first album Ledbetter Heights, and showed that straight out of the gate the boy was a man.

The actual Ledbetter Heights - also known as 'St. Paul's Bottoms' - is a traditionally black neighbourhood and former red-light district in Shreveport*, an area which spawned blues god Huddie 'Leadbelly' Ledbetter and was later named after him in an effort to rehabilitate the district's image...
All of which begs the question: what kind of a sorry state would a neighbourhood have to be in that naming it after a blues musician would improve it?

*Kenny Wayne Shepherd's hometown, yo.
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Happy Birthday Kenny Wayne Shepherd

A blues prodigy, self-taught by age 7, Kenny Wayne Shepherd recorded his first album Ledbetter Heights at age 17. In it, not only is his playing as sharp as a seasoned veteran's, his vocals growl and yelp and ache more like a man of 71 than 17. His second album, Trouble Is..., holds the record for the longest duration on the American Blues chart.

Today at 33 he is the author of five albums and tours extensively, often playing with the likes of B. B. King and Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown. In 2006 he married Hannah, the eldest daughter of Mel Gibson and together they have two children.
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In Memoriam: Anne Frank

Both a remarkable young woman and her remarkable book were born on this day: the girl in 1929, and the book 13 years later, in 1942; that such a simple birthday present as a diary could one day become the single most damning piece of evidence against the atrocities of the Holocaust not only staggers the mind but also makes the heart soar...

Born in Frankfurt, Anne Frank and her family fled to Aachen in 1933 after Hitler's election, finally settling in Amsterdam the following year. For awhile it seemed their flight had been successful, but they were soon trapped in Holland following the Nazi Occupation in November 1940.

Anne Frank's diary was begun less than a month before her family went into hiding, in July 1942; its earliest entries, while detailing the minutiae of her life, also offer glimpses of a growing awareness that her life was in danger. For two long years her family and four of their friends hid in a room in the back of the Opekta Works factory on the Prinsengracht (now a museum) which her father owned, until being arrested by the Gestapo in August 1944 - on a tip from a person whose identity remains unknown to history even if the sting of their betrayal survives.

Alas, the third act of Anne's life was not to be; seven months after her arrest she died of typhus in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, a few days after her older sister Margot. The exact date of their deaths remain unknown, but it was likely some time in March 1945, when an epidemic of the disease swept the camp. Since it was her dream to be a journalist one wonders how Anne, already a gifted and sensitive writer, would have described those last months of her young life, the liberation of the camps just six weeks after she died, or the ensuing Nuremberg trials when those responsible would be held accountable, having already written history's most damning account of Nazism by the age of 15.

Anne's father Otto Frank was the only survivor of the achterhuis, and upon his return to Amsterdam he was given Anne's diary, which was found and saved by Miep Gies, who'd aided the inmates during their hiding at great personal risk to herself. Today it is one of the world's most read books, and Gies is a national (indeed an international) heroine for having rescued it.

Anne's story was quickly adapted for the stage, and that play duly became a movie; the most chilling work on the life and death of Anne Frank, though, is Jon Blair's 1995 documentary Anne Frank Remembered; narrated by Kenneth Branagh and featuring excerpts of the diary read by Glenn Close, among the many treasures it contains* is the only known film footage of Anne Frank.

*Anne Frank Remembered also contains the longest interview Miep Gies ever gave about her involvement with the Franks, as well as their fellow captors, the Van Pels family - Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter - and Fritz Pfeffer. It comes with the highest possible recommendation of the Pop Culture Institute.
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"Brass in Pocket" by The Pretenders

Birthday wishes would go out today to Pete Farndon - bass player and founding member of The Pretenders - if only he'd survived that ole devil called the rock and roll lifestyle, that is. Instead of a 57th birthday, though, he gets a brief mention on an obscure blog in the boondocks of the Internet. Oh joy...

Few bands have survived the number of lineup changes The Pretenders have over the years, mainly because despite her refusal to perform as Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders that is essentially what the band should be called; I highly doubt the band could survive the loss of her the way it did poor old Pete Farndon. His departure was doubly painful; not only was he fired by his fellow band mates (in June 1982) he'd once been Hynde's lover as well.

His dismissal came just two days after his 30th birthday; just two days later his fellow founding Pretender James Honeyman-Scott died of a heart attack caused by cocaine use. Farndon himself died in April 1983 - in the midst of forming a new band with Topper Headon, formerly of The Clash - having made an indelible mark on the world of rock thanks to songs like this one.

Brass in Pocket, the band's third single, was released in November 1979 and appears on the band's 1980 debut album Pretenders. The video, interestingly enough, was the seventh ever video shown on MTV following that channel's August 1981 launch; I've always liked its wistful whimsy, and I'm a sucker for a story video every time.
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Pop History Moment: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman Were Murdered

On this day in 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered at her home on Bundy Drive in LA's tony Brentwood neighbourhood by person or persons unknown* wearing ugly shoes and gloves that didn't fit; alas, the crime took place in California, so it wouldn't have been possible to get a conviction even if the killer had been caught literally red-handed. Which, in a way, he was. As it is, O. J. Simpson had more of Nicole Brown's blood on him than she had left in her by the time he was done; so much, in fact, that not even the stunningly inept crime scene investigation unit of the LAPD could manage to taint, compromise, or obliterate all of it.

Still, the case riveted the world, as who doesn't love to see a famously arrogant celebrity fall from grace: from the sluggish high speed chase of the white Ford Bronco belonging to Al Cowlings on Interstate 405 through the various hairstyles of Marcia Clark and the wacky white supremacy of LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman to the verdict offered by Judge Lance Ito in October 1995...

Bad times...

*And by 'person or persons unknown' I'm being sarcastic; we all damn well know who did it.
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POPnews - June 12th

[Under the motto Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is charged with both preserving the relics and honouring the legacies of those men who have most excelled at playing the American pastime. But have they been too over-zealous in this latter pursuit? Author Zev Chafets thinks so; his book, Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame seeks to blow the white-wash off of some of the worst d-bags, bastards, and blackguards ever to shag a fly, swing the ash, or hurl the pearl.]
1381 - During England's so-called Peasants' Revolt rebels from Essex - led by John Ball, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw - arrived at Blackheath, which was then on the outskirts of London.

1429 - Joan of Arc led the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, in the second day of the Battle of Jargeau.

1653 - During the First Anglo-Dutch War the Battle of the Gabbard began; it would last into the next day.

1776 - The Virginia Declaration of Rights was adopted.

1860 - The State Bank of the Russian Empire was established.

1864 - During the Overland Campaign portion of the US Civil War, at the Battle of Cold Harbor, General Ulysses S. Grant gave Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulled his Union troops from their positions at Cold Harbor, Virginia, and moved south.

1889 - 78 people were killed and 260 injured in the Armagh rail disaster - a crash involving a Sunday School excursion train near Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland.

1898 - General Emilio Aguinaldo declared the Philippines' independence from Spain, appropriately enough with the Philippine Declaration of Independence.

1899 - The New Richmond Tornado - the eighth deadliest tornado in US history - killed 117 people and injured around 200 in that Wisconsin town.

1939 - The Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York.

1940 - 13,000 British and French troops surrendered to Nazi Germany's Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.

1963 - Civil rights leader Medgar Evers (shown, at left) was murdered in front of his Jackson, Mississippi, home by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith - a story told cinematically* by Rob Reiner in the 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi, which contains a chilling Oscar-nominated performance by James Woods as de la Beckwith...  In the film Whoopi Goldberg as Evers' widow Myrlie and Alec Baldwin as her lawyer Bobby DeLaughter fight for justice at de la Beckwith's third trial - the first two (in 1964) having ended in mistrials resulting in acquittal. As per usual, any attempt to stop or even slow down the Civil Rights Movement with the murder of Medgar Evers was met with a redoubled effort by those more determined than ever to continue his work by preserving his legacy. In 1970 Medgar Evers College opened in Brooklyn, a fitting tribute to the man who once helped the first black student, James Meredith, attend the University of Mississippi, which had a strict whites-only policy.

*An earlier film - For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story starring Howard Rollins Jr. and Irene Cara - was made for American television and aired in 1983; Phil Ochs also tells Evers' story in the song Too Many Martyrs.

1964 - Anti-apartheid activist and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison by a court in South Africa for engaging in acts of sabotage.

1967 - The US Supreme Court unanimously decided in the case of Loving v. Virginia, declaring all state laws which prohibited inter-ethnic marriage to be unconstitutional, making today a big one for all fans of miscegenation.

1975 - India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty of corruption by the High Court of Allahabad based largely on complaints made by Raj Narain. Her punishment was being barred from holding elective office for six years; her response was to compel Indian President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of emergency which held for 21 months, during which time she rounded up and jailed her critics and clamped down on press freedoms - events most chillingly described in Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel Midnight's Children.

1978 - David Berkowitz - New York City's notorious 'Son of Sam' killer - was sentenced to 365 years in prison for committing six killings - those of Donna Lauria, Christine Freund, Virginia Voskerichian, Alexander Esau, Valentina Suriani, and Stacy Moskowitz; his other victims - Jody Valenti, Carl Denaro, Rosemary Keenan, Donna DeMasi, Joanne Lomino, John Diel, Sal Lupo, Judy Placido, and Robert Violente - survived his attacks, although in many cases were left severely injured. Berkowitz's bloody rampage is chronicled in Spike Lee's 1999 film Summer of Sam, in which the murderer was portrayed by Michael Badalucco.

1979 - Bryan Allen won the second Kremer prize - a none-too-shabby £100,000 - for a man-powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross; he'd also won the first Kremer prize as well - only £50,000, but still nice - in August 1977, also piloting a plane owned by Dr. Paul MacCready.

1987 - The Central African Republic's former self-proclaimed Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa was sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule.

1990 - On a day now celebrated as Russia Day, the parliament of the Russian Federation formally declared its sovereignty.
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