"Joe Hill" by Joan Baez

For once I've decided to post a song not in commemoration of the singer's birthday but the subject of their song; here then is Joan Baez performing one of her classics, Joe Hill, in honour of the legendary labour leader, who was born on this day in 1879.

The historical Joe Hill died in November 1915, wrongly executed by the State of Utah for the murder of Salt Lake City butcher John G. Morrison and his son Arling - despite the fact that several eyewitnesses claimed Hill wasn't one of the two masked men who committed the crime.

The case was a cause célèbre in the days before a media circus might have unearthed the truth (or at least created reasonable doubt). Americans as diverse as President Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller - and many others around the world as well - tried in vain to appeal to Utah governor William Spry for clemency. In the end, Joe Hill faced the firing squad; it has been said that he refused to assert his water-tight alibi (that he'd been in bed with a married woman at the time of the shootings) to save her honour and possibly her life as well.

It was around 1930 that Alfred Hayes turned Joe Hill's story into a poem, and 1936 when Earl Robinson turned that poem into a song. In the years since it's been performed by such artists as Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, although Joan Baez's performance of it at Woodstock in August 1969 remains the gold standard. The version in the above video is mostly faithful to that earlier one - she tweaked a couple of the lyrics, but the arrangement is identical - and was recorded at a concert in aid of anti-war group Operation Ceasefire in September 2005.
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Happy Birthday Joy Behar

Once upon a time, Joy Behar was the resident loud-mouthed liberal on The View, the go-to gal when it came to controversy. Her clashes with Star Jones are legendary not least of all for their apparent civility; though they clearly didn't like each other, their conflicts never were as personal as those to come...

Enter: Rosie O'Donnell.

From the first it appeared that O'Donnell would usurp Behar's position on the show, but I doubt Behar minded; many times when Rosie was spouting off, Behar was leaning back, arms crossed across her chest, a very satisfied smile on her face. This is clearly because Behar is a team player; she was likely glad to have someone else draw fire for awhile.

Not that Behar managed to remain entirely unscathed in this era. Her frequent tangles with the Catholic Church (in which she was raised) have made her as much a hero around the Pop Culture Institute as they have a villain at the New York Archdiocese.

As O'Donnell's differences with fellow panellist Elisabeth Hasselbeck descended into frankly petty name-calling and extreme animosity on both sides, it became obvious that Behar was prepared for her re-ascendancy.

Exit: Rosie O'Donnell, and now not only is Joy Behar the only original member of the panel, aside from Barbara Walters (who doesn't appear daily anyway) she even has her own show; all hail the true Queen of Chat... Long may she kvetch!
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"Jack and Diane" by John "Cougar" Mellencamp

It was on this day in 2007 - John Mellencamp's birthday - I first posted the video he made to accompany a new song he'd written called Jena, which appears on his 20th album, 2008's Life, Death, Love and Freedom; the song decried a particularly loathsome example of racism being committed by high school students - known as the Jena Six - in the Louisiana town of that name. Both the song and its video perfectly encapsulate those qualities which have made Mellencamp the social conscience of the American heartland.

The following year to mark the occasion I decided to go back a quarter of a century, back to what I had always taken to be the beginning of his incredible career, to the first song of his I ever heard, anyway, Jack and Diane. Although it was the second single - I believe Hurts So Good was actually released later in Canada - both of these (plus a third, Hand To Hold On To) were all issued from his 1982 album American Fool. Unbelievably, American Fool was the sixth album from the man then known as John Cougar, whose first album was the no longer in print Chestnut Street Incident from 1976.

My awareness of the pop charts dates from about this time; although I'd always been aware of music through myriad sources, August 1982 was the first month I found myself living in a city with a Top 40 radio station. As a result, just about every song I heard for the next four years is indelibly etched onto my brain, seeing as I spent every spare moment I could in that intense period with a transistor radio* at my side. Throughout that time Jack and Diane was played extensively.

The song, of course, is about the novelty of youth - 'hold on to sixteen as long as you can' it exhorts - and describes its title characters looking back at their halcyon youth through a bittersweet haze of present-day apathy and regret over missed opportunities.

Now, of course, it's played on the Oldies station or - just as frequently - on my iPod; whenever it comes on I'll stop what I'm doing for a minute and, if I close my eyes, I'll just be able to see and feel and taste that time as surely as if I were still there. That's when I'll make a wish... Of course, my eyes will open and I'll still be here, not 12 years old again with the brain of a 38-year-old determined to relive it all without the mistakes I made the first time around. For just a second I'll be disappointed, until it occurs to me that without all those mistakes I wouldn't be me, and that if I did it all again I'd probably just make different (possibly worse) ones.

Still, it's nice to have that feeling of unlimited possibility back, if only for a moment...

*You see, kids, in the bad old days (circa 1982) we didn't have MP3 players, we had transistor radios, which were about the size of an old-school Game Boy; back then if we wanted to steal music we recorded it off the radio - or made cassettes from our friends' records - but the Walkman was still a couple of years off, and CDs weren't widely available for some years even after that.
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The Life and Times of Desmond Tutu

Born on this day in 1931 in the Transvaal, Desmond Tutu moved with his family to Johannesburg in 1943; although as a child he originally wanted to be a doctor, he couldn't afford the tuition, so became a teacher instead (like his father). He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1960, and between 1962 and 1966 earned both his BA and MA in Theology at London's King's College.

Tutu first rose to prominence in the 1970s when his was among the first of the chorus of voices opposed to South Africa's policy of apartheid to be recognized internationally; as bishop of Lesotho during the Soweto Riots - which event pop culture enthusiasts may recognize from Richard Attenborough's film Cry Freedom - he was instrumental in helping black South Africans turn their destructive rage into constructive activism.

Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his efforts; unbeknownst to everyone except him, he wasn't done yet, not by a long way.

In 1986 he became the first African (as opposed to Afrikaan) to head the Anglican Church in South Africa, a post which he held for a decade. In that time apartheid was abolished and majority rule returned to South Africa; in 1995 he was made chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to avoid the usual pitfall of vengeance and reprisal that generally accompanies regime change.

Despite being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, Desmond Tutu has continued to work tirelessly on behalf of the oppressed, which work is necessarily informed by his spirituality. His translation of Christian doctrine is clear, but bears repeating:

"Jesus did not say, 'If I be lifted up I will draw some." Jesus said, 'If I be lifted up I will draw all; all, all, all, all. Black, white, yellow, rich, poor, clever, not so clever, beautiful, not so beautiful. It's one of the most radical things. All, all, all, all, all, all, all, all. All belong. Gay, lesbian, so-called straight. All, all are meant to be held in this incredible embrace that will not let us go. All."

And so say all of us... Amen.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Edgar Allen Poe

For all the spooky and macabre inventions of his imagination, I doubt even Edgar Allen Poe could write a mystery as gripping as that of his own death...

Poe had been found, incoherent and babbling, in a Baltimore gutter just four days earlier by an acquaintance of his, the printer Joseph W. Walker; at that point Poe had been missing for a week, having last been seen in Richmond, Virginia, as he left to return home to New York City on September 27th.

When he was found, Poe was bloated, unclean, and not wearing his own clothes - none of which were in character for the normally fastidious author.

Walker took Poe to Washington College Hospital in Baltimore where he died on this day in 1849, never again regaining enough lucidity to explain how he'd gotten into such a sorry state.

Theories as to what had befallen him ranged from attempted suicide gone wrong, attempted murder gone wrong, cholera, rabies, even syphilis; the most credible one, though, points to Poe's having been a victim of cooping. Not helping in the matter was the man who claimed to be Poe's literary executor, Rufus Wilmot Griswold; they were actually bitter rivals.

In the years that followed Griswold did nothing to clear up the mystery, but instead defamed Poe's memory to all who would listen, beginning with a scurrilous obituary - widely reprinted - written under the pseudonym 'Ludwig'; yet even one of Griswold's friends described him as 'one of the most irritiable and vindictive men I ever met.' We may safely add plagiarist as well, since Ludwig's depiction of Poe is lifted from a description of a villain by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Far from destroying Poe's reputation, Griswold's character assassinations made Poe more popular than ever, likely because it conformed to the public prejudice about what sort of person might write such works as Poe's; Griswold himself died in obscurity eight years later, while Poe's works have been out of favour 'nevermore'.
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POPnews - October 7th

[With Arnold Schwarzeneggar on the right and Gray Davis on the left - although the would-be Governator actually ran against fellow Republican State Senator Tom McClintock, Davis' Lieutenant-Governor Cruz Bustamante, blogger Arianna Huffington, former child star Gary Coleman and porn star Mary Carey as well as about 130 others - the 2003 Recall election was one of the strangest on record. Even for California.]
336 CE - Pope Mark died, leaving the papacy vacant; his successor, Julius I, would not be elected until February 337 CE.

1542 - Explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovered Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California.

1769 - Captain James Cook arrived in New Zealand during his famed First Voyage, heading only the second European expedition to the islands, more than a century after Abel Tasman; while in the vicinity Cook mapped the entire coastline, making only minor errors.

1840 - Willem II became King of the Netherlands when, following the loss of territory brought on by the Belgian revolution and the scandal of his desire to marry the Catholic Belgian Henrietta d'Oultremont, his father Willem I abdicated.

1868 - Cornell University was inaugurated in Ithaca, New York.

1886 - Spain abolished slavery in Cuba.

1919 - Dutch airline KLM was founded.

1944 - An uprising at Birkenau concentration camp resulted in the destruction of one of its crematoria; it had been coordinated with an Allied air strike and a revolt of Polish civilians at Auschwitz.

1949 - The German Democratic Republic - better known as East Germany - was created.

1950 - Tibet was annexed by China, an illegal occupation which persists to this day.

1952 - American Bandstand debuted on Philadelphia's WFIL-TV (now WPVI-TV); the show was originally called Bandstand, and its first host was Bob Horn.

1955 - Allen Ginsberg gave his first public reading of Howl at San Francisco's Six Gallery.

1982 - Cameron Mackintosh's musical Cats opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre where it ran for 7,485 performances before closing on September 10th, 2000.

1985 - The cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked by four Palestinian terrorists, in an action coordinated by Abu Abbas; during their three-day occupation of the vessel they shot passenger Leon Klinghoffer - a wheelchair-bound stroke victim who was nearly 70 - and threw him overboard to die simply because he was Jewish.

1996 - Fox News Channel was launched.

1998 - Matthew Shepard was found staked to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, having been robbed and savagely beaten by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney simply because he was gay.

2001 - The US and the UK invaded Afghanistan.

2002 - The US government, with the knowledge and cooperation of the RCMP, ordered Syrian-born Canadian citizen Maher Arar deported to Syria knowing he was not a terrorist and that he'd be tortured there; not only was he repeatedly refused counsel in American custody, when he was returned to Syria he was indeed tortured and held without charge for 10 months before being returned to Canada, at which time he proceeded to expose the War on Terror for the tyranny in liberty's clothing that it is. Both Canada and Syria have cleared him of all charges; the US won't.

2003 - Gray Davis was recalled as Governor of California, only to be replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The recall effort was the fifth in California history - efforts to recall governors Pat Brown, Ronald Reagan, Jerry Brown, and Pete Wilson had all failed - but only the first successful one in the Golden State; the only other successfully recalled governor in American history was North Dakota's Lynn Frazier in 1921.
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"Nightshift" by The Commodores

Birthday wishes go out to Thomas McClary, founding member and lead guitarist of The Commodores; members of the band met in 1968 while attending the Tuskegee Institute, and were signed by Motown in 1972 having already made a sensation opening for The Jackson 5. While the band is best known for its ballads - such as Easy and Three Times a Lady - they could also churn out the funk with material like Brick House.

The song Nightshift was the first hit The Commodores had after Lionel Richie left for a solo career, and is a tribute to Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye, two R&B legends who died in 1984. It was the title track of the band's 1985 album.
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Remembering... Bette Davis

After a stellar career as one of Hollywood's top stars, Bette Davis found herself in the same predicament many talented actresses before her had done: middle-aged and unemployable...

Unwilling (or unable) to accept such laissez-faire sexism lying down, Bette Davis took whatever work was on offer; she made horror films, which traded on her past fame and camp appeal, she did television when many film actresses of her generation felt it was beneath them, and she toured the world in stage shows, filling arenas and nightclubs alike with her considerable charisma.

In all of these she was an unqualified success; then the triumphs that had sustained her turned to tragedies, seemingly overnight.

Riding high on the success of Kim Carnes' 1981 pop hit Bette Davis Eyes, and having just filmed the pilot for Hotel in 1983 (which promised to be a big hit*) she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and subsequently quit the show. Having survived a mastectomy, weeks later Davis suffered four strokes, which left her partially paralysed. During her recovery her loathsome born-again daughter published a bookful of lies about her called My Mother's Keeper; despite having previously praised her mother to the heavens, the heavens now called on her to heap scorn instead, and did she ever.

Davis' friends and foes alike leapt to her defense, to little avail; the book was a runaway bestseller.

Yet it took more than ill-health and literary matricide to keep down someone as indomitable as Bette Davis. She did her last good movie - The Whales of August - in 1987, and made numerous television appearances to promote it, including Late Night With David Letterman, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, and Donahue.

On this day in 1989, though, death finally caught Bette Davis; having gone abroad to accept a lifetime achievement award from a film festival in Spain, she fell ill, and died at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in France. She was 81.

Davis is interred at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles, alongside her mother and sister; her epitaph reads, simply:

She did it the hard way.
On a personal note: that day was a cold and rainy one in Ottawa, where I was living at the time. I had gone out, and when I got home my roommate Matthew gave me the news. We went over to our friend Theresa's house and watched What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - which I'd never seen before - in her honour. Even now, I can't watch that film without remembering that day, and its jumble of emotions - sadness at losing an icon, the camaraderie of friendship in difficult times, not to mention the shock at and delight in what is simply a bravura performance.

^{* It was. She was replaced by another Hollywood legend, Anne Baxter, and the show ran for 5 years, making stars of Connie Sellecca and James Brolin.
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Happy Birthday Ioan Gruffudd

Although his first international movie role was as John Gray, the real-life lover of Oscar Wilde opposite Stephen Fry in the film Wilde, it was as the fictional character Horatio Hornblower that I - along with millions of others - first got to know Ioan Gruffudd.

Then, of course, there's the matter of The Fantastic Four, in whose two recent films he played Mister Fantastic. Hm... Sounds like typecasting to me... He's also played Lancelot opposite Clive Owen and Keira Knightley in King Arthur (2004) and real-life abolitionist William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace (2006).

Nevertheless, it was the superhero role that launched his career into another level altogether. Gruffudd has expressed a keen interest in playing Horatio Hornblower as he was written, from callow midshipman to elderly Admiral, and the fame engendered by playing a comic book character might just allow him that opportunity.

In addition to acting, Gruffudd is an adept oboist, and in his native land of Wales in 2003 he was accepted into the Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain as a Bard at the highest level.
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"My Boy Lollipop" by Millie Small

Born on this day in 1946, Jamaican songstress Millie Small had a big hit in 1964 with My Boy Lollipop, which she recorded in London; the song had originally been a minor hit by Barbie Gaye.

Despite its Motown-esque sound, Small's version is considered the first internationally successful ska song. Accompanying her on guitar is Ernest Ranglin, with Jon Hiseman on drums; there remains, however, some question as to who is performing the harmonica solo... Jimmy Powell always maintained it was him, while the preponderance of opinion seems to favour Pete Hogman of The Five Dimensions. There's even a rumour that a still-unknown Rod Stewart deserves the credit.
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Remembering... Prince Claus of the Netherlands

Not many people can claim there were more protestors than revellers at their wedding, but that was certainly the case when, in March 1966, German-born Claus von Amsberg married Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands; with the Second World War still fresh in many memories, the idea that the future Queen would marry a German national didn't sit well with the normally tolerant Dutch population, and especially rankled the Dutch group Provo.

Born on this day in 1926, von Amsberg was conscripted by the Wehrmacht and served with the 90th Panzergrenadier Division in 1945 but was taken prisoner by the US before he could take place in any fighting; following the war, he served in the Germany's diplomatic corps, posted in the Dominican Republic and Côte d'Ivoire before returning to Bonn - then the West German capital.

The future royal couple met at the wedding night party of Princess Tatjana of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg and Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse in the summer of 1964, and were soon engaged. Despite their initial reticence, the more the Dutch got to know Claus the more they liked him. His work on behalf of the developing world was highly respected everywhere, but to those who met him his best quality was his approachability, his utter lack of snobbishness.

Before his death on this day in 2002 Prince Claus was said to be the most popular member of the House of Orange-Nassau, having come a long way in a short time to heal wounds so grave some said they would never heal...
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In Memoriam: Carole Lombard

Though her beauty alone could have made her a leading lady, it was her vivacity and sense of humour that made her not only one of the great leading ladies of the 1930s but one of that era's finest comediennes as well.



Born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on this day in 1908, Carole Lombard first hit the silver screen in 1921; by 1930 she was under contract to Paramount and on her way to making a string of smash-hit comedies, including Twentieth Century (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and To Be or Not to Be (1942), which was released posthumously.

As she'd bewitched the movie-going public, so too did she captivate two of Hollywood's leading men: William Powell - whom she married in 1931 and from whom she was amicably divorced in 1933 - and Clark Gable, then known as the King of Hollywood, to whom she was married from 1939 until her untimely death in January 1942.
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POPnews - October 6th

[Artists, who are essentially all pagans anyway, turned to Greco-Roman mythology - for example, the touching love story of Orpheus and Eurydice - for inspiration when those boring old Bible stories got... Well, old and boring. The resulting paradigm shift was known as the Renaissance, which would eventually produce works as diverse as an opera by Jacopo Peri and this painting, Orfeo y Euridice, by Peter Paul Rubens. And yes, I know most of the example I gave were of the Baroque period - cut me some slack! I ain't too hot on this longhair stuff yet...]

105 BCE - At the Battle of Arausio the Cimbri (under Boiorix) and Teutobod's Teutones inflicted a heavy defeat on a Roman army commanded by Gnaeus Mallius Maximus.

69 BCE - At the Battle of Tigranocerta the forces of the Roman Republic under Lucius Licinius Lucullus defeated the army of the Kingdom of Armenia led by King Tigranes the Great.

1600 - Jacopo Peri's Euridice had its debut at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence as part of the marriage celebrations of France's King Henri IV and Maria de Medici; although Euridice is considered to be the second opera ever written, it is the oldest one that survives to this day, its predecessor Dafne (by the same author) having been lost.

1762 - The Battle of Manila concluded, giving British commanders Brigadier-General William Draper and Rear-Admiral Samuel Cornish a decisive victory over Spain's Archbishop Manuel Rojo and Simón de Anda y Salazar, which resulted in the British occupation of Manila for the remainder of the Seven Years' War.

1789 - France's King Louis XVI returned to the capital from the Palace of Versailles after being confronted by the women of Paris the previous day.

1849 - The 13 Martyrs of Arad were executed following the Hungarian Revolution on orders of Austrian general Julius Freiherr von Haynau.

1854 - The Great Fire of Newcastle and Gateshead started shortly after midnight at a worsted factory owned by Wilson & Son, leading to 53 deaths and leaving hundreds injured.

1898 - The Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity was founded at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music.

1909 - The inaugural run of Vancouver's ambulance service resulted in a fatal collision with an American tourist and businessman from Ohio named C.F. Keiss in front of Fader's grocery store at the corner of Granville and Pender streets; Keiss thus became its first passenger, taking its first journey, which was to the morgue.  [READ MORE]

1927 - The film considered to be the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, opened to enthusiastic reviews and popular acclaim.

1945 - Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat were ejected from Wrigley Field during Game 4 of the 1945 World Series, leading to the so-called Curse of the Billy Goat.

1966 - LSD was declared illegal in the United States, the CIA having completed its own unethical studies of the drug on unwitting human subjects.

1973 - Egypt launched a coordinated attack against Israel to reclaim land lost in the Six Day War; whether you know it as the Ramadan War or the Yom Kippur War, it began at 2:05 pm on this day.

1976 - The Gang of Four were arrested on orders of Premier Hua Guofeng, bringing China's Cultural Revolution to an end.

1977 - The first prototype of the MiG-29, designated 9-01, made its maiden flight.

1979 - Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit the White House, which he did as the guest of US President Jimmy Carter.

1985 - PC Keith Blakelock was murdered as riots erupted in the Broadwater Farm suburb of London.

1995 - 51 Pegasi was discovered to be the first major star apart from the Sun to have a planet (and extrasolar planet) orbiting it.

2002 - Opus Dei founder Josemaría Escrivá was canonized.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Guy Pearce

English-born, Australian-raised Guy Pearce appeared on both Neighbours and Home and Away before bursting into the public eye in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, in which he was a little too convincing as angertwink Adam (aka Felicia JollyGoodFellow). Not that there's anything wrong with that.

His American career since has been hit-and-miss: L.A. Confidential - hit, The Time Machine - miss. Such is the way with Hollywood films, where hundreds of millions are spent on special effects, and screenplays are scribbled on napkins. Not that I'm bitter.

Pearce always has Australia to fall back on*; between his more high-profile appearances he returns home to make indie films and appear on stage.

*Even though I'm sure Australia would prefer he'd fall forward on them - I know I wouldn't mind!
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Pop History Moment: The October Crisis Begins

On this day in 1970 terrorists with the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross from his diplomatic home on Redpath Crescent in the Mount Royal neighbourhood of Montreal (shown at left). Their demands included the release of several of their fellow terrorists from jail and the reading of the FLQ Manifesto on television.

Although the FLQ had been founded in the early 1960s along Marxist lines their attacks, principally in the form of bombings, culminated in a February 1969 attack on the Montreal Stock Exchange which injured 27. Between 1963 and 1970 the FLQ were responsible for 200 violent actions including bombings, bank robberies, and kidnappings, resulting in 5 deaths, including a Quebec cabinet minister. They are also thought to be behind a series of riots at McGill University later that summer.

What followed the kidnapping of James Cross (shown, at right, in a photo staged by the FLQ; Cross actually spent most of his captivity wearing a hood) is known in Canadian history as the October Crisis, at the height of which Mayor Jean Drapeau of Montreal and Premier Robert Bourassa of Quebec asked Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to invoke the War Measures Act. This act gave the military extraordinary powers of arrest.

The name 'October Crisis' is something of a misnomer, as the situation wasn't entirely cleared up for years, although the last significant members of the FLQ were taken into custody at the end of December 1970, 24 days after James Cross was released unharmed.
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POPnews - October 5th

[Once the women of Paris' Third Estate arrived at Palace of Versailles they began to clamour for the queen, Marie Antoinette, to appear. She did appear, at first with her two children Marie-Thérèse and younger brother Louis-Charles, then later stood alone on a balcony with muskets and cannon pointed at her for ten minutes, until her husband agreed to move the Royal Family back to the Tuileries Palace. The queen's stoic demeanour throughout, it is said, likely prevented a far worse tragedy from occurring.]
610 CE - Byzantine Emperor Heraclius was crowned.

869 CE - The Fourth Council of Constantinople was convened to decide about what to do about Patriarch Photius of Constantinople.

1550 - Pedro de Valdivia founded the city of Concepción, Chile.

1789 - During the French Revolution Parisian women undertook a march on Versailles to confront King Louis XVI about his refusal to promulgate decrees on the abolition of feudalism, demand bread, and have the King and his entire court returned to Paris.

1877 - Chief Joseph surrendered his Nez Perce band to General Nelson A. Miles.

1886 - The South African city of Johannesburg was established after gold was discovered nearby; today it is Africa's only global city, and the richest metropolitan district in Africa.

1903 - Sir Samuel Griffith was appointed the first Chief Justice of Australia, and Sir Edmund Barton and Richard O'Connor were appointed as foundation justices.

1910 - Portugal abolished the monarchy of Manuel II and established the First Republic, which held until a coup in May 1926; during the period of chaos which followed, the Estado Novo and - after 1933 - the Ditadura Nacional were established under António de Oliveira Salazar.

1945 - A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators turned into a bloody riot at the gates of Warner Bros. studios on what came to be known as Hollywood Black Friday.

1947 - President Harry S Truman delivered the first televised national address from the White House, apparently.

1968 - A civil rights march in the Northern Ireland city of Londonderry ended in violence.

1969 - The first episode of the famous comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC.

1970 - PBS became a network.

1974 - The Guildford pub bombing, carried out by the IRA, left 5 dead and 65 injured.

1984 - Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.

1988 - The Chilean opposition coalition Concertación (center-left) defeated Augusto Pinochet in his re-election intentions.

1993 - On the final day of the Russian Constitutional Crisis, tanks bombarded Moscow's White House, a government building housing the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rallied outside.

1999 - West London's Ladbroke Grove rail crash killed 31 people.

2000 - Mass demonstrations in Belgrade - now called the Bulldozer Revolution - forced the resignation of Slobodan Milošević.
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John Cleese Remembers The Late Graham Chapman

This is John Cleese's eulogy for his colleague Dr. Graham Chapman, delivered in the Great Hall at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London; Chapman died on this day in 1989.

Graham Chapman - one of the founding members of Monty Python - was one of the first celebrities to come out, and as early as 1972 gave financial and moral support to the publication Gay News. Chapman was survived by his partner of 23 years, David Sherlock, and their son John Tomiczek.
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Remembering... Buster Keaton

Born into a family of vaudevillians on this day in 1895, Buster Keaton learned young how to take a fall; it was a skill that would serve him well.

Initially reluctant to enter the world of moving pictures, he nevertheless crafted some of the finest comedic moments ever witnessed on the silent screen.
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In Memoriam: Damon Runyon

It's a long way from Manhattan to Manhattan, especially when the former is in Kansas and the latter is in New York; it's even longer when, like Damon Runyon, you get there via Pueblo, Colorado - which means you've been going in the wrong direction altogether!

Arriving in New York City in 1910 gave Runyon unique access to a subculture that was then beginning to form on and around Broadway; comprised of equal parts theatrical types and thugs, he proceeded to memorialize his acquaintances as the most theatrical of thugs.

The greatest of these were eventually given immortality in a show called Guys and Dolls, first on the very street that had given them life in 1950, and then in a film version from 1955.

Alas, he never lived to see it, as he died in December 1946.

Runyon, born this day in 1884, was the very picture of a hard-bitten journalist from the era. He is credited with revolutionizing the coverage of baseball (for which he was even elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967), wrote the story of FDR's first inaugural in 1933 for the United Press himself, and is even said to have dubbed boxer James J. Braddock the Cinderella Man.
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Happy Birthday Jackie Collins

Whenever the topic of my 'guilty pleasures' comes up, the novels of Jackie Collins are inevitably at the top of a short list which also contains the music of Kid Rock, Three's Company, and fried Spam.

Now, I don't believe in guilt, so I don't feel guilty for occasionally reading one of her potboilers, but I think most of my friends would be shocked to discover that between reading five kilo biographies and litt-rich-ah* I will occasionally cleanse my palate with a book which is all about fun.

I'm not sure then if reading Jackie Collins is the guilty pleasure or shocking my friends; either way, thanks for all the fun Jackie!

^{* That is to say 'literature' spoken with a very snooty accent.}
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The Death of Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin gave rock and roll the blues, infusing the idiom with deeper rhythms and themes than it had previously known, and along the way gave the women who love to rock someone to look up to, artistically at least. When she succumbed to an unusually pure dose of heroin (on this day in 1970) she'd been on a drinking binge, having been unlucky in love for the last time. Arising out of the hippie counterculture of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, Janis Joplin was in every way the antithesis of the way the music industry wanted women to be. She was loud when women (even hippie women) were expected to be seen and not heard, she was sexually aggressive instead of passive, blunt-spoken and ballsy.

Yet as blues divas go, she was right on the money. Hard-drinking, hard-loving, and - tragically - short-lived... She died during the recording of her album Pearl, the day after recording Mercedes Benz in one take, the day before she was to have recorded the lyrics to Buried Alive in the Blues.
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POPnews - October 4th

[It took Gutzon Borglum and then his son Lincoln Borglum a total of 14 years to carve Mount Rushmore, during which time Jeff Daniels, Nick Nolte, Robin Williams, and Sam Waterston must have gotten pretty bored, judging by their facial expressions in the finished product.]
1209 - Otto IV was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Innocent III.

1363 - At the end of the Battle of Lake Poyang the Chinese rebel forces of Zhu Yuanzhang defeated those of his rival, Chen Youliang, in one of the largest naval battles in history.

1636 - The Swedish Army, led by Johan Banér, defeated those of Saxony and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Wittstock.

1777 - At the Battle of Germantown, a rag-tag militia under George Washington was repelled by the British soldiers (and Hessian mercenaries) of Sir William Howe.

1779 - The Fort Wilson Riot took place when an angry mob marched on the house of James Wilson, who barricaded himself inside with 35 of his colleagues.

1824 - Mexico enacted its new constitution, making it a republic.

1830 - Belgium gained its independence from The Netherlands.

1876 - Texas A&M University opened as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, becoming the state's first public institution of higher education.

1883 - The Orient Express made its initial run between Paris and Istanbul.

1910 - As a prelude to revolution, warships battered the royal palace in Lisbon, causing King Manuel II and his family to flee into exile in the United Kingdom; the following day Portugal's First Republic was declared with the writer Teófilo Braga as President.

1918 - An explosion killed more than 100 and destroyed the T.A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant in Sayreville, New Jersey; fires and explosions continued for three days, forcing massive evacuations and spreading ordnance over a wide area, pieces of which were still being found in 2007.

1927 - Gutzon Borglum began work on Mount Rushmore.

1931 - Chester Gould's iconic comic strip Dick Tracy first appeared.

1950 - Snoopy made his first appearance in Charles Schulz's iconic comic strip Peanuts two days after the strip debuted, although he wouldn't be named until November 10th.

1957 - Sputnik 1 - the first man-made object to orbit the Earth - was launched; it remained aloft for 22 days until its battery power was expended, after which it burnt up falling to Earth.

1965 - Paul VI became the first Pope to visit the US when he arrived in New York City.

1966 - Basutoland became independent from the United Kingdom, and was renamed Lesotho.

1967 - Omar Ali Saifuddin III of Brunei abdicated in favour of his son, His Majesty Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, who reigns to this day.

2004 - SpaceShipOne captured the Ansari X Prize.
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Pop History Moment: "The Mickey Mouse Club" Debuts

It was on this day in 1955 that The Mickey Mouse Club made its television debut on ABC; although the brainchild of Walt Disney, it was Bill Walsh who steered the series in its early years, assisted by Hal Adelquist.  Hosted by Jimmie Dodd (who also wrote the show's iconic theme song, Mickey Mouse March) the show would go on to feature dozens of talented teenagers as Mouseketeers, including Tommy Cole, Darlene Gillespie, Bobby Burgess, Doreen Tracey, Cubby O'Brien, Karen Pendleton, Lonnie Burr, Sharon Baird, and especially Annette Funicello.

In one form or another, the show would run until March 1996, and more than achieved its initial purpose - which was to raise funds for the building of Disneyland.

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"Take Your Mama" by Scissor Sisters

Although born in Arizona on this day in 1978, Jake Shears was brought up in Seattle; while attending Los Angeles' Occidental College but visiting Lexington, Kentucky, Shears was introduced to Scott Hoffman. Years later, in New York City, the two met again and formed Scissor Sisters.

Take Your Mama was the band's follow-up to its first single, a cover version of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb; both songs - along with Laura, Mary, and Filthy/Gorgeous - appeared on the band's eponymous debut album.
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Remembering... James Herriot

When I was a kid in the 70s, the work of James Herriot was everywhere. Whether in their original form or in compendium, those paperback books never failed to transport me to rural Yorkshire, to the time during and after World War II. They are at least partly responsible for the rampant Anglophilia infecting me to this day...

Born Alf Wight in Sunderland on this day in 1916, the man who became James Herriot was raised in Glasgow, before returning to England and establishing his veterinary practice in Thirsk. Wight wrote his first book, If They Could Only Talk, in 1969, and followed it with ten more before his death in February 1995. He used a pen name because he was still a practicing vet when he started writing them, and at that time vets were forbidden to advertise; apparently there was some concern at the time that writing books about his experiences would be breaking this rule.

To this day the works of James Herriot remain as heart-warming and wholesome as ever, their ongoing popularity a testament to the man who wrote them.
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Happy Birthday Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal's job - above and beyond that of writer - has always been making the same American establishment which spawned him uncomfortable; love him or hate him (often simultaneously), his assertive progressivism stands as a beacon in an age of retrogressive sentimentality such as ours...

For famously standing up to fascist windbag William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1968 (he was one of the first to challenge Buckley on his vitriolic homophobia) Vidal deserves every accolade; for revisiting American history with a clear eye he deserves every medal and honour his country can give him. Read as a series Burr (1973), 1876 (1976), Lincoln (1984), Empire (1987), Hollywood (1990), and The Golden Age (2000) comprise the most ambitious realization of American history in fiction ever attempted.

While his assertion that 'there are no homosexual people, only homosexual acts' hasn't won him any friends among the capital-g Gays, among post-gays he remains an icon. Whatever he may feel about his own relationships with women (including an affair with Anaïs Nin), he lived with Howard Austen from 1951 until Austen's death in 2005. Vidal only recently hit the news by suggesting that America was headed for a totalitarian regime; he was a few years late on that - given the attempts made by the Bush Administration to do that very thing - but as ever his insights got people talking.
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"Dirty, Low-Down and Bad" by Keb' Mo'

Blues musician Keb' Mo' (born Kevin Moore on this day in 1951) bears an eerie resemblance both visually and vocally to blues great Robert Johnson; in 1998 he played his hero in a documentary entitled Can't You Hear the Wind Howl? Like a lot of people, though, I first discovered him when he made an appearance on Touched By an Angel.

Keb' Mo's eponymous first album from 1994 yielded the song you see above; the three-time Grammy winner's eighth studio album, Suitcase, was released in 2006.  Meanwhile, 2009's Live and Mo' featured six live performances and 4 new studio recordings.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Clive Owen

When these birthday wishes were first posted on this day in 2007, expectations were running high at the Pop Culture Institute for the then-forthcoming Elizabeth: The Golden Age, starring Cate Blanchett as the ginger virgin/firebrand herself and birthday boy Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh. Those expectations were both met and exceeded by the film.

Whether playing roles from the past, present, or future, Clive Owen is obviously a man for all times.

Educated at RADA alongside the likes of Ralph Fiennes and Jane Horrocks, Owen burst into the public consciousness with a role as a soft-spoken hot guy in the film Croupier.

Further roles as soft-spoken hot guys followed: King Arthur, Gosford Park, and Closer; eager to demonstrate his range, he played a hot, soft-spoken guy in Sin City and Children of Men.

The best thing about him, I guess, is he's got such range...
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Impressions of A. Y. Jackson

As a founding member of the Group of Seven, A. Y. Jackson (born this day in 1882) is partially responsible for the introduction of Impressionism to the depiction of the vast Canadian wilderness, which until then had been thought too rugged to paint by the effete cultural elites of Southern Ontario.

Wounded at the Battle of Sanctuary Wood in June 1917 he turned to making a record of the Great War while recovering from his injuries. The above scene, entitled House of Ypres, was done in 1917.

Whether capturing scenes of Nature's beauty or the devastation caused by man, A. Y. Jackson surely ranks as one of the finest painters ever produced by Canada.
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"Let's Twist Again" by Chubby Checker

Born Ernest Evans on this day in 1941, Chubby Checker did yeoman service trying to teach white people to dance... Yet in many ways, he was a victim of his success; his smash hit The Twist - itself a cover version of the song originated by Hank Ballard - and its follow-up obscured the breadth of his talent.

At one time Chubby Checker even had five albums - not songs, albums! - in the Top 12 at once, a feat which has never been surpassed!
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In Memoriam: Eleanora Duse

Although famed as an actress, little remains of those stellar performances given by Eleanora Duse - born on this day in 1858 - save a few reminiscences in a scattering of memoirs. She toured the world, playing everywhere to ecstatic crowds, but died a few years before the various innovations of Mr. Edison might have captured some of her magic for posterity.

In July 1923, near the end of her life, Duse became the first woman featured on the cover of Time magazine, a photo of which is shown above.
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