Hizzoner Fiorello La Guardia

Of all the men to serve as Mayor of New York - and therefore entitled by tradition to be affectionately referred to by New Yorkers as Hizzoner - few have brought as much actual honour to the office as Fiorello La Guardia, who was born on this day in 1882.

Of course, La Guardia had the good fortune to serve after one of the most corrupt mayors in New York's history, the as charming as he was dissolute Jimmy Walker, so it wouldn't have been difficult to shine by comparison*. Then again, he also had the misfortune to take office on the first day of 1934, more than two years before the Great Depression finally bottomed out. At least he didn't have to deal with Prohibition, although he was kept busy (as if he wouldn't have been busy enough anyway) cleaning up after the mess it had made.

Fortunately for the people of New York City their new mayor throve on challenge... As indefatigable as he was incorruptible, La Guardia refused to play partisan politics by working closely with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to implement the programs of the New Deal; that he was also able to work with both the notoriously imperious Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and the ambitious Thomas E. Dewey - with whom he launched a full-scale assault on organized crime - is a testament to the innate diplomacy and even toughness of the man whose name ironically meant 'The Little Flower'.

They were anxious times, and where Central Casting might have suggested a mayor who was suave and patrician so as to soothe the city's frazzled nerves, instead they got a garrulous ethnic who inspired people by kicking them in the keister and consequently did the job better than anyone before or since...

Having served three consecutive terms at New York City Hall - during which time he brought about the demise of Tammany Hall and the corruption it engendered, spent his evenings riding along with fire-fighters and police officers, personally officiated in municipal court where he meted out his own innovative brand of justice**, built both Floyd Bennett Field and later La Guardia Airport within the city limits, oversaw the 1939 World's Fair, and shattered the fortunes of mobster Frank Costello even as he personally shattered the slot machines that had built that fortune - La Guardia left office on the last day of 1945, having brought the city he loved through both the Depression and World War II with flying colours, while having concurrently served it as mayor and his country as Director of Civilian Defense***.

Retirement didn't agree with Fiorello La Guardia; he died in September 1947, never to witness his life being enacted on the Great White Way in the 1959 musical Fiorello!, starring Tom Bosley in a Tony Award-winning performance. Two recent books cast new light on his amazing career: both H. Paul Jeffers' The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York by Alyn Brodsky come highly recommended by the Pop Culture Institute.

*The same enviable situation a certain 43rd President finds himself in.
**A man was brought before him accused of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family; La Guardia first fined the man ten dollars, then fined all those present in the courtroom 50 cents each 'for living in a city where a man has to steal bread in order to eat'. The unfortunate fellow left court that day with $47.50!
*** That's a 133-word sentence, people!
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Pop History Moment: The Abdication of Edward VIII

In many respects, countries get the leadership they deserve; a nation more concerned with geniality than intellect, for instance, might choose an affable madman who'd never left his country until after he was elected... Rather than, say, someone so able to interpret the zeitgeist on behalf of the entire world that he has to settle for an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize rather than the Presidency, which the nitwit who 'defeated' him spent his entire administration driving into the ground anyway, all the while earning himself the lowest approval rating in history. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Well, the same principle applies for unelected Kings; it's just unfortunate for Edward VIII that he missed his own window of opportunity... What a merry King he'd have made in the 1920s, dancing the Charleston across a nightclub tabletop on Black Friday, the modern equivalent of fiddling while Rome burned.

By the mid-1930s, though, the frivolous and frankly lightweight character of Edward VIII were exactly the opposite of what England needed; fortunately by then he'd fallen into the clutches of a serial maneater and, to borrow the words of Sir Tim Rice, 'the greatest social climber since Cinderella'. Faced with an array of every available maiden in the land positively oozing with virginity or a twice-divorced broad who looked like Ned Sparks in drag, Edward VIII chose Mrs. Simpson, and it was a win-win situation for everyone - except maybe for her, who'd probably delusionally envisioned herself as becoming Queen of England, and instead ended up having to settle for the booby prize as Duchess of Windsor.

Unable to live without this paragon of femininity, Edward VIII did the only patriotic thing, and on this day in 1936 divested his nation of what was by then its most serious liability by abdicating.

While often seen as the gravest danger England had withstood to date, the Abdication Crisis on the contrary strengthened the nation and her Empire, proving that the system worked by eliminating someone unsuitable and seamlessly replacing him with someone else who was altogether better for the job, no matter how trepidatious he might have been to assume the role. Subsequent events - such as the discovery of the his-and-hers Nazi sympathies on the part of the newly created Duke and Duchess of Windsor - only seem to reinforce the fact that the right decision had been made.
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"I'm Sorry" by Brenda Lee

Birthday wishes go out today to Brenda Lee, the pint-sized rockabilly spitfire who was ironically one of the biggest recording artists of the 1950s and 1960s; she was just 13 years old in 1957* when she released her first pop single, Dynamite, which blew away all those who heard it as well as earning her the sobriquet 'Little Miss Dynamite'. Her signature tune, I'm Sorry, came out in 1960, by which time she was best known as a singer of such modern Christmas carols as Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.

I'm Sorry was produced by the legendary Owen Bradley, and proved that his Nashville Sound could and would bridge the gap between pop and country; the power of Brenda Lee's voice - as much as the clarity of her tone - would put her in an elite league with such consummate artists as Connie Francis and Patsy Cline.

*Making her just 66 years young today!
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POPnews - December 11th

[Those responsible for the French Revolution were to blame for some of the most heinous miscarriages of justice in the history of jurisprudence, including the trial of King Louis XVI, shown above; the fact that many of them were lawyers only made things worse. On the plus side, though, they did make the whole genre of lawyer jokes possible.]
1282 - Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales recognized by the British Crown, was killed at Cilmeri by soldiers in the service of England's Edward I; the Welsh remember him as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf.

1789 - The University of North Carolina was chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly.

1792 - The former Louis XVI of France - having been captured following the Insurrection and forced to abdicate in August 1791 - was put on trial; his conviction on the grounds of high treason before the National Convention was a foregone conclusion. Citizen Louis Capet would be executed in January 1793 by Charles Henri Sanson.

1816 - Indiana became the 19th US state.

1905 - An uprising by workers in Ukraine occurred, temporarily establishing the Shuliavka Republic in the capital, Kiev.

1907 - The New Zealand Parliament Buildings were almost completely destroyed by fire.

1925 - Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quas Primas introduced the Feast of Christ the King.

1931 - The Statute of Westminster - an important step towards sovereignty for dominions within the British Empire such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa - was enacted by the British Parliament.

1941 - Germany and Italy declared war against the United States in retaliation for the United States' declaration of war against the Empire of Japan on December 8th, which was itself in reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th.

1946 - The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established.

1958 - French Upper Volta gained self-governing status from France, becoming the Republic of Upper Volta with full membership in the French Community.

1964 - Che Guevara addressed the United Nations as head of the Cuban delegation; during his speech there an unknown assailant fired a mortar shell at the UN Building.

1971 - The Libertarian Party was formed in the United States.

1972 - The Apollo 17 mission landed on the Moon.

1981 - At the El Mozote massacre armed forces in El Salvador killed an estimated 900 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the Salvadoran Civil War.

1993 - Forty-eight people were killed when a block of the Highland Towers collapsed near the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

1994 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troops into Chechnya at the outset of the First Chechen War.

1997 - The Kyoto Protocol was opened for signature; to date 183 parties have signed it.

2005 - The Buncefield Oil Depot caught fire in the English town of Hemel Hempstead.
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The Late, Great Richard Pryor Takes On The N-Word

When Richard Pryor died - on this day in 2005, nine days after his 65th birthday - one of the brightest lights in American culture went out... Of course, it was akin to a miracle that he'd managed to live to the ripe old age he did in the first place, all the while shining that light into the darkest parts of the American psyche, but the fact remains that he did and so deserves to be celebrated for it.

In this clip Pryor - who was never one to shy away from controversy* - takes on the perennial hot button issue of the N-word; endlessly argued over by everyone from identity politicians to semanticists, grappled with by philosopher and pundit alike, extolled as a reclaimed word and hurled like a weapon, with an elegant turn of phrase Pryor helps it all make sense. 'That's a word that is used to describe our own wretchedness,' he explains, in his 1982 concert Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip. On that stage he promised to never use the word again to describe another black man, and so far as I can ascertain he never did...

*That the preceding statement is an epic understatement cannot be overstated...
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"Nature, the gentlest mother..." by Emily Dickinson

Nature, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest,
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon,--
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky

With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.
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"19" by Paul Hardcastle

Birthday wishes go out today to Paul Hardcastle, the British-born DJ and keyboards whiz who scored a hit worldwide in 1985 with 19 - a tribute, really, to the much-maligned Vietnam veterans whose sacrifices were only then (a dozen years after the last of them had returned Stateside) being recognized.

Featuring the sampled vocals of narrator Peter Thomas - who initially didn't want his vocals to be used in the song; fortunately he later relented - the song was also among the first to highlight the tragedy of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or what used to be called* shell-shock. Inasmuch as the Vietnam War was a disaster for the American Empire diplomatically, its aftermath has been an even greater disaster at home, filling American streets with men who should have been treated like heroes but who, having served their purpose, were thereafter discarded like so much trash.

*Far more poetically and therefore far more effectively, in my opinion...
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Pop History Moment: Edward VIII Signed the Instrument of Abdication

On this day in 1936 England's Kind Edward VIII signed the so-called Instrument of Abdication, clearing the way for him to renounce his throne in order to marry the twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson.

Signed at His Majesty's home, Fort Belvedere, and witnessed by his three brothers - Prince Albert, Duke of York (who succeeded him the following day as George VI), Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent - it wouldn't take effect until the following day, after a special Act of Parliament (His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936) was given Royal Assent. Given the unique structure of the Commonwealth of Nations under the Statute of Westminster, each independent Dominion was required to give its own consent, which is what happened. Among the machinations involved in this process was a move by the Irish Free State to rid itself of all references to the Crown in exchange for the required unanimity.
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Red Kettle Alert

This Christmas season, as you are out and about on your errands, take note of the various red kettles provided by the Salvation Army at the entrances to malls, supermarkets, and other stores and always remember to ignore them. It's important to always remember that the Salvation Army is not a charity, it is a church - and a particularly loathsome one at that.

If you believe, as I do, that a) charity is love, and if we can agree that b) all love should be unconditional, then c) the Salvation Army fails on both counts. They like to stress the help they give the poor and less fortunate, but usually fail to mention that every bit of the help they do give comes with a heaping helping of fire and brimstone, usually via a sermon.

They are homophobic and misogynistic*, and consider themselves a military organization for a reason; during the debate in Canada over allowing same-sex marriage in this country it was the Salvation Army who lead the charge against it, by aggressively lobbying many Members of Parliament - lobbying that in many instances could have been considered harassment. There were also numerous high-profile lawsuits against the Salvation Army in Ontario in the late 1980s/early 1990s over their refusal to employ and assist unwed mothers.

I have been consistently thwarted in terms of charitable giving by the dearth of secular charities; I would gladly sponsor a child in a developing country if only I could be sure that my pennies a day weren't spent robbing them of their religion, culture and language, beating or molesting them or in some other way inculcating them with the dangerous hypocrisies of modern Christianity. I would gladly support a soup kitchen if only I could find one that didn't ladle Old Testament judgement along with its soup; similarly, many food banks run out of church basements also find ways to pick and choose who is worthy of their largesse - by choosing to only support families, for instance, and not single men - men who may or may not be gay.

As much as I am loath to support the United Way (since too many of the funds they raise go toward management rather than helping people) I'd rather see them reap the benefits of Christmas cheer than allowing the Christian soldiers to move onward even one step further.

*They are also racist, requiring proof of citizenship from children before they'll distribute toys to them... Because that's what Jesus would have done, I'm sure. Thanks to my Facebook friend Cheryl Young Cohen for this little tidbit!
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"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" by John Lennon

Today marks two weeks until Christmas Eve, the traditional beginning of the Christmas season at the Pop Culture Institute; and what better way to usher in a festive and lovely time of year than a real downer of a carol by John Lennon?

Please - during this season of giving, remember the less fortunate: the poor, foreign orphans of various colours, and certain bloggers whose attempts to provide enlightertainment all year long have proven very expensive indeed...
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POPnews - December 10th

[There are few things as crushing to the human spirit as a coal mine, and likewise few things as poisonous to the planet (not to mention the human body) as coal; anyone who tells you coal is still a viable energy source today is on the take from the coal industry, and must be stopped before their greed kills us all. In the meantime, for a sensitive look at the life and travails of coal miners, read George Orwell's 1937 book The Road To Wigan Pier.]
1041 - Zoe, Empress of Byzantium, elevated her husband's nephew - whom they had adopted as their son - to the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire as Michael V following the death of her husband and his uncle/father Michael IV.

1394 - A son was born to Scotland's King Robert III and his queen Annabella Drummond at Dunfermline Palace who would ascend the throne in April 1406 as James I.

1508 - The League of Cambrai was founded by Pope Julius II, France's Louis XII, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and Ferdinand II of Aragon in order to balance the power of the Republic of Venice; initially successful, with so many princely egos at the table it was bound to fail, which it did in 1510.

1541 - Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn for their alleged adulteries with Catherine Howard, the 'fifth' wife of Henry VIII; Howard herself would be confined to the Tower of London and executed in February 1542.

1665 - The Royal Netherlands Marine Corps was established by Michiel de Ruyter.

1684 - Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, was read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.

1817 - Mississippi became the 20th US state.

1864 - Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union Army troops reached the outskirts of Savannah during Sherman's March to the Sea.

1865 - Widower of Britain's ill-fated Heiress Presumptive Princess Charlotte and favourite uncle of Queen Victoria Léopold I, first King of the Belgians, died; he was succeeded by his second son, who assumed the throne as Leopold II, his elder son Louis-Philippe having died in May 1834.

1898 - The Treaty of Paris was signed, officially ending the Spanish-American War.

1901 - The first Nobel Prizes were awarded on the fifth anniversary of the death of their benefactor, Alfred Nobel.

1906 - President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win any Nobel Prize; in his case, the Nobel Peace Prize.

1907 - A nighttime battle in London's Trafalgar Square between 1,000 medical students and 400 police - which came to be known as the Brown Dog Riots - was actually the culmination of an escalating struggle over a memorial to animals used in vivisection, which had been heavily vandalized before being secretly taken down in 1910; a new memorial was finally erected in Battersea Park in 1985.

1927 - The Grand Ole Opry premiered on radio under that name, having debuted on Nashville's WSM as WSM Barn Dance in October 1925.

1932 - Thailand's new constitution was signed by King Prajadhipok, making him both the last absolute ruler and the first constitutional monarch in that country's history; the event is still celebrated in that country as Constitution Day.

1948 - The UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the day is now celebrated as Human Rights Day around the world.

1968 - The biggest heist in Japanese history - the 300 million yen robbery - was committed against a branch of the Nihon Shintaku Ginko bank in Tokyo's Kokubunji district by a man dressed as a police officer; despite seven years of investigation, also the largest in Japanese history, the crime was never solved.

1993 - The last shift left Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland; the closure of the 156-year-old pit marked the end of the old County Durham coalfield, which had been in operation since the Middle Ages - or more than 800 years!

2007 - Led Zeppelin reunited for the first time in three decades when they appeared at the Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert; nearly thirty years after the band's dissolution following the death of John Bonham in September 1980, the seat behind the drum kit for this legendary gig was occupied by his son, Jason Bonham.
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Pop History Moment: The Debut of 'Coronation Street'

On this day in 1960 Coronation Street made its television debut on Granada Television (now ITV Studios)...  The very same episode was placed here on this day in 2010, on the occasion of the show's 50th anniversary.  Nearly 7,500 episodes and 50 years later the show is heaped with superlatives, including Britain's longest-running soap opera and the world's longest-running dramatic programme among many others.



Set in Manchester's fictional working class district of Weatherfield - itself based on the City of Salford - the brainchild of Tony Warren was initially rubbished by critics but embraced by audiences, who'd made it the number one show on British television by 1961. This dichotomy probably best illustrates the class divide in Britain; ITV was basically founded in an effort to put the working class majority and their stories on television, in direct competition to the shows aired by the middle class, pro-Establishment BBC.



From its beginning Coronation Street sought to combine the aesthetics of kitchen sink drama popular in British cinema throughout the 1950s with those of the American soap opera; among its other innovations was the presence of strong female characters, such as Ena Sharples (Violet Carson), Elsie Tanner (Patricia Phoenix), and Annie Walker (Doris Speed) - proprietress of the Rovers Return Inn. The original cast are mostly gone now... Only one remains, namely Ken Barlow (William Roache).
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Happy Birthdame!

I first became aware of her when the sitcom she made, As Time Goes By, began appearing on our local PBS affiliate; alongside her old friend Geoffrey Palmer - himself a Britcom stalwart - Judi Dench added a kind of gravitas to the proceedings that, if anything, made the show funnier.

Then came Mrs. Brown (1997), a little movie about a little woman that plays a huge part in bringing the character of the reclusive Queen Victoria to light; together with Palmer, Antony Sher (a revelation as Benjamin Disraeli) and Billy Connolly, the film portrays the creation of an imperial matriarchy that saved the British throne at a time of crisis.

At an age (a radiant 76) when most people are slowing down to enjoy their dotage, Dame Judi Dench appears to be full steam ahead, never making a misstep in the choices of roles - whether onstage or onscreen: Tea with Mussolini (1999), Chocolat (2000), The Shipping News (2001), Mrs Henderson Presents (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006)...

She just keeps getting better and better, which makes celebrating her birthday a no-brainer for the Pop Culture Institute!
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"I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses

The Waitresses were among my favourite bands when, back in the day, I and my hair were all about the New Wave; in memory of their vocalist Patty Donahue, who died on this day in 1996 of lung cancer, it's their biggest hit, from the 1982 album Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful.

It's not available on CD; for that you'll need to get The Best of the Waitresses; the band is shown here performing it on BBC2's long-running music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test.
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Remembering... Margaret Hamilton

Sooner or later, every pretty girl becomes aware that her looks won't last forever, meaning she must develop talent or personality or some other such thing to compensate... For all that plain girls may dream of beauty, the nightmare of losing it never need trouble their sleep.

Margaret Hamilton - born on this day in 1902 - was one of the hardest working actresses in Hollywood, precisely because she wasn't pretty; glamour girls are almost always the flavour of the month, whereas a classic like vanilla is a perennial favourite.

Famed for her portrayal of The Wicked Witch of the West, Hamilton assayed a variety of maids, nurses, schoolteachers, and New England spinsters during the course of her long career, from Zoo in Budapest (1933) to her final appearance nearly fifty years later on a 1982 episode of the television show Lou Grant.

Rumour has it (and true or not it has a nice ring to it) when Gregory Maguire wrote his great novel Wicked, he made Elphaba (the name he gave to the Wicked Witch of the West) concerned about the ill-treatment of animals as a tribute to her; throughout her life, Margaret Hamilton's charitable works always supported children and animals.

She was, to all who met her, a beautiful lady indeed...
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Happy Birthday Your Imperial Highness

In another life Masako Owada could have been a diplomat, as she was before her marriage, and as her father Hisashi Owada is; no doubt in her next life - as Empress of Japan - she will not only be among that country's foremost ambassadors but a superlative one at that, owing to her background. If, that is, she can get the Imperial Household Agency to stop hectoring her over her failure to produce a male heir - as if bullying someone were any good way to get what you want!

Born on this day in 1963, Crown Princess Masako - bright, beautiful, beloved - has instead turned into something of a spectre within Japan's Royal Family, seldom venturing out on public duties, nursing the wounds that result from the particular misogynies of royal life. For a woman as worldly as Her Imperial Highness, the paternalism of Japanese society - especially in its upper echelon - has proven especially hurtful.

Not that she didn't expect it; stories abound about how many times she refused Crown Prince Naruhito's proposal and (setting aside all romantic notions about his persistence during their courtship) it's a darn good thing he's stood by her as resolutely through her trials as he has. Even more so than with most married couples, her problems really are his problems.
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"Willow" by Joan Armatrading

Birthday wishes go out today to Joan Armatrading, the anglo-Caribbean singer whose smoky voice has no doubt proven the ideal soundtrack to many a steamy night...

I chose this song because it was featured on the soundtrack for the film Boys on the Side, which for three months in the mid-90s never left my CD player. It's the song of hers with which I'm most familiar and, having since experienced a broader spectrum of her music, in my opinion shows her full range of talents well.

Plus, it's got a great message; what more could you want?
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POPnews - December 9th

[P. B. S. Pinchback was many things - newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, and mountebank; although racially he referred to himself by the quaint term quadroon, he chose to take pride in his accomplishments (over which he had some degree of control) rather than anything as arbitrary as the colour of his skin.]
1425 - The Catholic University of Leuven was founded as a Studium Generale courtesy of a papal bull issued by Martin V.

1531 - The Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have first appeared to Juan Diego in the Mexican town of Tepeyac.

1824 - Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeated a Royalist army under Viceroy José de la Serna and José de Canterac at the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.

1872 - Louisiana's P. B. S. Pinchback became the first black governor in US history; his tenure in Baton Rouge lasted 35 days.

1897 - The feminist newspaper La Fronde was first published in Paris by Marguerite Durand.

1905 - In France, a law separating church and state was passed.

1917 - In Palestine, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire.

1922 - Gabriel Narutowicz was elected the first President of Poland by the Sejm.

1931 - The Constituent Cortes approved the constitution which established the Second Spanish Republic.

1935 - Walter Liggett, an American newspaper editor and muckraker based in Minneapolis, was killed in front of his family in a gangland murder; Liggett had recently exposed the connection between gangster Kid Cann and the administration of Minnesota governor Floyd B. Olson. His daughter Marda Liggett Woodbury would grow up to write a book about her father's crusading work against corruption entitled Stopping The Presses: The Murder of Walter W. Liggett.

1946 - The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials began with the Doctors' Trial, which prosecuted Nazi doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.

1952 - The dense mixture of fog and coal smoke that had first descended over London on December 5th finally cleared, although the impact of the Great Smog would be felt for months.

1958 - The John Birch Society was founded in the United States.

1960 - The first episode of Britain's longest running television soap opera Coronation Street was broadcast.

1961 - Tanganyika gained its independence from the United Kingdom; today the East African territory is better known as Tanzania.

1965 - During the Kecksburg UFO Incident a fireball was seen in the skies over Michigan and Pennsylvania; witnesses later reported something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admitted that it had examined an object as a result, but changed their story from its having been a meteor to some kind of Russian satellite instead.

1979 - It was announced that the virus which causes smallpox had been eradicated.

1990 - Lech Wałęsa became the first-ever directly elected President of Poland.

2008- Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested by federal officials for a number of alleged crimes including attempting to sell the US Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
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"A Little Jive Is Good For You" by Martha Tilton

Although hers was the go-to voice when it came time to dub such actresses as Barbara Stanwyck, Martha O'Driscoll, and Anne Gwynne on film, here Martha Tilton (who died on this day in 2006) is all herself - to spectacular results!  Also appearing are the Slate Brothers, whose limited filmography belies their success as raconteurs; for years they ran a club on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.

This precious little nugget of pop culture comes to us courtesy of Soundies - those grand-daddies of the music video that used to feature in the cinemas of yesteryear, which have been given a new lease on life courtesy of YouTube.
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In Memoriam: Martha Tilton

Of all the purveyors of ear candy in an era renowned for pure tones and elegant phrasing, few had a patch on the Liltin' Miss Tilton...

Born in November 1915, Martha Tilton got her start performing with the vocal group Three Hits and a Miss, before hitting the big time as the girl singer with Benny Goodman's Orchestra on their radio showcase Camel Caravan. It was with them she recorded her breakthrough hit And the Angels Sing, and she was with them when they played their legendary gig at Carnegie Hall in 1938 - considered by many to be the beginning of the Swing Era.

As a recording artist, Tilton was lucky (and talented) enough to be signed by Capitol Records, which was established at the height of America's involvement in World War II, and not only survived but thrived (despite the wartime rationing of vinyl) owing to the superior artistry of the acts it signed.

Tilton's talents have also been preserved in a visual medium, thanks to her many appearances in film and Soundies shorts, which have gained a whole new life thanks to YouTube.

Martha Tilton died on this day in 2006, and may be gone but as long as there is music will never be forgotten...
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Gratuitous Brunette: Teri Hatcher

Once upon a time this image of birthday gal Teri Hatcher - taken when she portrayed Lois Lane in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - was the hottest thing on the Internet, having been downloaded some 20,000 times...

I know this doesn't seem like much today, but in 1995 it was enough to make the shot legendary and Hatcher among the world wide web's first viral sensations. Having made a similar pop culture sensation via an episode of Seinfeld after the cancellation of Lois & Clark in 1997, Hatcher landed the role of accident-prone Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, which in 2004-5 was the hottest thing on TV. She remains resident on Wisteria Lane to this day...
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"Black Boys on Mopeds" by Sinead O'Connor

From the much-loved 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got by Sinéad O'Connor, it's Black Boys on Mopeds, done here live.

Breithla Shona Dhuit Sinéad!
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Christina: The Girl King

She was born, on this day in 1626, under what astrologers all agreed was an auspicious star; hers was to be the reign to end all reigns... Raised by her father Gustav II Adolf as a Prince (until the age of five, anyway) from 1632 to 1654 Christina reigned as King of Sweden; they called her the Girl King.

Thing is, she wasn't very good at it. Damn astrology...

Bored of life in the relative cultural backwater of Stockholm, Christina abdicated her throne at the age of 28 in favour of her cousin, who became Charles X Gustav. She then exiled herself to Rome, where her palazzo became for a time a grand literary and artistic salon. While there she also converted to Catholicism; as the most famous convert of her day, she became a thing of fascination to Papists, this one woman counter-reformation whose father had once led the failed Protestant charge during the Thirty Years' War only to fall at the Battle of Lützen. Never a devoted Catholic, she was nevertheless a committed one.

Having lavished her immense fortune on the famously rapacious aristocracy of Rome, after just two years Christina realized she was broke, and so was forced to take her show on the road in an effort to drum up funds. Her assertive manner and masculine dress scandalized the ladies of Louis XIV's Versailles; while at Fontainebleau in 1656 she and the wily Cardinal Mazarin hatched a plot to make her Queen of Naples, which might have succeeded but for the murder of her Master of the Horse marchese Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi in 1657 at the hands of two of her servants and by her order. Although technically legal, it was to make her very unpopular indeed.

Having burned her bridges in France she was rebuffed from visiting Cromwell's England and so made a humiliating return to Sweden in 1660 to ask for her old job back following the death of Charles X Gustav, even though the one thing that could have restored her popularity - a penis - was not to be possible there for another 300 years. Not only did the Swedes prefer to be ruled by the new Charles XI (a four-year-old boy) while there she was forced to sign a new instrument of renunciation, giving up all claim to a throne the vast majority of her former subjects didn't want her to have anyway.

Thus humbled, she returned to Rome, where she died in April 1689; she is buried at the Vatican, in St. Peter's Basilica.
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Rethinking Mary, Queen of Scots

That history is written by the victors is especially true when considering the life and achievements of Mary, Queen of Scots... Born on this day in 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, Mary ascended the throne of Scotland at the age of six days following the death of her father James V; even though most agreed he died of grief - some said over recent losses to his uncle Henry VIII at the Battle of Solway Moss, others that his hoped-for heir had been a girl - the official cause was cholera. She was raised thereafter by her formidable French mother, Marie de Guise.

To her contemporaries (not all of them fawning sycophants and courtiers) there was much that was commendable in and about the lively girl with the lush chestnut hair and long limbs; yet Mary's reputation has, until recently, suffered from the slings and arrows of scholarly hacks.

True, she made some terrible decisions in her life; then again, who hasn't? The trouble is, when you're Queen (and Mary was twice a Queen, having also been Queen of France from July 1559 to December 1560) your lousy decisions tend to blow up in your face not just in front of everyone but when everyone's watching you as well; since the state is only as infallible as the monarch, too much of this tends to be quite unnerving, and an unnerved governing class never governs well, so an unnerving sovereign is usually gotten rid of forthwith by hook or by crook.

Anyway, as if the events leading up to her abdication in July 1567 weren't bad enough (and they were) her ill-starred escape from Scottish custody at Loch Leven Castle, military defeat at the Battle of Langside, and inevitable capture by the English at Carlisle (all in May 1568) seem to pale in comparison to the humiliation of her two decades in English custody; a Queen almost from birth, her captivity may have cut her dignity as deeply as her death sentence, deeper in many ways than even the blade that would one day separate her head from her body.

The compatriots of Mary's archnemesis Elizabeth I and their successors have tended to remember the vanquished Queen (beheaded at Fotheringay Castle in February 1587) as everything their own mistress wasn't: frivolous, easily flattered, and a slut. Had things worked out a little better for the lively and passionate Mary, Queen of Scots - had she not been quite so gullible in her relationships with men, just as a for instance - it might be the reputation of her brittle, ambivalent cousin that would need rehabilitation today, and not the other way around.

Mary's reputation, though, has been in recovery for nearly forty years, ever since the appearance of Lady Antonia Fraser's epic 1969 biography, and is probably as good as it'll ever be today given the circumstances. In the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age Mary's death was given its rightful context as the event which triggered the Spanish Armada; Jane Dunn's excellent book Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens revisits both women with unabashed fascination and adds both shading and dimension to the received view that, while Mary was crafty, Elizabeth was also crafty. Plus cunning, savvy, Machiavellian even...

(Everything, in other words, Mary was not but shoulda been to survive. ~ MSM)
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"Imagine" by John Lennon

Imagine was written and recorded by John Lennon in 1971, and was the first single from the album of the same name; it is the official anthem of all people who hope for a better world tomorrow than the one they knew yesterday.

Frequently criticized by the people it criticizes, the song has also suffered jibes from the cynical over the years; yet all the song asks of us is that we imagine, a task which is rendered impossible by cynicism, apparently.
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Pop History Moment: The Killing of John Lennon

Exactly what Mark David Chapman hoped to accomplish by killing John Lennon on this day in 1980 has never been made clear; obviously the product of disordered thinking, psychotic, and influenced by delusion, Chapman's violent murder of a person whose life was devoted to peace is one of the greatest tragedies of our time. Much of Chapman's 'excuse' for killing Lennon revolved around his fondness for the nihilistic novel The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger; that Chapman had hoped to model his life after the book's protagonist - a self-absorbed douchebag of epic proportions by the name of Holden Caulfield - goes a long way towards pointing at serious mental illness on Chapman's part.

Lennon was returning home to The Dakota from a recording session at Manhattan's Record Plant Studios at 10:50 PM when he passed Chapman - for whom he had signed an autograph only the day before - on the sidewalk outside the building. After calling out 'Mr. Lennon' Chapman fired five hollow point bullets at his supposed idol, hitting him with four of them, causing major damage to his internal organs, including a severed aorta which would eventually cause Lennon's death from hypovolemic shock.

As Lennon staggered into the building, Chapman withdrew his copy of the book, sat down, and began reading; when he was finally arrested he put up no fight. Lennon, meanwhile, was declared DOA at Roosevelt Hospital at 11:15 PM.

Although he was given no funeral, John Lennon has been given a memorial; Central Park's Strawberry Fields Memorial, situated across the street from where Lennon was killed, opened in October 1985. It is one of the most popular scenes of pilgrimage in New York City.

Despite the fact that Chapman had planned his crime for years, and even spoken about it to friends and family, he was charged with second degree murder; he has been denied parole six times, thanks as much to a grassroots effort by fans as it is to the efficacy of Yoko Ono's legal team.

Mark David Chapman is currently incarcerated in seclusion at Attica.
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POPnews - December 8th

[The Monument of the Hand was erected in the Cretan prefecture of Chania to remember those who died when the car ferry SS Heraklion sank off Falkonera en route from the port of Souda to Piraeus near Athens.]

1609 - The reading room at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana opened its doors in Milan; after Oxford University's Bodleian Library - which first opened its doors in November 1602 - it was the second public library in Europe.

1660 - Margaret Hughes became the first actress to appear on an English public stage when she assayed the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello by Thomas Killigrew's new King's Company at their theatre, Gibbon's Tennis Court, in London's Vere Street.

1854 - Pope Pius IX proclaimed the Roman Catholic dogma of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin.

1869 - Timothy Eaton founded the T. Eaton Co. Limited at 178 Yonge Street in Toronto, which would eventually run the tony Eaton's department store chain throughout Canada before his heirs ran it into the ground in August 1999.

1886 - The American Federation of Labor was established in Columbus, Ohio.

1889 - The Royal Netherlands Football Association was founded.

1904 - Denmark's Konservativ Ungdom (Young Conservatives) was founded by Carl F. Herman von Rosen; still in existence today, not only is it that country's oldest political youth organization it's believed to be one of the oldest in the world.

1907 - King Gustaf V acceded to the Swedish throne following the death of his father, Oscar II.

1914 - Near the beginning of World War I the German Kaiserliche Marine under the command of Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee was engaged by Britain's Royal Navy under Doveton Sturdee in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

1941 - The US Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan following the latter's bombing of Pearl Harbor the previous day.

1953 - Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his Atoms for Peace speech at the UN General Assembly.

1966 - The Greek ship SS Heraklion sank during a storm in the Aegean Sea, killing over 200.

1974 - A plebiscite in Greece abolished that country's monarchy for the second and final time since it had been established in 1832.

1982 - Activist Norman Mayer threatened to blow up the Washington Monument, before being killed by United States Park Police; future White House Press Secretary George Stephanopoulos - then an intern at the nearby Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - made his first appearance on Nightline that evening to discuss the incident.

1987 - Melbourne was rocked by news of the Queen Street Massacre, a shooting spree by Frank Vitkovic which killed 8 and injured five - but not Con Margelis, the one he was gunning for - at the Queen Street offices of the Australia Post; after finally being disarmed by Frank Carmody, Vitkovic jumped eleven stories to his death. The involvement of Australia's Church of Scientology in this incident has never been satisfactorily investigated...

1993 - The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law by US President Bill Clinton.

1995 - Philip Lawrence, headmaster of St. George's Roman Catholic School in North London's Maida Vale district, was murdered by Learco Chindamo of the mostly Filipino local street gang Wo Shing Wo; Lawrence had come to the aid of one of his pupils, William Njoh, who was seriously injured in the attack.

2004 - Darrell Abbott - known professionally as Dimebag Darrell, lead singer and founding member of such heavy metal stalwarts Pantera and Damageplan - was shot and killed by deranged fan Nathan Gale on stage at Columbus, Ohio's Alrosa Villa while performing with Damageplan. The band's drum technician, John 'Kat' Brooks, and tour manager, Chris Paluska, were injured in the fray, while their head of security, Jeff 'Mayhem' Thompson, Alrosa Villa employee Erin Halk, and audience member Nathan Bray (who'd been performing CPR on Abbott) were all killed; as for the shooter, he was handily despatched by Officer James D. Niggemeyer (shown, at right). The entire story is told in Chris Armold's 2007 book A Vulgar Display of Power: Courage and Carnage at the Alrosa Villa.

2008 - Kirsty Williams was elected leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, making her the first female leader of a political party in Wales.
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