POPnews: September 14th

[US President William McKinley's assassination at the hands of Leon Czolgosz resulted in the tightening of security around the Chief Executive, which no one had thought of before since 'being proactive' had yet to be invented.]
81 CE - Domitian became Roman Emperor upon the death of his brother Titus.

1180 - The Battle of Ishibashiyama saw Japan's Minamoto no Yoritomo lead the Minamoto against the Taira (with the assistance of the Miura) in one of the bloodier engagements of the Genpei War; for the record, the Taira's Oba Kagechika was victorious.

1607 - The so-called Flight of the Earls from Ireland's Lough Swilly, in County Donegal, refers to the departure of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell from the village of Rathmullan along with some ninety members of many prominent Gaelic families on board a French ship bound for the Continent. Some historians have argued that this particularly extreme action was forced upon the Irish nobility by the fallout from the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, others that it was a strategic mistake that cleared the way for the Plantation of Ulster.

1682 - Bishop Gore School, one of the oldest in Wales, was founded in Swansea; one of its illustrious alumni is Dylan Thomas, whose poetry was first published in the school magazine.

1752 - The British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar, thereby skipping eleven days (the previous day of this year in England was September 2nd).

1812 - Following the Battle of Borodino during the Napoleonic Wars, French grenadiers entered Moscow; the Fire of Moscow began as soon as Russian troops left the city, and would leave three-quarters of the city in ruins.

1829 - The Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Adrianople with Russia, thus ending the Russo-Turkish War.

1862 - The Battle of South Mountain - itself part of the Maryland Campaign - was fought; not only would it give Union generals George B. McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, and William B. Franklin a victory over the Confederacy's Robert E. Lee, the Maryland Campaign is today considered a turning point in Union fortunes during the American Civil War.

1901 - President William McKinley died, eight days after being shot; he was succeeded by his Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt.

1926 - The Liberal Party's William Lyon Mackenzie King defeated Arthur Meighen's Conservatives in a Canadian general election, winning 128 seats to the Conservatives' 91, with 46.1% of the popular vote. The Progressives won 20 seats, with the remaining 6 being divvied up between minor parties.

1944 - Maastricht became the first Dutch city to be liberated by Allied forces.

1948 - The groundbreaking ceremony for United Nations headquarters was held in New York City.

1951 - British Prime Minister Clement Attlee opened the largest oil refinery in Europe, at Fawley on Southampton Water; it remains the largest oil refinery in the UK to this day.

1959 - The Soviet Union's Luna 2 probe crashed onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.

1960 - OPEC was founded.

1975 - Elizabeth Ann Seton - the first American saint - was canonized by Pope Paul VI.

1981 - Marcus Sarjeant - the would-be assassin who'd fired six blanks at the Queen on June 13th - was jailed for five years by Lord Lane; he was released from Grendon psychiatric prison in October 1984 at the age of 20, changed his name, and has endeavoured to make a new life for himself. At least he hasn't tried it again, which seems to make a case for rehabilitation.

1982 - Bachir Gemayel, President-elect of Lebanon, was assassinated; his brother, Amine Gemayel, was later elected in his place, and served as President from 1982 to 1988 instead. Habib Shartouni is considered responsible for the slaying, which was accomplished by means of a bomb planted in Kataeb Party headquarters.

1994 - Major League Baseball canceled its season due to a strike.
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Roald Dahl: Always A Dahl Moment

Having already written a fairly thorough tribute to Roald Dahl on the anniversary of his death, I'm not sure what else I can say about the man on the anniversary of his birth that I haven't already said... Clearly I'm not alone in this, as today is widely celebrated in the English-speaking world as Roald Dahl Day, and indeed the month of September is considered (among other things) Roald Dahl Month.

Then again, there are those people whose accomplishments are so integral to my own life and career that I have no problem running my mouth or even repeating myself when it comes time to eulogize them. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that without exposure to his works in those impressionable years before the age of ten I might not be a writer at all... Had he only ever written Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I would still find myself endlessly rhapsodizing about his literary achievements; as it is, he was also responsible for such masterpieces of kid-lit as James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Witches, as well as the decidedly grown-up My Uncle Oswald.

Apart from his literary achievements, Dahl was a pilot with the Royal Air Force during World War II, participating in the airborne battle to liberate Athens from the Axis menace. It was during this engagement that his friend, the distinguished flier Marmaduke 'Pat' Pattle, was fatally shot down. Fortunately Dahl survived, and his wartime adventures later provided him with rich fodder for his earliest works, a series of magazine articles and short stories relating these and other experiences; he'd also been employed during the war writing propaganda for the consumption of Allied forces. In fact his first work for kids, The Gremlins, was published while he was still enlisted in 1943, and concerns those mythical creatures well-known to the men of the RAF who fly and service airplanes.

Turbulently married for thirty years from July 1953 to the American actress Patricia Neal, together they had five children and their fair share of heartache into the bargain. Their first child, Olivia, died of measles encephalitis at the age of seven in 1962; then came Tessa, Theo*, Ophelia, and Lucy. It was while pregnant with Lucy in 1965 that Neal famously suffered three cerebral aneurysms, nearly killing her; thanks in large part to Dahl's persistence, Neal re-learned to walk and talk - and in fact only died in August 2010, at the grand old age of 84!

Born on this day in 1916, Roald Dahl died in November 1990; since June 2005 his home in Great Missenden has been maintained for the Nation as the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre.

*Whose childhood collision with a New York taxi caused the infant to develop hydrocephalus, and his father to develop the Wade-Dahl-Till valve still used to treat such conditions; ironically, by the time work on the valve was completed, Theo had recovered enough that he no longer required it!
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Now Showing: "La Molina" by Yma Sumac

The singer Yma Sumac sparked an unusual kind of controversy when she burst upon the world's music scene in the early 1950s; owing to the unbelievably exotic pedigree she offered as her own (namely that she was an Inca princess descended from Atahualpa) it was oft-rumoured that she was actually Amy Camus* even though they could never quite agree on the spurious place of her birth - some said Brooklyn, others Detroit, still others offered somewhere in Canada.

For the record, she was born in Peru on this day in 1922, although her name at birth - Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo - never would have fit on the sleeve of a 45 rpm record, necessitating the name change.  Yma Sumac died in November 2008.

*Yma Sumac backwards, guh!
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Tupac Shakur

On this day in 1996 Tupac Shakur - one of the last remaining of the socially relevant rappers - succumbed to injuries received on September 7th in a drive-by shooting after the Mike Tyson - Bruce Seldon fight in Las Vegas. He was 25. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his murder have been explored in the documentary Tupac: Assassination as well as in Assassination: Conspiracy or Revenge.

Shakur's gangsta cred did not end with a hail of bullets; after cremation his ashes were mixed with marijuana and smoked by members of Outlawz. I don't know if I'm more upset that a) a dozen years later police are no closer to solving the case, or b) he stole my idea for the memorial service I want, or c) I wasn't invited, since alive or dead I would have loved nothing better than to have smoked him myself.
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POPnews: September 13th

[Although not the only wall to span the northernmost extent of Roman Britain, Hadrian's Wall is much more famous than either the Antonine Wall or the two other unnamed fortifications those resourceful Italians built to keep the Pictish tribes in.]
122 CE - Legend has it work began on Hadrian's Wall.

533 CE - General Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeated Gelimer and his Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimium, near the North African city of Carthage.

1501 - Michelangelo began work on David - essentially completing rough work begun by Agostino di Duccio; the work was unveiled in the Palazzo della Signoria in September 1504, just days shy of three years later.

1504 - Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issued a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built in Granada to house them after their deaths; both of their bodies had been interred there by 1521, where their remains remain to this day.

1743 - Great Britain, Austria and Sardinia signed the Treaty of Worms, a handy bit of political manoeuvering designed to separate Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII from French influence while resolving issues which had developed between Archduchess Maria Theresa and Sardinia's King Charles Emmanuel III over some of Austria's holdings in Italy.

1759 - British forces under General James Wolfe defeated the French troops of Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm near Quebec City at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham during the Seven Years' War*; both generals lost their lives in the hostilities.

*Which is better known in the United States as the French and Indian War.

1788 - The Philadelphia Convention set the date for the country's first presidential election, and New York City became the temporary capital of the United States.

1812 - A supply wagon sent to relieve the nine-day siege of the Indiana Territory's Fort Harrison was ambushed by a Potawatomi war party during the Attack at the Narrows; eleven soldiers and all the supplies were lost in what was nevertheless considered the first major American land-based victory of the War of 1812 - the larger action known as the Battle of Fort Harrison.

1814 - Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Sangled Banner, when he set his poem The Defense of Fort McHenry to the music of a British drinking ditty called The Anacreontic Song.

1848 - Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage incredibly survived having an iron rod measuring 109 cm (43 inches) driven through his head following an accident with explosives during construction of the Rutland & Burlington Railroad; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulated thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions among Victorian scientists.

1850 - The first ascent of Piz Bernina - the highest summit of the eastern Alps - was made by Johann Coaz and his assistants the brothers Jon and Lorenz Ragut Tscharner.

1922 - The world's highest temperature was recorded at Al 'Aziziyah in Libya: 57.7 C (135.9 F) - one degree hotter than standing within arm's length of Luke LaRue.

1923 - Miguel Primo de Rivera was invited to be Prime Minister of Spain by King Alfonso XIII, setting up a dictatorship following a coup by that country's military.

1935 - A rockslide near Whirlpool Rapids Bridge ended the Great Gorge and International Railway in the Niagara Gorge.

1943 - Chiang Kai-shek was elected President of China.

1969 - Scooby Doo, Where Are You? made its television debut.

1993 - Late Night with Conan O'Brien made its television debut.

2001 - Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader of Britain's Conservative Party, replacing William Hague; he served until losing a vote of confidence in November 2003, following which he was replaced by Michael Howard.

2006 - Kimveer Gill killed 1, wounded 19 others, then committed suicide at Dawson College in Montreal.
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"Fuck Them All" by Mylène Farmer

Well, you don't need to speak French to understand what this is all about; taken from the 2005 album Avant que l'ombre... by Mylène Farmer, it's that popular nursery rhyme Fuck Them All, a song which has rarely been off my iPod over the past few years, and one whose message emerges again and again at times whenever I am in need of an anthem - which is often!

The video was directed by Agustin Villaronga and features scarecrows designed by Swiss artist Martial Leiter.
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Bonne Fête Mylène Farmer

In the interest of full disclosure I should say that the only thing I knew about Mylène Farmer before I started this blog was her name and her profession; probably the reason you've never heard of her is that she sings in French, which is the excuse I'm using.

I had some vague sense that she was known as 'the Madonna of France' but even that I wouldn't have published without checking*. Virtually every female singer who uses sexuality in her act is known as 'the Madonna of' whatever country she's from; if Nana Mouskouri so much as undid her top button they'd be calling her 'the Madonna of Greece' for pity's sake.

Well, what an eye-opening day it's been!

About all I can say is, Madonna wishes she were half the provocateur Mylène Farmer is, was, and will continue to be. Having spent a couple of hours luxuriating in the rich visuals of her video career, I've already half-forgotten what's-her-name. And in just the brief thumbnail of her life is enough scandal, controversy, and outrage for three Madonnas.

*It's also not quite true, since she was born in Montreal, on this day in 1961.
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H.L. Mencken: The Sage of Baltimore

If the Pop Culture Institute can be said to have a spiritual leader it is H. L. Mencken. Not spiritual in the religious sense - Mencken's disdain for fundamentalism surpasses even my own - but in the secular sense. After all, by what right do the religious lay exclusive claim to the soul?

To his resume as satirist and polemicist could have been added psychic; once, while discoursing on the dumbing down of the Presidency, he wrote: 'On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.' This was in 1920!

By the time he co-founded (with George Jean Nathan) the hugely influential publication The American Mercury, at the age of 44, he was already well-known, chiefly for comments like that which appears above. However, the following year's Scopes Trial was tailor-made for Mencken and his skills; he proceeded to make his name all over again from writing about it.

Despite being openly critical of marriage, Mencken married in 1930; his wife, Sara Haardt, was in ill-health and died in 1935. In 1948 Mencken himself fell ill, having suffered a cerebral thrombosis. Although unable to read or write, he spent the final eight years of his life organizing his papers; whatever drove him to write now drove him to ensure that he'd be remembered as a writer.

Born on this day in 1880, Mencken died in January 1956, and is buried in Baltimore. His approach to life and work can be best summed up in the humourous epitaph he left for himself:

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl.

Amen...
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"Biko" by Peter Gabriel

A hundred crusading journalists couldn't hope to have the impact of even one pop star, let alone a pop star as universally admired as Peter Gabriel; which could be sad (especially if you're a crusading journalist like Helen Zille) but which I consider to be proof of the democratization of information. I certainly never read about Steven Biko - neither his life nor his death - in the newspapers, but was well-acquainted with this video when it came out to coincide with the 1987 film Cry Freedom, directed by Sir Richard Attenborough. What I did learn from the papers, though, is that many viewings of this film in South Africa were disrupted prior to 1991, which is proof for the need to democratize information in the first place*.

Steve Biko died on this day in 1977, having sustained a massive head injury while in police custody and following an 1100 mile journey by Land Rover to hospital in Pretoria; police blamed his death on a hunger strike**. Yet for the way he died, as much as for his promulgation of the idea that 'black is beautiful', Biko became a powerful symbol within the Black Consciousness Movement as well as the patron saint of the anti-apartheid activism which dealt its own killing blow to racism in the early 1990s.

*Getting as much information into as many hands as possible is the best defense against censorship.
**Which is technically true, since comatose patients with major head trauma suffered at the hands of the police can be notoriously finicky eaters.
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Peter Roget: A Way With Words

It was on this day in 1869 that Peter Roget, Swiss-born author of the great Thesaurus, died.

Passed away, bought the farm, entered immortality, cashed in his chips, croaked, shuffled off his mortal coil, snuffed it, went belly up, became deceased, took up daisy pushing, tucked in for his dirt nap, expired...

(With apologies to Monty Python's parrot...)
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Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett: What A Pair

If only drippy arch-sentimentalists Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett had been half as fun as Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson, who play them here during the second season of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, maybe they wouldn't need to be made fun of as much as they are in this.

Anyway, it was on this day in 1846 he spirited her out of her father's house in London's Wimpole Street, thence to St Marylebone Parish Church, and then off to Italy where she lived the bulk of the rest of her life in connubial bliss before dying in June 1861.
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Happy Birthday Yao Ming

There are oodles of slightly racist jokes I could say here - I don't even need to hint at them, cuz my whiteys all known 'em - but just in case this dude is a prototype, I'm gonna ease up on the Sinophobia. The last thing I need is ten or twelve of these showing up at my door, on special orders from Hu Jintao...

Anyway, he's rich, famous, recently married to a lovely lady named Ye Li, and recuperated from a broken foot in time to represent China at the 2008 Summer Olympics - not to mention carrying the torch into the stadium* - so why should I spoil it with some snarky joke about MSG?

*Which, given his height, could have set off the sprinklers!
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POPnews: September 12th

[Since 1983 a replica of the cave at Lascaux has been open specifically for tourists - located 200m away from the original - in order to spare some 16,000 priceless images the worst ravages of tourism: namely creeping black mold, exposure to carbon dioxide, and having to spend 40 years in close proximity to a horde of unwashed mouth-breathers.]
1213 - During the Albigensian Crusade England's Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, killed King Peter II of Aragon during the Battle of Muret.

1846 - Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning.

1847 - The Mexican-American War's Battle of Chapultepec began, during which Chapultepec Castle was taken from Mexico's Nicolás Bravo by American commander Winfield Scott.

1848 - Switzerland became a Federal state.

1857 - The SS Central America sank about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon; the ship had been carrying 13-15 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush, and the loss of bullion triggered the Panic of 1857.

1874 - British Columbia's District of Maple Ridge was founded, a dozen years before Vancouver; now Vancouver is a world-class city and Maple Ridge... Uh... Isn't.

1910 - Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 received its world premiere in Munich (with a chorus of 852 singers and an orchestra of 171 players); Mahler's assistant conductor during rehearsals was Bruno Walter, who later made a name for himself as a maestro.

1940 - The world's single greatest trove of Paleolithic art was discovered near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne département, by four teenagers - Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas - as well as Ravidat's dog, Robot.

1943 - Benito Mussolini - Fascist dictator of Italy between October 1922 and July 1943 - was rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi during Operation Eiche by the German commando forces of Otto Skorzeny.

1959 - Bonanza, the first regularly-scheduled TV program presented in color, premiered on NBC; it would last until 1973 and make a star of Michael Landon - although it was Pernell Roberts who used to keep me up at night, if you know what I mean...

1964 - Utah's Canyonlands National Park was established.

1974 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by the Derg.

1977 - Steven Biko died of injuries received while in custody in South Africa; Biko's story came to light due to the work of the crusading journalist Helen Zille and, of course, crusading pop star Peter Gabriel.

1983 - A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, was robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros during an operation called Aguila Blanca (White Eagle).

1992 - NASA launched the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission; on board were Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark C. Lee and N. Jan Davis, the first married couple in space. So we pretty much know what their mission, um, entailed...

1994 - Frank Corder fatally crashed a stolen Cessna into the South Lawn of the White House; he'd intended to crash it directly into the Executive Mansion, but owing to his intoxication at the time he thankfully pulled off an epic fail and missed. He was the only casualty. President Bill Clinton and his family weren't even in residence at the time, due to renovations, and were staying instead across the street at Blair House; anyway, Corder's friends said he had no grudge against the President, and may only have wanted to commit a very high profile suicide.

2001 - US President George W. Bush declared War on Terror, marking the first time a nation ever declared war on a concept; tyranny, rather than hilarity, ensued...

2005 - Hong Kong Disneyland opened in Penny's Bay on Lantau Island.

2007 - Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada was convicted of the crime of plunder.
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Parting Shot: World Trade Center, The Tribute In Light

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"It Had To Be You" by Harry Connick, Jr.

Years before the neo-swing craze temporarily distracted hipsters from their love of grunge, there was Harry Connick, Jr.; now that bands like the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and their ilk have been consigned to the 99-cent bin, Harry Connick, Jr. is still a force with which to be reckoned. Funny, isn't it, how fads come and go but the classics never seem to go out of style?

In keeping with today's unofficial theme - which seems to encompass all things New York - and seeing as it's Connick's birthday, I figured I'd take my readers all the way back to 1989; that's the year the then 22-year-old crooner's rendition of It Had to Be You knocked the socks off of everyone who went to see When Harry Met Sally...

Written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner, When Harry Met Sally... of course starred Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally; they also co-star in the video, emoting up their respective storms alongside their unofficial third costar (namely New York City) while Connick himself pours his honeyed tenor over it all like autumn sunlight glancing off the Hudson River. The film's soundtrack album was produced by Marc Shaiman, and functions pretty neatly as Harry Connick, Jr.'s third collection; not only that, it pretty much launched him into the stratosphere of American performing artists*.

*Where he was destined to end up anyway, but still...
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Gratuitous Brunette: Harry Connick, Jr.

The day that gay rumours about birthday boy Harry Connick Jr. emerged started out very well; alas, I woke up just as he was about to propose to me, so I may never know how things turned out...

In the meantime, I guess I'll have to make do with the fruits of his ever-fertile career: at last count at least 26 CDs, 19 movie roles, and television appearances galore, during which he can always be counted on to be charming and humourous.

Once, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, I saw him sing a single song like a dozen of his favourite performers, from Mel Torme to Judy Garland, effortlessly morphing between them, which was merely a glimpse into the breadth of his talent. And yet for all the inane videos of guys getting kicked in the nads and Perez Hilton talking and what-not do you think I can find that clip anywhere on YouTube? No!

(Not that I'm bitter...  Much.)
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Happy Birthday Your Imperial Highness

Princess Akishino (popularly known as Princess Kiko) is only the second commoner to marry into the Japanese Royal Family - the first being her mother-in-law the current Empress - which she did in June 1990. Princess Kiko is seen here holding her newborn son, Prince Hisahito - her third child (after Princesses Mako and Kako) and first son by Prince Akishino.

Hisahito, who turned 4 on September 6th, may one day become Emperor.

Far from solving a constitutional crisis over whether or not his older cousin Aiko could one day be Empress regnant, his birth seems to have bogged down the process required to clarify the issue.
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"Honey" by Moby

I don't know what Moby's on, but I'll take a kilo, and don't bother wrapping it. I'll do it here. Thanks.

Honey first appeared on his 1999 album Play, which was released during my now-infamous tenure at the record store; for six months my sole job was restocking the rack we kept it on, and I must have had to fill it twice a day throughout that whole time.

Today he's blowing out 45 fairly-traded artisanal candles on a cruelty-free carob and organic mulch cake.
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Who Killed Salvador Allende?

The junta headed by Augusto Pinochet was as disingenuous about how Salvador Allende died - 'no, honestly, he killed himself with the AK-47 given to him by Castro' - as it was about any of the millions of Chileans it killed... That's the funny thing about fascist regimes; even when they might be telling the truth it's like they're lying.

Nowadays it's generally accepted that Salvador Allende committed suicide rather than be captured by troops loyal to Pinochet during a coup on this day in 1973; during the days of tyranny that followed, though, the propaganda that he'd died fighting gave much aid and comfort to his supporters.
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Happy Birthday Your Majesty

One thing you could never say about Queen Paola of The Belgians is that she hogs the spotlight.

This, for instance, is the best current picture of her available, shown full sized; it's a few years old. Her website is the the nadir of Belgian abysmalism, and despite seven decades in Europe's exalted class, little is known of her, save her good works and still-extraordinary beauty. Good enough for me!
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"United We Stand" by Lola Falana and The Muppets

It's a curiously appropriate sentiment for this of all days; whatever political or religious tyranny we might face - now or in the future - we'd do best to face it together. Birthday wishes go out today to Lola Falana, who provided The Muppet Show's Episode 411 with this stirring moment, first aired in November 1979.

Falana got her big break at famed nightspot Small's Paradise in Harlem, where she was mentored by jazz great Dinah Washington; she went on to become the Queen of Las Vegas - at one time she was the highest paid cabaret star in the world - after getting her big break on Broadway from Sammy Davis Jr., who cast her in the 1964 musical Golden Boy.

She was ubiquitous in the Seventies, but through the Eighties and Nineties kept a much lower profile during an ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis beginning in 1987; on September 10th, 2001, she claims to have heard a voice, which told her: 'Today is the last day things will be as they are. Tomorrow nothing will be the same again.'

The following day, of course, the 9-11 Attacks did indeed change everything - and on her 59th birthday*at that! Already a born-again Catholic, she claims the divine revelation motivated her to carry out her charitable works on behalf of the orphaned children of Sub-Saharan Africa via the Lambs of God Ministry she founded.

*Lola Falana was born on this day in 1942.
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Lest We Forget: Father Mychal Judge

The most enduring story for me from that terrible day - September 11th, 2001 - is that of Father Mychal Judge, a Franciscan priest and chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, who again and again went into burning, collapsing buildings to deliver Last Rites to the men who were dying in them. On his final trip - into the lobby of the North Tower - he was struck by falling mortar and killed.

He is officially the first victim of the attacks, although many thousands had already died by the time he fell; the image of his body being recovered is already known as the 'American Pieta'. On that day a man may have died, but a legend was born...

Despite the harrowing events of that day, it was on September 12th that all Hell really broke loose. That's when it was revealed that Father Judge was gay. The very idea that a gay man could be heroic sent the usual suspects - the Catholic Church, the Republican Party, and the fascists of the allegedly liberal mainstream media - into their usual tizzy, and the 24-hour news cycle sent those tizzies into overdrive.

Earlier calls for Judge's canonization ceased upon that revelation, but whether the Church chooses to honour Saint Mychal Judge or not, both people who knew him and people who only knew of him continue to honour the memory of a man who died in the line of duty, a man whose Boss loves him, no matter what Vatican management says...
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Pop History Moment: The 9-11 Attacks

Over the years it seems like I've read every conceivable account of what happened on that day... I've slogged through the official account and seen news footage of a bewildering variety, watched Fahrenheit 9-11, Zeitgeist, the Movie, and others of its ilk, heard crackpots from both the left and the right expound on what they think really happened. All I can think is that I don't know what to think. Which, in the long term, may be the only thing to think - especially if it causes the mind to stay open...

Inasmuch as they claim to hold them in contempt, conspiracy theorists of all kinds seem to ascribe virtually supernatural powers to those they feel are responsible for killing more than 3000 people in four attacks on a single, sunny morning on this day in 2001. Either someone planted enough bombs in both towers of the World Trade Center to bring them both down, despite the fact that not one of what must be hundreds of employees - engineers, security guards, cleaning staff - over many weeks witnessed any such thing being done; or else the planes were struck by rockets timed to hit them immediately prior to impact, yet no one seems to know who these sharpshooters are, or where their perch was. The Pentagon was damaged by a cruise missile, or by a plane that wasn't a commercial airliner, yet in neither instance can its loss be otherwise accounted for. Republicans perpetrated the attacks in order to support an already burgeoning military/industrial complex, yet in all these years not one of them got wasted on Scotch at lunch and started bragging about his part in it, in that blowhard way they have about them.

And on and on it goes, conspiracies so intricate, so involved, that it would take the collusion of literally thousands of super-intelligent, highly talented people to accomplish them. Yet every time I've ever tried to plan a surprise party with three friends, invariably one of them spills the beans beforehand. It seems unlikely that Port Authority security - not to mention that of Logan and Reagan airports - could be so thoroughly infiltrated by al-Qaeda that they were all willing to die to do it.

Whomever it was who unleashed Hell on that clear, bright morning, has likely gotten away with it. Anyway, the events of history cannot be undone; only their aftermath can be dealt with. That former Presidential candidate and then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani moved the offices of his anti-terrorism unit into the World Trade Center after it had been the victim of a previous attack may have cost him the nomination; the fact that he also made sure the Fire Department's radios didn't work definitely bit him on the ass during his campaign. His mayoralty worked double time to create a climate of fear and mistrust between minority communities both before and afterwards.

The truth - actual facts - aren't subject to scrutiny as much as interpretation. Three planes flew into three buildings, a fourth crashed in a field; that is what happened. Why it happened, or who did it, or why they did it... Even if the whole truth came out most people wouldn't believe it anyway. In the end, we all believe what we need to believe, making the 9-11 Attacks the ideal event for our cynical, skeptical times.
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"Wind Beneath My Wings" by Bette Midler

Like many seemingly quintessential New Yorkers, Bette Midler was a transplant; shortly after her arrival there from Hawai'i in 1965 she said she felt like she was home - despite missing her family in Honolulu, of course. The city, she says, gave her everything; she was already heavily engaged in giving back, through her charity New York Restoration Project (which she founded in 1995), when the city was attacked on this day in 2001.

Wind Beneath My Wings already had poignance when it was released in 1989, on the soundtrack to the movie Beaches; 12 days after the attacks she gave it even more by performing it live from Yankee Stadium during a televised memorial.
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POPnews: September 11th

[The Hope Diamond, currently housed in the Smithsonian Institution's
Natural History Museum, has had a long and storied history; it's
so long, in fact, that some of the stories about it are even true!]

9 CE - The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ended (three days after it began, on September 9th) with a victory by the Germanic armies of Arminius over three Roman legions commanded by Publius Quinctilius Varus; as a result the northern border of the Roman Empire would be set at the Rhine river for the next four centuries.

1185 - Isaac II Angelus killed Stephanus Hagiochristophorites and then appealed to the people, resulting in the revolt that deposed Andronicus I Comnenus and placed Isaac on the throne of the Byzantine Empire.

1297 - William Wallace defeated English forces led by the Earl of Surrey and Hugh de Cressingham at the Battle of Stirling Bridge; work on a monument to Wallace would be completed on this day in 1869.

1541 - Michimalonco led a band of Mapuche warriors in the destruction of Santiago, Chile; defense of the village was left to the conquistadora Inés de Suárez, as her lover Pedro de Valdivia was away. The skirmish was an early engagement in the Arauco War, which was not settled until 1881 by a process known as the Pacification of the Araucania.

1609 - English sailor Henry Hudson entered the mouth of Upper New York Bay, landing on the island of Manhattan in order to take on provisions before sailing up the river that would one day be named after him - the Hudson River - on behalf of his employer, the Dutch East India Company.

1649 - The Siege of Drogheda ended when Oliver Cromwell's English Parliamentarian troops took the Irish town and executed its garrison.

1789 - Alexander Hamilton was appointed first US Secretary of the Treasury by President George Washington.

1792 - The Hope Diamond was stolen along with the other Crown Jewels of France when six men broke into the house where they were stored.

1921 -Silent film star Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle was arrested for raping Virginia Rappe on September 5th; she died three days later, some said as a result of injuries arising from that rape. Despite three subsequent acquittals for his involvement in the crime, the old maxim 'where there's smoke there's fire' killed Arbuckle's career as surely as someone had killed Rappe...

1940 - Buckingham Palace was damaged by Nazi bombs during the Blitz, the first of seven such attacks during World War II on the London home of King George VI, prompting the Queen* to famously state '....now the palace has been bombed, I feel now that I can look at the people of the East End straight in the eye'.

*Subsequently the Queen Mother.

1941 - Construction began on the Pentagon with a groundbreaking ceremony attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; more ground would be broken there 60 years later to the day when, in 2001, 'American Airlines Flight 77' crashed into it.

1956 - People to People International was founded by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1961 - The World Wildlife Fund was formed in Morges, Switzerland, a suburb of Lausanne; it was the brainchild of Julian Huxley and Max Nicholson.

1970 - The Ford Pinto was introduced.

1972 - Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) began regular service in San Francisco.

1973 - A coup in Chile orchestrated by General Augusto Pinochet toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.

1992 - Hurricane Iniki devastated Hawai'i, killing 6 people and causing $1.8 billion in damages.

1994 - Frank Eugene Corder stole a Cessna plane shortly before midnight, intending to crash it into the White House...

1997 - NASA's Mars Global Surveyor reached Mars - technically the landing was called an 'orbital insertion', which is dirty talk for sci-fi fans.
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Surreal. Shocking. Schiaparelli!

On a bookshelf at the Pop Culture Institute is a bright pink book.

The bright pink book is entitled Shocking Life, and it is the memoirs of Elsa Schiaparelli, one of the foremost fashion designers of the 20th Century - indeed, of all time, since it's unlikely her kind will ever occur again, though she has spawned imitators (all of whom I'm far too discreet to name).

Inasmuch as Chanel shocked the world by dressing women unfettered by corsetry and draped suggestively in jersey, Schiaparelli would shock the world by dressing women in trompe-l'oeil bows and animal prints and hats designed to look like shoes. The products of her fertile mind still have the power to shock today.

Born on this day in 1890, Elsa Schiaparelli died in November 1973, having deeply unsettled the fashion establishment of Paris. Good for her, I say!
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"Cruel Summer" by Bananarama

Birthday wishes go out today to Siobhan Fahey, founding member - along with lifelong friends Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin - of the highly successful trio Bananarama; Fahey later went on to even more fame as part of Shakespears Sister alongside uber-cool Marcella Detroit, and even hit the tabloids when she married (and then later divorced) Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame in the years between 1987 and 1996.

Cruel Summer was originally released as part of their self-titled second album in 1983, but failed to ignite until it was included on the soundtrack of the 1984 film The Karate Kid. Apparently, the video is a parody of both The Dukes of Hazzard and Knight Rider.
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"Orchard" by Hilda Doolittle

Saw the first pear

as it fell --

the honey-seeking, golden-banded,

the yellow swarm

was not more fleet than I,

(spare us from loveliness)

and I fell prostrate

crying:

you have flayed us

with your blossoms,

spare us the beauty

of fruit-trees.

The honey-seeking

paused not,

the air thundered their song,

and I alone was prostrate.

O rough hewn

god of the orchard,

I bring you an offering --

do you, alone unbeautiful,

son of the god,

spare us from loveliness:

these fallen hazel-nuts,

stripped late of their green sheaths,

grapes, red-purple,

their berries

dripping with wine,

pomegranates already broken,

and shrunken figs

and quinces untouched,

I bring you as offering.

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In Memoriam: Hilda Doolittle

To anyone who's ever been made to sit through endless recitations of lyric poetry and thought they might die from it, Hilda Doolittle - who was born on this day in 1886 - will seem like nothing less than a saviour...

Doolittle was one of the first Imagist poets, dispensing with complicated metre and unnecessary verbiage in her work, favouring instead vividly wrought, passionately expressed, but most importantly short poems. Which is not to say she disdained the classics; indeed, much of her work was derived from ancient Greek writing, including Sappho, whose work is entirely lyric.

A notable bohemian, Doolittle (who published extensively as H.D.), had romantic entanglements with both men and women. The most notable of these are Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington, two notable Imagist poets, as well as the novelist Bryher.

While such behaviour may have marginalized her among her contemporaries, in the more enlightened times that followed her September 1961 death H.D.'s work was rediscovered and her reputation has now been entirely rehabilitated.
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"China In Your Hand" by T'Pau

Happy Birthday to Carol Decker - whose name I only learned when I first posted this - despite the fact that I've loved the song China In Your Hand ever since it was released in October 1987.

First appearing on T'Pau's album Bridge of Spies, the song is actually about the novel Frankenstein and its author Mary Shelley, something else I learned from posting this. I did know, however, that the band was named after a character on Star Trek, so I'm not a total moron - just a geek. At the rate I'm going I'll be the least moronic geek in history!
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Pop History Moment: An Empress Is Slain

If Luigi Lucheni expected to further the cause of anarchism by killing the much-loved Empress of Austria on this day in 1898 he did not do so. He did, however, succeed in doing pretty much the exact opposite. Killing the 60-year-old Empress exponentially increased her legend; ninety years after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the woman known as Sisi lives on in film, music, and novels and is as popular today as she ever was. Even now she is often compared to Princess Diana for her sparkling personality, fashion sense, and for her compassion toward the downtrodden...

Lucheni - known in anarchist circles as 'the stupid one' for his inability to grasp even simple concepts of anarchism - had set out to prove his support for the cause by killing a royal, in this case the Duc d'Orleans. When a change in the Duke's plans meant he couldn't be got, he went for the Empress, whom he knew to be poorly guarded, instead.

On a promenade beside Lake Geneva, as the Empress and her lady-in-waiting Countess Sztaray were boarding a boat for Montreux, Lucheni stabbed her in the heart with a needle file. She fell, but unaware that she was hurt, boarded the boat anyway; it was there that the extent of her injuries were ascertained. Though her corset stays slowed the bleeding, she was fatally injured, and died shortly thereafter. Her last words were said to be 'What happened to me?'

Her Imperial and Royal Majesty is buried alongside her illustrious Hapsburg ancestors in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.

Lucheni, 25, admitted his crimes in court, and was sentenced to life in prison; while there he wrote his memoirs, which were later confiscated by guards and have since been lost. In October 1910 he was found hanging from his belt in his jail cell, and his death was ruled a suicide.
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POPnews: September 10th

[If this photo of Mike the Headless Chicken with his executioner-exploiter Lloyd Olsen doesn't turn you into a vegetarian, nothing will; the story behind the picture - literally, click on the picture, it's back there - is too crazy not to be true.]

506 CE - The bishops of Visigothic Gaul met at the Council of Agde under the stewardship of Caesarius of Arles to deal with 'ecclesiastical discipline' - which sounds way kinkier than it is.

1167 - Empress Matilda - daughter of England's King Henry I, widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, wife of Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, mother of another English King (Henry II), and would-be Queen-regnant of England herself, whose abortive attempts to claim her father's throne from her cousin King Stephen led to a civil war in England called The Anarchy - died.

1419 - John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, was assassinated by adherents of the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France; turns out being fearless isn't so great for your health after all.

1547 - The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh - the last full scale military confrontation between England and Scotland - resulted in a decisive victory for the forces of Edward VI, commanded by the Duke of Somerset, over those of Scotland's Earl of Arran.

1608 - John Smith was elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia.

1823 - Simón Bolívar was named President of Peru.

1846 - Elias Howe was granted a patent for the sewing machine.

1858 - George Mary Searle discovered the asteroid 55 Pandora; however, it's not the largest object in our galaxy named Pandora, not by a long shot. There's a moon of Saturn named Pandora, and then there's this...

1897 - During the so-called Lattimer Massacre a sheriff's posse killed twenty unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania.

1919 - The Republic of Austria and the Allies of World War I signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which recognized the independence of the former Austro-Hungarian possessions of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs.

1945 - Mike the Headless Chicken was decapitated; he survived for another 18 months by being fed with an eyedropper via his neck before eventually choking to death at a motel in Phoenix.

1961 - At the Italian Grand Prix a crash caused the death of German driver Wolfgang von Trips and 15 spectators, who joined him when his Ferrari crashed into Jim Clark's Lotus.

1967 - Gibraltar voted to remain a British holding rather than join Spain.

1974 - Portugal recognized the independence of Guinea-Bissau, which had been declared in September 1973.

1977 - Hamida Djandoubi was the last person in France to be executed by the guillotine. [Insert tasteless Mike the Headless Chicken joke here.]

2000 - The musical Cats closed on Broadway; they've been trying to get that smell out of the Winter Garden Theatre ever since.

2001 - Ignorance was bliss.

2003 - Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was fatally stabbed while shopping outside the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in Stockholm by a man later identified as Mijailo Mijailović; she died the following day.

2008 - The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in the history of mankind, was powered up in Geneva, although it did not bring about the end of the universe as some nutjobs - the same ones who were to blame for all that Y2K mishegas, I'll bet - had feared.
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