In Memoriam: Melvin Purvis

The United States in the 1920s - before the era of big government - was a mostly lawless place; about all a criminal had to do to get away with any crime in those days was cross a state line, rendering most border towns dangerous in the extreme... Into this sad state of affairs stepped a young lawyer named Melvin Purvis (born this day in 1903) who was one of the first men to join the Bureau of Investigation before it was given more sweeping powers by President Franklin D. Roosevelt following his inauguration in 1933.

Although he only served in the FBI from 1927 to 1935, Purvis still holds the record for the most public enemies arrested or killed: Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger were all killed either by him or by agents serving him. It is rumoured that he left the FBI because J. Edgar Hoover was jealous of the attention he got, which Hoover thought should be either his or the Bureau's.

Since his suspicious death in February 1960 Purves has been played on film by Ben Johnson, Geoffrey Binney, Dale Robertson, Will Patton, Chuck Wagner, and most recently - in Michael Mann's 2009 film Public Enemies opposite Johnny Depp as John Dillinger - by Christian Bale.
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"Rosa Parks" by Outkast

Personally, I can think of no greater tribute to Rosa Parks than the utterly joyous Rosa Parks by OutKast, which originally appeared on their 1998 album Aquemini; alas, Parks herself wasn't quite so honoured by the homage, so what do I know? Whether the ensuing lawsuit over the song was the doing of Parks or whether she was put up to it by her advisers (who had some financial interest in the outcome, after all) will have to remain a mystery, though, as that knowledge died with her on this day in 2005.
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Remembering... Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks, the mother of the American civil rights movement, died on this day in 2005, nearly fifty years after refusing to give up her seat at the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

The ensuing Montgomery Bus Boycott polarized the nation, in much the same way the murder of Emmett Till did, demonstrating once and for all the evil inherent in 'race' prejudice. Said Parks of the incident:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

The seat Parks refused to give up was not a whites-only seat, but rather in the front row of the 'colored' section.

Within the five days between her arrest - for 'disorderly conduct' - and trial, the boycott was planned, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. got involved, and soon the entire story was front-page news, not the first time Southern bigotry made news around the world, and certainly not the last.

The legacy of the soft-spoken seamstress and her so-called disorderly conduct must never be forgotten, affecting (and effectively disordering) an endemic system of segregation which denied the fruits of the American Dream to untold millions of people simply due to the colour of their skin.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Queen Jane Seymour

Of all his six wives only the third - Jane Seymour - earned the sobriquet 'my only true Wife' from Henry VIII; her death is said to have left the King in mourning for the rest of his life...

Having served as lady-in-waiting to his previous two wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, she was betrothed to the King in May 1536, the day after Anne Boleyn was beheaded. They were married ten days later.

Proclaimed Queen on June 4th (but never formally crowned due an outbreak of the plague), she found herself pregnant early in 1537. In October 1537 she gave birth to a Prince, named Edward (later Edward VI) at Hampton Court Palace; three days later she participated in her son's christening, although ill. She died on this day in 1537 of complications related to puerperal fever.

Because she was female, the date of her birth was not recorded; it is thought, however, that she was 29 at the time of her death. She was buried at Windsor Castle, with her stepdaughter Princess Mary acting as chief mourner.
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"Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf

On what would have been Canadian-born drummer and Steppenwolf co-founder Jerry Edmonton's 64th birthday*, it's Magic Carpet Ride, arguably the band's biggest hit**. The first single from their 1968 album Steppenwolf the Second, and written by John Kay and Rushton Moreve, Magic Carpet Ride has been widely used by pop culture - mainly as a musical shortcut to establish either the trippier years of the late-60s or else an advanced state of buzz...

*He died in a car accident in November 1993.
**Fans of Born to Be Wild - which made it all the way to #2 - may beg to differ; Magic Carpet Ride stalled at #3.
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POPnews - October 24th

[Chartres Cathedral was dedicated in the presence of France's King Louis IX on this day in 1260, having seen a number of its predecessors on the site go up in smoke; this incarnation nearly became rubble itself at the hands of a mob during the French Revolution, only to be saved by its more courageous townsfolk.]
69 CE - At the Second Battle of Bedriacum forces under Antonius Primus - the commander of the Danube armies, loyal to Vespasian - defeated the forces of Emperor Vitellius.

1147 - After a siege of 4 months crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques reconquered Lisbon.

1260 - The Mamluk sultan of Egypt, Saif ad-Din Qutuz, was assassinated by Baibars, who then seized power for himself.

1590 - John White, governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returned to England via Plymouth after an unsuccessful search for the 'lost' colonists.

1648 - The Peace of Westphalia was signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War.

1857 - Sheffield F.C. - the world's oldest football club - was formed.

1861 - America's first transcontinental telegraph line was completed, rendering the Pony Express obsolete.

1901 - Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

1917 - The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, marking what is now generally called the Russian Revolution.

1926 - Harry Houdini made his final public appearance, at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit.

1929 - Black Thursday marked the initial crash of the New York Stock Exchange; Black Tuesday, five days later, finished the job.

1930 - A bloodless coup d'état in Brazil ousted Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, the last President of the country's First Republic, and his heir apparent, Júlio Prestes; Getúlio Dornelles Vargas was then installed as 'provisional president' under a system known as Estado Novo. Vargas' steady drift to the right ensured that Brazil had become a fascist dictatorship by the time he left office for the first time in October 1945.

1931 - The George Washington Bridge, linking upper Manhattan to Fort Lee, New Jersey, was dedicated; it opened to traffic the following day.

1945 - The United Nations was founded once all five permanent members of the Security Council - the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China - had ratified its charter.

1980 - The government of Poland legalized the Solidarity trade union, which was a first within the Soviet bloc; the union was de-legalized two years later by Wojciech Jaruzelski.

1990 - Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti revealed to the Italian parliament the existence of Operation Gladio, a 'stay-behind' paramilitary force organized by NATO and the CIA in order to prevent the spread of Communism into Italy after World War II.

1998 - The Deep Space 1 mission was launched.

2002 - Washington, DC, area spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo - the infamous Beltway Snipers - were arrested.

2003 - British Airways' last Concorde made its final commercial flight.
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NBC News Digest with Jessica Savitch

Legendary newswoman Jessica Savitch was apparently high on drugs - slurring and stumbling over words - the night she read the NBC News Digest that appeared during commercial breaks on October 3rd, 1983, which may have gotten her in trouble with the network.

In any event, that Monday night would be her last television appearance; 20 days later she drowned in a car accident.
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The Death of Jessica Savitch

As one of the first women in the all-male news business, Jessica Savitch had a difficult time; to be too acquiescent might mean losing respect from those who mattered most to her career, and to be too tough meant risking being labeled a bitch*. Additionally, there was pressure on her to always look good, which is not something David Brinkley or Eric Sevareid ever had to worry about.

Although Savitch herself penned a memoir called Anchorwoman in 1982, the biography of record on Savitch's life is still Gwenda Blair's Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News, published in 1988, five years after the tragic accident that took Savitch's life.

On this day in 1983 Savitch had dinner with her boyfriend Martin Fischbein, vice-president of the New York Post, at a restaurant called Odette's in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Driving home in a heavy rainstorm, Fischbein lost control of the vehicle, whereupon it skidded into the Pennsylvania Canal and landed upside down in about 15 feet of water. There is evidence that Fischbein may have been knocked unconscious in the accident, but it was obvious to rescuers that Savitch had tried and failed to escape the flooding vehicle. Along with the two humans, Savitch's dog Chewy also drowned. Savitch was 36.

I had been quite a fan of Savitch's, and still am; I remember being deeply shocked when I'd heard what had happened. In the wake of the accident there were all sorts of dark rumours, as there usually are unless someone dies of old age. Savitch's battles with NBC were already legendary, and her cocaine use was well-known; in fact, her colleague Linda Ellerbee was to have held an intervention, except that Savitch died before she could.

*Oh no!  Anything but that...
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Happy Birthday Ned Rorem

In the interest of full disclosure I am compelled to say: I don't know much about opera, and I know even less about classical music, aside from the names of the great composers.

This is not, I should add, out of a lack of interest; my profile sentiment is sincere: 'I am interested in everything, especially stuff I've never heard of'. Unfortunately, people who know a lot about opera and classical music love to sneer at people who don't know anything about the subject, and I can't abide being sneered at, so I've found it challenging to learn.

Most of what I know about Ned Rorem, then, composer of numerous operas, symphonies, and concerti - indeed, a man often described as America's greatest living composer - is of his private life.

When I made my first tentative steps out of the closet in 1988 (blowing the doors off it and making a crater on the west side of the house in the process) there weren't all these gay guys running around like there are now. Ned Rorem's 1969 Paris Diary instantly became one of my favourite books, as well as one which directed me to further discover my community. For that alone I am grateful enough to include him in this great running commentary I call a blog.

Yet I have still, after all these years, never heard any piece of Ned Rorem's music. And even if I had, I wouldn't know anything about it except whether or not I'd liked it. Maybe I'll go back and read Paris Diary again; it might inspire me to further explorations, and help to brighten one of the darker corners of my understanding.
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Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent

Probably the most beloved on Johnny Carson's recurring characters, Carnac the Magnificent, delights and disgusts the audience with an array of corny jokes, aided and abetted by his trusty sidekick Ed McMahon.
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In Memoriam: Johnny Carson

In a parallel universe, Johnny Carson could have become a beloved sitcom star; had Sheldon Leonard not gotten his way, Carl Reiner would have cast Carson opposite Mary Tyler Moore in a little sitcom about a comedy writer, which Carson actually was at that time.

Fortunately, Leonard got his way, and Dick Van Dyke was cast instead. Head of the Family became The Dick Van Dyke Show, TV history was made, and by way of a consolation, Carson took over after Jack Paar quit The Tonight Show in October 1962.

Alongside his old chum Ed McMahon (whom he'd met while working on Who Do You Trust?) Carson went on to make some TV history of his own, hosting The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 incredible years, first from New York City and then, after 1972, from the NBC Studios in Burbank.

Carson's extraordinary run finally ended in May 1992, when he retired from show business to play tennis and spend more time at his Malibu home with his fourth wife, Alexis. He made one more high-profile appearance, in May 1994, during one of protege David Letterman's week-long trips to LA; born on this day in 1925, Carson died in January 2005 from a heart attack worsened by emphysema, complications arising from his lifelong cigarette habit.
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Happy Smurfday!

On this day in 1958 The Smurfs - a fictional race of blue dwarves later popularized in Hanna-Barbera's animated series The Smurfs - appeared for the first time, in the story Le flute à six schtroumpfs, a Johan and Peewit adventure by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo which was serialized in the weekly comics magazine Le Journal de Spirou.

The well-being of Smurfs has always been at the forefront of the Pop Culture Institute's charitable work; currently, we operate a Home For Wayward Smurfettes under the wardenship of Papa Smurf. Living in a village made of mushrooms with one female means more than those adorable faces of theirs are blue, and as a result those poor Smurfettes get worn out pretty quickly...
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Augusten Burroughs: Memoir and Peace

Augusten Burroughs, who was born this day in 1965, became something of an overnight sensation when he published his memoirs, Running With Scissors, in 2002 - at the tender age of 37. It took his foster family, who were the subjects of the book, a bit longer than overnight to be outraged; in fact, it took them a couple of years to enter litigation against their former charge. Presumably they were waiting to see how well the sales went.

In 2005 the family who raised Burroughs took him to court, claiming defamation and invasion of privacy in addition to all sorts of other malfeasance on the part of the man who'd lived with them from for half a dozen years from the age of twelve. Feh! Go live with a writer. The case was settled in August 2007.

Fortunately, unlike Burroughs, I won't need to have truth on my side when I get around to publishing my memoirs; since I only have one family member left, and she's already admitted she's got a terrible memory, when the time comes I can pretty much say whatever I like.
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POPnews - October 23rd

42 BCE - During Rome's Republican civil wars, following the Second Battle of Philippi, Brutus's army was decisively defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian, following which Brutus committed suicide.

425 CE - Valentinian III became the Emperor of Rome at the age of 6.

1086 - During the Reconquista, at the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeated the forces of Castile's King Alfonso VI.

1157 - When Denmark's King Sweyn III was killed at the Battle of Grathe Heath his death ended the civil war in that country and enabled his rival to assume the throne as Valdemar I.

1295 - The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England was signed in Paris.

1641 - The Irish Rebellion of 1641 broke out - an anniversary commemorated by Irish Protestants for the next 200 years.

1642 - The Battle of Edgehill, the first major battle of the First English Civil War, pitted King Charles I and Prince Rupert of the Rhine against the Earl of Essex.

1707 - The Parliament of Great Britain - that is, England and Scotland combined, under the terms of the Acts of Union - met for the first time at the Palace of Westminster at the behest of Queen Anne.

1739 - British Prime Minister Robert Walpole reluctantly declared the War of Jenkins' Ear against Spain.

1812 - Claude François de Malet, a French general, undertook a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming that the Emperor died in Russia and claiming he himself had been made the commandant of Paris. For his impertinence, De Malet would be executed on October 29th.

1935 - Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard 'Lulu' Rosencrantz were all fatally shot at about 10:15 pm in the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey. Charles 'The Bug' Workman and Emanuel 'Mendy' Weiss, two hitmen working for Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter's Murder, Inc. carried out the deed. Berman died first, some four hours after the shooting; Landau died four hours after that. Schultz lingered, delirious, for 22 hours, having his last words taken down by a stenographer, while Rosencrantz died 7 hours later. Workman eventually served 23 years in prison for his part in the killings, while Weiss was executed for another murder he committed in 1944.

1942 - All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner were killed when it was struck by a US Army Air Forces bomber over Palm Springs, California; amongst the victims was award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger, responsible for such songs as Thanks for the Memory, Love in Bloom, and Blue Hawaii.

1956 - Hungarians rose up in revolt against their Communist overlords; the Hungarian Revolution lasted until November 4th, at which time a large Soviet army arrived and occupied Budapest.

1958 - An underground earthquake - since dubbed The Springhill Mine Bump - trapped 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, which at the time was North America's deepest coal mine. This disaster was the third to occur at the location, following a fire in 1891 and an explosion in 1956. It took rescuers from around the world nine days to dig out 100 survivors, making the death toll 74.

1983 - The US Marines barracks in Beirut was hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 US Marines; a French army barracks in Lebanon was also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops, marking one of the bloodiest days in the Lebanese Civil War for the Multinational Force in Lebanon.

1989 - The Hungarian Republic was officially declared by president Mátyás Szűrös, replacing the communist Hungarian People's Republic; the day is celebrated in Hungary as a national holiday.

1992 - Emperor Akihito of Japan became the first head of state from that country to visit China.

2001 - Apple released the iPod.

2002 - Chechen terrorists seized a theatre in the Dubrovka neighbourhood of Moscow, holding more than 850 hostages; the event was handled as disastrously as a later one in Beslan in 2004, and remains a blot on the already heavily blotted leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As many as 200 people died, most from a mysterious gas meant to neutralize the Chechens - a gas which Putin's government still refuses to identify.
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Happy Birthday Marc Shaiman

Born this day in 1959, Marc Shaiman rose to prominence as an arranger and musical director for Bette Midler in the mid-1980s, even appearing in a cameo as her piano player in Beaches (1988); he co-produced Midler's biggest hit to date, Wind Beneath My Wings which comes from the soundtrack to that movie.

Shaiman has since parlayed his early success into a career composing music for the movies, most often comedies, beginning with Broadcast News (1987) and including such recent classics as The Addams Family (1991), The First Wives Club (1996), and Team America: World Police (2004). While early in his career he often worked with Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner, and Garry Marshall, in recent years Shaiman is known for his work with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, co-writing such enduring classics as Uncle Fucka and Blame Canada.

Already the winner of a Tony and a Grammy for his work on the musical Hairspray, he has likewise won an Emmy for his work with Billy Crystal on the Academy Awards telecast. Despite five Oscar nominations he's never won, proof that there's no gay Mafia running Hollywood.

Since 1979 his collaborator in life as well as at work has been Scott Wittman.
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"Better Be Ready" by Annette Funicello

In 2007, when I first marked this particular birthday on the Pop Culture Institute, I chose a frankly pervy clip of birthday gal Annette Funicello singing Stuffed Animal while flouncing about in a baby doll nightie; the following year, naturally, that clip was unavailable, which gave me an excuse to spend a few idle minutes perusing what other Funicello-esque offerings YouTube might have for me. Pretty quickly I found this one, in which a more mature Annette swings, Sixties-style... Enjoy!
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Bonne Fete Catherine Deneuve

Her career spans 50 years now, during which time she has been a sex symbol, a respected actor, a muse, a goodwill ambassador, a 'bitch', and the emblem of her country - and often many of these at the same time.

Catherine Deneuve was born on this day in 1943 into a theatrical family; her father Maurice Dorléac and her mother Renée Deneuve were both stage and screen actors. Catherine, the third of four daughters (the others being Françoise, Sylvie, and Danielle Dorléac) made her film debut at the age of 13, although she wouldn't have her first notable role until 1963.

The following year she starred in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which made her a star; it was followed in time by Repulsion and Belle de jour, which served to cement her reputation. In 1965, Deneuve married David Bailey, the renowned British fashion photographer.

The same year Belle de jour was released, Deneuve made the follow-up to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - entitled The Young Girls of Rochefort - with her sister Françoise Dorléac, who died in a car crash in June 1967 shortly after filming completed.

Deneuve and Bailey split in 1972, but have remained friends; Deneuve later had two children, one with Roger Vadim, and another with Marcello Mastroianni, both of whom have gone into the family business. While continuing to act, Deneuve has also modeled, devoted herself to charity work, and been politically active.
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The Death of Pretty Boy Floyd

Charles Arthur 'Chock' Floyd was born in Adairsville, Georgia, in February 1904; when he was ten the Floyd family moved to Akins, in the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma, where in addition to dirt farming, they were known as moonshiners. Married to Ruby Hargrove at 17, Floyd committed his first crimes at eighteen, was a father to Jack Dempsey 'Jackie' Floyd at nineteen, in jail by 21 and divorced at 22. When he finally left jail at 26 in 1930 he moved to Kansas City, vowing never to return to prison...

One of a number of celebrity gangsters whose Midwestern crime sprees in the early 1930s electrified the general public, by the height of the gangster era of 1933-4 Floyd was already famous, not least because of the colourful moniker, which he hated. Misinformation, even more than the most sensational facts, is what legends are made of, and of the life and crimes of Pretty Boy Floyd there are far more myths than facts.

It begins with his name, which some say was given to him by a madam named Beulah Baird, and still others claim came from a description given of him by a witness to an early robbery. In addition, he was often accused of committing multiple bank robberies at the same time.

Even the circumstances surrounding his death are curious. There are those who claim that police from East Liverpool, Ohio, were with the FBI on the final raid against Floyd and his gang; still others claim that the FBI acted alone. One story has him wounded but fit to stand trial, another that Melvin Purvis summarily executed him. About all that is known for certain is that on this day in 1934, Pretty Boy Floyd - the sagebrush Robin Hood, as he had come to be known - died, aged almost 31, and that tens of thousands of people either filed past his body in the Sallisaw, Oklahoma funeral home or attended his funeral in his adopted hometown of Akins.

'Pretty Boy' Floyd was played by Channing Tatum in Michael Mann's eagerly anticipated 2009 summer blockbuster Public Enemies, which also starred Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis and Johnny Depp as John Dillinger; Floyd has already been portrayed on film by John Ericson, Fabian, Steve Kanaly, Martin Sheen, and Bo Hopkins. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana have already tried to rehabilitate Floyd's image in their 1994 work Pretty Boy Floyd, A Novel; a well-read hardcover copy of this out-of-print book resides in the collection of the Pop Culture Institute.
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"Hope" by Shaggy

It's always been a challenge for me to justify the author and performer of such a singularly upbeat song with the red carpet asshat who can't seem to resist an opportunity to demonstrate his own insecurity by gay-baiting and indulging in recreational misogyny.

To be fair, he has cleaned his act up somewhat; to appear (as he once did, in August 2007) on The Friday Night Project seated with Alan Carr and Gok Wan without making a single off-colour quip must have been a heckuva chore for old Shaggy.

So whether he's seen the light or is still a hater at heart, this song - which originally appeared on his fifth studio album, 2000's Hot Shot - continues to earn him our birthday wishes...
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Pop History Moment: Bomb Tries To Make Lady Antonia Fraser History

On this day in 1975 historian Lady Antonia Fraser - along with her husband, Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser and their house-guest Caroline Kennedy - narrowly avoided being killed by a bomb placed beneath his Jaguar XJ6 by the IRA outside their home in London's tony Holland Park. Only a telephone call from fellow Tory Jonathan Aitken prevented the device from killing its intended victims - possibly the one good deed Aitken ever managed. Killed in the blast was noted cancer researcher Gordon Hamilton-Fairley, who noticed the device while walking his two dogs, Benny and Emmy Lou, who also died.

Over the next couple of years the daughter of the Earl of Longford would cause a similar explosion beneath London's perpetually stodgy high society when she, a mother of six and a Catholic besides, would undertake an extramarital affair with playwright Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress Vivien Merchant. Fraser and Pinter married in 1977, and remained together until his death in December 2008, living in that same house.

Many thanks go out to fellow blogger Another Nickel In The Machine for additional information on this event - the Campden Hill Square bombing - in particular, as well as the targeted bombing campaign conducted by the IRA in London throughout the 1970s in general.
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POPnews - October 22nd

[The Old Metropolitan Opera House, at 1411 Broadway - designed by J. Cleaveland Cady - occupied an entire block between W. 39th and W.40th; following a fire in August 1892 it was rebuilt along its original lines. After the company moved to posher digs at Lincoln Center in April 1966, a gala finale concert was given; unable to repurpose or renovate the building, or even secure landmark status for it, it was torn down in 1967 and replaced with an office tower which today provides the company with valuable revenue.]
1383 - When Portugal's King Fernando I died without a male heir it brought about the 1383-1385 Crisis, a period of civil war and disorder; his daughter Beatrice (by Leonor Telles de Menezes) and son-in-law John I of Castile tried to hold the throne, but ultimately the crown went to João I, the dead king's illegitimate half-brother, who became the first monarch of the House of Aviz following his victory at the Battle of Aljubarrota in April 1385.

1575 - The Mexican city of Aguascalientes was founded by Juan de Montoro.

1633 - Following the Ming Dynasty's fight with Dutch East India Company at the Battle of Southern Fujian Sea, Chinese forces commanded by Zheng Zhilong won a great victory.

1797 - One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris' Parc Monceau, André-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump, landing without injury in front of a crowd of admiring spectators.

1836 - Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

1844 - Millerites - followers of William Miller - anticipated the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Coming of Christ, in what came to be known as The Great Anticipation; when nothing happened, the following day became known as the Great Disappointment, and many of Miller's followers simply abandoned their beliefs.

1877 - Scotland's Blantyre mine disaster killed 207.

1879 - Thomas Edison's preliminary test of the incandescent light bulb lasted 13.5 hours.

1883 - New York City's Metropolitan Opera House opened with a performance of Charles Gounod's opera Faust, starring the Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson.

1895 - At Paris' Gare Montparnasse train station the Granville-Paris express derailed into the Places des Rennes (shown at right). This sensational photo was made by Levy & Sons, and remained popular throughout the Surrealist period of the 1920s for its depiction of a world gone mad.

1907 - A run on Knickerbocker Trust Company stock set events in motion that would lead to a depression called the Panic of 1907.

1910 - After a jury deliberated for just 27 minutes, Dr. Crippen was found guilty of killing his wife, Cora, a failed singer and actress known professionally as Belle Elmore; his lover, Ethel Le Neve, was acquitted of any complicity, and lived until 1967. The case was a huge cause célèbre in its day, partly because Crippen was the first murderer caught with the aid of wireless communication technology.

1924 - Toastmasters International was founded.

1926 - J. Gordon Whitehead sucker punched magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal, which may have led to Houdini's untimely death just nine days later.

1934 - In East Liverpool, Ohio, notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd was shot and killed by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents under the command of Melvin Purvis.

1941 - 17-year-old Guy Môquet, a hero of the French Resistance, was executed by the Nazis, along with 29 other hostages, in retaliation for the killing of Karl Hotz, the commanding officer of occupation forces in the French département of Loire-Inférieure.

1964 - Jean-Paul Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize for Literature, apparently.

1986 - Jane Dornacker died when the WNBC traffic helicopter she was reporting from crashed into the Hudson River; the pilot, Bill Pate, was badly injured although he did survive the crash. Dornacker survived an earlier helicopter crash the previous April 18th over New Jersey's Hackensack River.

1999 - Maurice Papon, an official in the government of Vichy France during World War II, was jailed for crimes against humanity.
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Brian Tobin: Rebel Without A Cod

Born on this day in 1954, and first elected to Canada's Parliament in 1980, Brian Tobin was one of the few Liberals who survived Brian Mulroney's Tory landslide of 1984; alongside his colleagues from Ontario - Don Boudria, John Nunziata, and Sheila Copps - the MP for Humber—Port au Port—Ste. Barbe helped form what the Ottawa press corps quickly dubbed the Rat Pack, which during the next nine years on the Opposition Bench gave the government what-for in an altogether unprecedented way.

When the Liberals were returned to power in 1993 under Jean Chrétien, Tobin's previous loyalty to his new boss was rewarded; he was given the plum job of Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, which anyway is practically a Newfoundland sinecure. It was during his tenure at DFO that Brian Tobin had his finest hour (to date): the Turbot War.

Following a moratorium on fishing which devastated the Newfoundland economy, it was discovered that factory trawlers from Europe operating just outside Canada's 200-mile limit were vacuuming the ocean clean of all life, therefore potentially extincting such staple catches as cod and halibut from the Grand Banks, an area that was still prime fishing ground as recently as the 1970s. The source of the devastation having been determined, Tobin decided to make something of it; he had the Canadian Coast Guard trail a Spanish stern-trawler called the Estai which was suspected of just such illegal activity. In March 1996 shots were fired, the Estai was boarded, its crew arrested and its nets impounded.

The Estai had indeed been using illegal gill nets, which Tobin himself demonstrated during a press conference held on a barge in the East River near the UN, much to the chagrin of the Spanish and EU trade representatives like Emma Bonino. Accused of grandstanding by the timid do-nothings who'd been letting it happen, Tobin used the notoriety he'd gained during the incident to propel himself into the office of Premier of Newfoundland. In 2000 he returned again to federal politics, this time representing Bonavista—Trinity—Conception; disgusted, as many of us were, by the seemingly endless machinations of Paul Martin, Tobin retired from politics in 2002.

Still I, for one, am not counting him out; his memoirs are entitled All In Good Time, implying that the man once dubbed 'Captain Canada' may yet return to public life...
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"The Temptation Of Adam" by Josh Ritter

Birthday wishes go out today to folkie Josh Ritter, who was born on this day in 1976; The Temptation of Adam appears on his fifth studio album, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, released in 2007.
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Happy Birthday Joyce Randolph

Consider, if you will, the plight of Joyce Randolph...

Fourth billed and forced to play third fiddle behind a booming tuba, a shrill harp, and a bassoon (or is that baboon? or maybe it's buffoon?) Joyce Randolph had the most thankless job on The Honeymooners. Most episodes she's lucky if Trixie gets one scene.

Nevertheless, she did get to play a part in one of the television era's first pop culture sensations. Not that she's the only person to play Trixie Norton - oh no; I've only just learned that Trixie was first played by Elaine Stritch, which about blows my mind.

Today the one-time Garbo of Detroit turns 86; long-retired from acting but not from performing, she currently serves of the board of the USO.
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Edna Purviance: Lady and A Tramp

Over the course of eight years - from 1915 to 1923 - she starred in 33 films with Charlie Chaplin; for the first two of those years, they were lovers, and she was in the background.

A talented pianist - born on this day in 1895 - Edna Purviance was at first thought to be too serious for comedy; in the end it was her gravity which gave Chaplin's famed character of The Tramp something suitably durable against which to play his ineffable whimsy.

She would prove to be his best leading lady.

Although she starred in 33 films with Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance has yet to be recognized by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce with a star on the Walk of Fame. There is a petition here and on Facebook to correct this grievous injustice.

If you have a moment, won't you please sign them for yourself?
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The Death of Horatio Nelson

So beloved and revered a figure was Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson in his day that even more than 200 years after his death he is still being lionized as one of the greatest Britons to have ever lived. In life he was known for his ability to inspire men against long odds, and in death is fondly remembered in sailor's lore and cultural zeitgeist alike for the kindness and compassion he displayed while in command.

Which just goes to show you, you can carry on the most scandalous kind of private life imaginable provided you are really good at what you do (and it never hurts to be a nice guy as well). In Nelson's case scandal involved leaving his wife Fanny - the unlovely Lady Nelson (with whom he had no children) - to live together with Lady Emma Hamilton, a notable beauty of her day with whom he had a daughter, Horatia.

As a tactician and field commander Nelson was without match. His ability to change strategy mid-battle and willingness to disobey orders to do so was very much the opposite of what was expected of him, yet it was tactics like these that had brought him much glory at the Battle of the Nile, the Battle of Copenhagen, and finally his greatest victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Having lost the sight in his left eye in 1794 off of Corsica in the service of the Kingdom of Naples, and his right arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797, Nelson lost his life at Trafalgar on this day in 1805.

After running the most famous array of signal flags in British naval history up the mizzenmast of HMS Victory - England expects that every man will do his duty - he ordered an attack on the French flagship Bucentaure, damaging it badly enough to take it out of commission; then it was onto Redoutable. A bullet from a unknown French marksman in the riggings found its target, at a range of about 50 feet, and four hours later a great man was dead...
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Jack Kerouac Reads From "On The Road"

It is a voice simultaneously mannered and casual, confident that it ought to be spoken...  Here's Jack Kerouac, reading from his masterpiece On the Road, accompanied by Steve Allen on piano, and they're both on the top of their game. The year is 1959.

Just a decade later he'd reached the end of the road; on this day in 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida, hemorrhaging from a cirrhotic liver, Jack Kerouac died.
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"Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again ! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings : save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village ! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O ! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come !
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams !
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book :
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike !

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought !
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
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Remembering... Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Both the youngest and the favourite of 14 children, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (born on this day in 1772) took refuge in the place many bullied children do - the library; when not ensconced in a book he could be found rambling the Devonshire countryside, communing with Nature around Ottery St Mary where he was born.

At the age of 23 Coleridge hatched a plan with his fellow poet Robert Southey to move to America and start a commune in the wilds of Pennsylvania; although the plan failed before it could be brought to fruition, the friends did end up marrying a pair of sisters out of it. In this endeavour Southey seems to have made the better match, whereas Coleridge merely added a failed marriage and divorce to the list of his woes.

Alongside his friend William Wordsworth*, Coleridge founded the Romantic movement of poetry, which rooted itself in the classics, and concerned itself with experiencing the joys of Nature amidst a booming industrial expansion already blackening much of Britain by the time he was a young man.

Due to a well-documented battle with toothache and facial neuralgia, Coleridge sought relief in opium as early as age 26, blissfully unaware as everyone around him was of the addictive qualities of the poppy. Although credited with giving his work its ethereal imagery, opium was to be the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who died in the home of his physician, James Gillman, in the Highgate section of London in July 1834. He was 61.

*About which camaraderie Adam Sisman has written The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge - available at all fine links immediately preceding this statement and in the collection of the Pop Culture Institute, natch...
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"Oye Como Va" by Celia Cruz

No, it's not a Spanish song about Donald Trump; that one's called Oye Como Ver*.

It's actually Celia Cruz, Cuba's late-lamented Queen of Salsa, who died in July 2003; in her homeland she's still known as La guarachera de Cuba... Today would have been her 85th birthday.

Oye Como Va was written by Tito Puente in 1963, and has since been widely covered, including a more famous version by Santana, from their 1970 album Abraxas.

*Badump-tish!
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Happy Birthday Carrie Fisher

Although her first film appearance was in Shampoo (1975), five-year-old me was not the slightest bit interested in subtle comedy-dramas based in recent current events...

7 year-old me, however, was captivated by loud movies filled with space ships, princesses in distress, and wise-cracking robots; lucky me, that was the year Star Wars came out. Ever since then there's been a warm place in my heart for Carrie Fisher...

Even though she writes far more than she acts these days she still turns up occasionally onscreen; I remember a particularly hilarious moment when Carrie Bradshaw (of Sex and the City) met Carrie Fisher during a fling with Vince Vaughan, who was playing Fisher's assistant in a classic episode from 2000 entitled Sex and Another City - and Fisher thought she was a hooker! Oh my... I laughed until I stopped.

Fisher also turned up - again unexpectedly - in Stephen Fry's amazing 2006 documentary The Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive, in which she discusses the challenges she's faced achieving mental wellness. Of course, her novels have consistently addressed the difficulty of growing up (not to mention staying sane) in LA, a subject about which she is circumspect without placing blame - a refreshing position for the spawn of entertainers to take.
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POPnews - October 21st

[Frank Lloyd Wright's only New York Building was also his last commissioned work; the struggles involved in getting his design from the drawing board to the corner of Fifth Avenue and E. 89th Street are legendary, not least of which was challenging the orthodoxy of concrete boxes which were then the prevailing norm in Manhattan architecture.]
1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated the leaders of rival Japanese clans at the Battle of Sekigahara, marking the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, which would rule Japan until the mid-nineteenth century.

1797 - The 44-gun US Navy frigate USS Constitution was launched at Edmund Hartt's shipyard in Boston Harbor; named by US President George Washington and one of six authorized by the Naval Act of 1794, she is today the oldest commissioned vessel afloat in the world.

1805 - At the Battle of Trafalgar, the Royal Navy defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve; in striking at the heart of Napoleon Bonaparte's ambitions for the domination of Europe, Viscount Horatio Nelson inspired a burgeoning British Empire too fond of boats to have designs on European soil.

1816 - The Penang Free School - the oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia - was founded in George Town by the Reverend Sparke Hutchings.

1854 - Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were despatched to the Crimean War...  Although Nightingale's mission of mercy would prove a disaster - troops consigned to her field hospital at Scutari faced higher than normal mortality rates due mainly to the lack of hygiene - in her later years she learned much from the ordeal, and modern nursing would not exist in the form it does today were it not for her pioneering work.

1867 - The landmark Medicine Lodge Treaty was signed near the Kansas town of Medicine Lodge by leaders of Kiowa and Comanche nations, requiring them to relocate to a reservation in western Oklahoma. Another, with the Plains Apache, was signed later that day, while a third a week later sealed the Fates of the Southern Cheyenne, and Southern Arapaho.

1892 - Opening ceremonies for the World's Columbian Exposition were held in Chicago, though because construction was behind schedule, the exposition did not open until May 1893.

1895 - The short-lived Republic of Formosa collapsed as Japanese forces invaded the island now called Taiwan.

1921 - President Warren G. Harding delivered a speech which called for the abolition of lynching, apparently.

1944 - The first kamikaze attack was carried out when HMAS Australia was hit by a Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

1945 - Future tinpot dictator and flabby Argentinian strongman Juan Perón discovered what the term 'better half' meant when he married erstwhile actress Eva Duarte, a charisma monster soon to be renowned for her legendary portrayal of Evita.

1959 - Frank Lloyd Wright's only major New York City building - the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - opened to the public.

1966 - A coal tip avalanche devastated the Welsh town of Aberfan, killing 144, including 116 children aged 7 to 10.

1969 - A coup d'état in Somalia brought Siad Barre to power.

1977 - The European Patent Institute was founded.

1978 - Australian civilian pilot Frederick Valentich vanished while flying a Cessna 182 over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft.

1987 - Formerly the first Jewish Miss America, Ed Koch's best fruit-fly Bess Myerson was arrested for her involvement in an alimony-fixing scam; she was later acquitted.

1990 - The first Apple Day was held in London's Covent Garden.

1994 - 32 people were killed and 17 injured when Seoul's Seongsu Bridge collapsed.
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