POPnews - April 13th

[Designed by John Russell Pope and built by John McShain on a commanding site in West Potomac Park, construction on the Jefferson Memorial began in December 1938 (and was completed by the architectural firm of Eggers & Higgins amid some controversy following Pope's death); the main sculptor was Rudulph Evans, with Adolph A. Weinman selected to sculpt the pediment relief above the entrance. The bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson it contains - also by Evans - was added in 1947. Jefferson wasn't the first choice for a memorial on the site, however. As early as 1901 the McMillan Commission had proposed a similar structure to house numerous sculptures of the nation's most illustrious men; nothing came of that plan, nor of a memorial - proposed in 1925 - to honour the recently deceased Theodore Roosevelt. It was another Roosevelt, FDR, who consulted with the Commission of Fine Arts in 1934 about erecting the colossal shrine to his idol, which stands today amidst thousands of sakura donated to the United States by Japan in both 1912 and 1965.]

1111 - Henry V was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Paschal II at St. Peter's Basilica.

1598 - France's King Henri IV issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the country's minority Protestant Huguenots and ending the French Wars of Religion.

1742 - George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah premiered at the Music Hall in Dublin.

1861 - At the outset of the American Civil War, Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate forces following a 33-hour siege.

1868 - The Abyssinian War ended as British and Indian troops under Robert Napier captured Magdala from forces loyal to Emperor Tewodros II, who committed suicide as his fortress was taken.

1870 - New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded; its doors opened in February 1872, with the core of its collection donated by railroad tycoon John Taylor Johnston.

1873 - The Colfax Massacre took place in Colfax, Louisiana; more than a hundred black men were killed by white supremacists belonging to groups such as the White League while attempting to vote.

1919 - At the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre British troops shot and killed at least 379 unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar.

1921 - The Spanish Communist Workers' Party was founded.

1939 - India's Hindustani Lal Sena (Indian Red Army) was formed on the twentieth anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, vowing to engage in armed struggle against the British.

1943 - The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC, on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth.

1948 - A British soldier and 79 Jewish doctors, nurses, and medical students from Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus were massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra, near Jerusalem, when their convoy of two Haganah escort cars, two ambulances and two buses were attacked. So badly burnt were the bodies that only 31 of them could be identified; the rest were buried in a mass grave at Sanhedria Cemetery. The attack was said to have been ordered by Abdul Kader Husseini in retaliation for the Deir Yassin Massacre.

1953 - CIA director Allen Dulles launched a mind-control program known as MKULTRA.

1969 - Brisbane's tramway network closed, likely because some oil company executive managed to buy himself a local politician or two; all trams were then replaced by - surprise! - diesel buses.

1970 - An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 exploded, putting the crew into deadly peril, as dramatized in Ron Howard's 1995 film Apollo 13 as well as 1974's Houston, We've Got a Problem.

1974 - Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft) launched America's first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.

1975 - An attack by Lebanon's Phalangist resistance resulted in the so-called Bus Massacre, in which 26 members of Palestine's P.F.L. were killed, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.

1976 - The US Treasury Department reintroduced the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson's 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration.

1992 - The Great Chicago Flood occurred when the damaged wall of a utility tunnel beneath the Chicago River opened into a breach which flooded basements and underground facilities throughout the Chicago Loop with an estimated 250 million gallons of water.

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"Now We Are Free" by Lisa Gerrard (with Hans Zimmer)

Fans of Dead Can Dance have known for years the power that's in the voice of Lisa Gerrard (who was born on this day in 1961); it took Ridley Scott, though, to bring her powerful gift to the widest possible audience...

Pairing her with Hans Zimmer, the two composed a haunting soundtrack for Scott's 2000 film Gladiator, for which they received a Golden Globe and were Oscar-nominated.
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Remembering... Josephine Baker

Ernest Hemingway called her '... the most sensational woman anyone ever saw...' and he must have meant it because it wasn't like Papa to gush; yet her daring wasn't just confined to the stage, it seasoned her whole outlook on life. Whether shaking her banana-adorned booty at the Folies Bergères or secreting papers out of France for the Resistance, all her life Josephine Baker lived it and loved it right on the edge.

Born in St. Louis in June 1906, she dropped out of school at 12 to become a street performer; at 15 she traveled the US in vaudeville, which landed her in New York City at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Awarded the coveted spot of last girl in the chorus line* at the Plantation Club, she parlayed her cabaret success into roles on Broadway, in such revues as Shuffle Along (1921) and The Chocolate Dandies (1924).

Predictably, the offensive titles of these shows were the least offensive things about them; tired of American bigotry she set her sights on brighter lights - an entire City of Lights, in fact. Opening in Paris in October 1925 she soon became the toast of Europe. Initially a dancer, once out from under the thumb of Jim Crow she found her voice as well; eventually she added movies to her resume, starring in three perfect gems: the silent Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934) and her final film Princess Tam Tam (1935).

Following this success she attempted a return to the United States, appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936; it was a flop, and before the run had ended she was replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee. She returned to France, disgusted, and stayed away for years - she simply refused to play to a segregated audience, and later it would be her appearances in Las Vegas that helped integrate audiences there.

After her personal triumph over the Nazis in German-occupied Paris she continued to funnel money back to the US to support civil rights organizations; in fact, she was the only woman to speak at the March on Washington in August 1963. Putting her heart where her money is with regards to integration, years before anyone had ever heard of Mia Farrow or Angelina Jolie, Baker proceeded to adopt 12 orphans of various ethnicities, housing them at her home, the Château de Milandes.

Her final performance came on the occasion of her fiftieth anniversary on the Parisian etage; booked into Bobino nightclub in 1975 - with the high-profile patronage of Prince Rainier, Princess Grace, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - she gave a performance which had those in attendance (jaded jet-setters all) tripping over each other to find a superlative that was superlative enough to describe it.

Two days later she was discovered, unconscious, in her dressing room, surrounded by glowing reviews; two days after that, on this day in 1975, Josephine Baker died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.

*The last girl in the chorus line typically performed the complicated choreography required of the entire line in a comically haphazard fashion, following which she would perform it in an even more elaborate form for the encore; it was a signal honour to be awarded this spot in the line up, and earned Baker the epithet of 'highest paid chorus girl in vaudeville'.

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"Hug My Soul" by Saint Etienne

Birthday wishes go out today to Sarah Cracknell, one third of Saint Etienne (along with Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs) whose wistful 1960s-inspired electronica dominated the UK pop scene in the early 1990s; while their biggest hit was arguably a cover of Neil Young's 1970 classic Only Love Can Break Your Heart, the band actually released 7* albums between 1991 and 2005.

Hug My Soul was the third single from the band's third album Tiger Bay, and originally appeared in 1994, following the singles Pale Movie and Like a Motorway. The last release from their original label, Heavenly Records, it - along with the album - was re-released in 1996 by their new record label, Creation Records, featuring different artwork and a slightly shuffled track listing.

*Or eight, depending upon whether or not one counts Fairfax High, which was only sold as as a bonus disc with 1998's Good Humor.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of FDR

To those who led it - as much as to those who fought it - World War II was an unimaginable strain; at the head of the American effort was an extraordinary man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. First elected President in November 1932 as the Great Depression was beginning to deepen, things had just started to lift during his second term (thanks as much to the machinations of the military-industrial complex as to the New Deal) but as his third election loomed Hitler's thugs marched into Poland in September 1939. A much more worldly figure than many of his recent predecessors in the Presidency, FDR foresaw the threat to world democracy should the powers of Europe crumble under tyranny. That threat was finally brought home following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 at which point the United States finally entered the war; even then the President adamantly insisted on a policy of Europe First to aid British and French allies.

For guiding the United States towards war against Fascism the President nobly suffered the very worst name-calling available to his foes, many of whom already felt him a traitor to his class for deigning to assist the working class in the first place. In that reductive way which is second nature to the Republican Party they likewise turned the Second World War into being all about Jews - and why would anybody, even the man they vilified as 'President Rosenveld', want to help them? For all their subsequent posturing about how unpatriotic it is to criticize a Republican President during wartime, they attacked FDR now as savagely as Hitler attacked Holland, Belgium, Denmark, the United Kingdom...

Yet Roosevelt remained stalwart, infuriating his domestic foes by ignoring them as surely as he made his foreign foes irate with rhetoric. Following the Yalta Conference in February 1945, FDR traveled the Arabic world and Northern Africa, holding meetings with Egypt's King Farouk I, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, and King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia; he then had what would be his final meeting with Winston Churchill, and thereafter met with US ambassadors in Algiers.

When he addressed Congress in March (on the subject of the Yalta Conference) those assembled were shocked by his gaunt appearance. Formerly a sportsman who - despite his crippled legs - had a robust upper body, he was now a frail old man with a haggard face and the complexion of a ghost. He spent the month of March at his desk in the Oval Office - mostly chiding Stalin - but by the end of the month (having already won his record-setting fourth election) he was persuaded to take a break, and so went to his favourite spa, Georgia's Warm Springs, in advance of a proposed address to the founding conference of the United Nations.

On this day in 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took to his bed, complaining of a headache; he never returned from it. He'd had, in fact, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and died there at 3:55 PM, his former mistress Lucy Mercer by his side; his daughter Anna Roosevelt Boettiger had arranged for her to take care of him in her absence (her son was sick as well). When FDR was first taken ill First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had wanted to come, but was urged to keep her afternoon speaking engagement with the Sulgrave Club so as to not arouse suspicion. During a performance by pianist Evelyn Tyner she was called away and told by telephone to return to the White House as soon as possible. She watched the rest of the performance and left to thunderous applause; as soon as the new President was sworn in at 7 PM she left for Georgia.

The President's body was borne back to Washington by train, and all along the track Americans of every age and colour stood silently to watch it pass, many with tears streaming down their faces. Following a state funeral he was thence removed to his home at Hyde Park, New York, where he is interred at Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site. Less than a month after FDR's death Adolf Hitler took a pistol and scurried, rat-like, beneath the rubble of Berlin, where he did the only right thing he ever did and ended the war. Roosevelt's Vice-President - now President Harry Truman - dedicated the V-E Day festivities to a man who, as much as any enlisted soldier, gave his life to keep his country free.
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POPnews - April 12th

[While few people had even heard of Terry Fox when he began the Marathon of Hope on this day in 1980, within weeks he was a national celebrity; by now - nearly thirty years after he was forced to quit his run just 143 days in, or at halfway across the country - he is Canada's greatest hero.]
467 CE - Anthemius was elevated to Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.

1204 - The Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople, thus ending the Byzantine Empire, if only temporarily.

1557 - The city of Cuenca in Ecuador was founded by Gil Ramírez Dávalos.

1606 - The Union Jack was adopted as the flag of Great Britain - although it's only called a Union Jack when it's flying from a ship's mast. At all other times it's called the Union flag.

1861 - The American Civil War began when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston.

1864 - During the American Civil War, Confederate forces under Nathan Bedford Forrest and James R. Chalmers massacred most of the African American soldiers who'd surrendered to them at Tennessee's Fort Pillow.

1917 - During World War I, Canadian forces successfully took Vimy Ridge from the Germans; the victory - at the end of three days of fierce fighting (and at a cost of 3,598 killed with 7,004 wounded on the Canadian side alone) - is considered to have been a pivotal moment in the emergence of Canada as a world power. The battle is commemorated at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France (which was rededicated by the Queen of Canada in 2007) and is the subject of Pierre Berton's aptly-titled work of populist history, Vimy.

1927 - Believing a Communist takeover of China to be imminent, Chiang Kai-shek purged them from the ranks of the Kuomintang; untold hundreds were killed and untold thousands went missing during the April 12 Incident. The massacre ended China's First United Front yet only postponed the Communist onslaught by a generation.

1934 - The strongest surface wind gust in history - 231 mph - was measured by the staff of the Mount Washington Observatory on the summit of New Hampshire's Mount Washington.

1935 - The Bristol Blenheim had its maiden flight.

1937 - English aviator and inventor Sir Frank Whittle ground-tested the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby.

1961 - Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into outer space, on board the Soviet Union's Vostok 1; the event is still commemorated the world over as Yuri's Night.

1968 - Following an accident involving VX nerve gas at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah's Skull Valley, 4,372 sheep died - of which 2,150 had to be euthanized, and a further 1,877 were rendered unsalable due to their exposure - during what came to be known as the Dugway sheep incident.

1980 - Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope run across Canada in aid of cancer research by dipping his artificial leg into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland.

1981 - Columbia's STS-1 mission became the first for NASA's Space Shuttle program.

1992 - Disneyland Resort Paris - more commonly called Euro Disney - opened in the eastern suburbs of Paris, and was the second international Disney resort property (the first being Tokyo Disney Resort).

1994 - The legal firm of Canter & Siegel - husband Laurence Canter and wife Martha Siegel - posted the Internet's first commercial mass spam mailing on over 6,000 Usenet groups; entitled Green Card Lottery - Final One? and using a script written by a programmer known only as 'Jason', their actions set in motion a near crippling of the Internet. Not only does spam cost US business alone $13 billion it results in a slower service all around, and is rightly reviled as a practice despite being virtually unstoppable.

2002 - Pedro Carmona became interim President of Venezuela during a coup attempt against Hugo Chávez.

2007 - The Kremlin vetoed an investigation into the March 1968 death of Yuri Gagarin, who was - as previously noted - the first man in space.
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Remembering... Jane Bolin

As will happen when somebody is first at something, they soon find a lot of other firsts piled at their feet; at least that was the case with Jane Bolin...

Aside from being fourth of her siblings - born on this day in 1908 - everything else Jane Bolin did was first: she was the first black woman to receive a law degree from Yale Law School (in 1931), the first to join the New York City Bar Association, and the first to join the city's law department. In 1939 she became the first black woman to serve as a judge in the United States when she was sworn in to the bench of the New York City Domestic Relations Court, having been appointed to the position at the age of just 31 by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Her position was renewed three times, and when she was finally forced to retire at the age of 70 she'd served the families of New York for 40 years. In that time she strove to racially integrate city services. She also served on the boards of the NAACP and the National Urban League, and was awarded honorary degrees from Tuskeegee Institute, Williams College, Hampton University, Western College for Women and Morgan State University.

Bolin died in January 2007 at the age of 98, and was survived by her son, Yorke B. Mizelle.
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"Down In The Depths" by Lisa Stansfield

As performed by birthday gal Lisa Stansfield - in a video directed by Phillippe Gautier - Down in the Depths retains all of the power inherent in the performance of its originator, Ethel Merman, but without the latter's trademark bombast; as a result, you may or may not like this version, which Stansfield recorded for the 1990's AIDS relief album Red Hot + Blue, and which itself was named for Cole Porter's 1936 musical Red, Hot and Blue in which this song premiered.

Got that?
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"All Around The World" by Lisa Stansfield

Lisa Stansfield was a middling pop star and children's television presenter when All Around the World rocketed her to international stardom in 1989, and along with it her debut solo album Affection; with a smoky, smooth voice ideally suited to blue-eyed soul she offered a version of Cole Porter's Down in the Depths (on the tribute/charity album Red Hot + Blue) so torchy it was a threat to curtains. She also did her part to raise the roof on Wembley Stadium during her duet with George Michael on These Are the Days of Our Lives at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

Thanks to one of my rare relationships, I'll always have half a claim on this as being 'my song', since once upon a time it had been 'our song'; thanks as well to a thriving sense of nostalgia (which seems especially strong in these, my twilight years) the song is once again on heavy rotation in my iPod nearly 20 years after it became too painful to listen to when that adolescent love affair - as these things will - inevitably came to an end...
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Pop History Moment: Rock Song Proves Prophetic

London's Brixton neighbourhood erupted in violence on this day in 1981, in an eerie echo of the song The Guns of Brixton, by The Clash. Although the song was written and released in December 1979 for their third album, London Calling, it spoke of discontent then brewing between Metropolitan Police and the largely black population there.

The 1981 riot began when police arrested a black youth on Railton Road under the aegis of Operation Swamp 81, which was aimed at reducing street crime in the area; needless to say, given the outcome, it failed miserably. More than 300 police and 65 civilian injuries were reported following the fracas, while 100 vehicles - including 56 belonging to police - were burned, along with 30 buildings. Another 150 buildings were damaged, mainly by looters. Of the 5,000 people involved, the 1,000 police present made just 82 arrests.

A public inquiry into the riot was made by Lord Scarman; his findings were published in November 1981.
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POPnews - April 11th

[Architect Adolf Leonard van Gendt found his inspiration for the Concertgebouw in Leipzig's Neue Gewandhaus, which was later destroyed during World War II; located in the Amsterdam suburb of Amstelveen - and built on some 2,186 twelve to thirteen meter (forty to forty-three foot) long pilings - the Concertgebouw is considered to have some of the best acoustics in the world.]
491 CE - Flavius Anastasius became Byzantine Emperor, with the name of Anastasius I, following the death of Zeno.

1079 - Stanislaus, Bishop of Krakow, was executed by order of Poland's Duke Bolesław II. Maybe. Then again, it might have been on May 8th. Anyway, for his trouble he would be canonized by Pope Innocent IV in September 1253.

1241 - Mongolian warlord and founder of the Blue Horde, Batu Khan defeated Hungary's Béla IV at the Battle of Muhi.

1689 - William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Great Britain; in order to accommodate the unprecedented arrangement special coronation regalia was made, including two pieces now known as the Queen's Orb and Sceptre.

1814 - The Treaty of Fontainebleau ended the War of the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon Bonaparte, forcing him to abdicate unconditionally for the first time.

1828 - The Argentinian city of Bahia Blanca was established as a fortress by Ramón Estomba upon the orders of Juan Manuel de Rosas, governor of Buenos Aires.

1865 - President Abraham Lincoln made his last public speech, at the gates of the White House, during which he spoke in favour of black suffrage. In the modestly-sized crowd that day was a certain John Wilkes Booth, whose reaction to Lincoln's announcement was to reverberate for generations... 'That is the last speech he will ever give,' he said, to his companion Lewis Powell, as they walked away.

1888 - Amsterdam's Concertgebouw was inaugurated with a concert in which an orchestra of 120 musicians and a chorus of 500 singers participated, performing works of Wagner, Handel, Bach, and Beethoven.

1919 - The International Labour Organization was founded.

1951 - The Stone of Scone - the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were (and British monarchs since Edward II in February 1308 have been) traditionally crowned - was found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey; it had been taken from within St. Edward's Chair in Westminster Abbey in December 1950 by four Scottish nationalist students (Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart) who also damaged it in the pilfering, whereupon it was repaired by Glasgow stonemason Robert Gray and returned to London.

That's the chair there, with the Stone of Scone safely thereunder ensconced; of course, since November 1996 the Stone has actually resided at Edinburgh Castle.

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1955 - Air India's Kashmir Princess crashed as a result of a bomb blast in a failed assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai by the Kuomintang; while it has always been explained that the Chinese Premier missed the flight due to an emercency appendectomy, recent intelligence indicates he may have been aware of the plot and sacrificed those on board for some reason known only to him. In all sixteen passengers and crew died in the crash - including seven journalists and Raymond Wong, the Hong Kong branch director of Xinhua News Agency - while three survived.

1961 - The war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann began, in Jerusalem.

1965 - During the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak fifty-one tornadoes touched down in six Midwestern states, killing 256 people.

1968 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

1970 - Apollo 13 was launched.

1979 - Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was deposed.

1987 - The London Agreement was secretly signed between Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres and Jordan's King Hussein.

2002 - An attempted coup d'état aimed at toppling Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez began.

2007 - A pair of bombings in the Algerian capital of Algiers killed 33 people and wounded 222 others.

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"Do You Want Crying" by Katrina and the Waves

Birthday wishes go out today to Katrina Leskanich, front woman for the Anglo-American band Katrina and the Waves, who would have been a one-hit wonder for their 1985 monster hit Walking on Sunshine were it not for this, the band's second single; in fact, Katrina and the Waves were still making music a dozen years later when they won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1997 with Love Shine a Light, in support of which they appeared an unprecedented four weeks in a row on Top of the Pops. *
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Pop History Moment: "The Great Gatsby" Is Published

F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece of the Jazz Age - The Great Gatsby - was first published on this day in 1925 by Scribner's; its iconic cover was designed by Francis Cugat prior to publication, and was said to have influenced the finished novel. The novel takes place during the summer of 1922, and concerns the dissipation of a group of new money swells at the outset of Prohibition.

A flop upon its initial release, it has morphed into a classic with the passage of the years.

The most famous adaptation of The Great Gatsby for film was made by Jack Clayton in 1974, and starred Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby, Mia Farrow as the object of his affection Daisy Buchanan, and Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway; previously made in 1949 and subsequently remade for television in 2000 (starring Mira Sorvino as Daisy), a silent version made in 1926 has long been considered lost.
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"Murder On The Dancefloor" by Sophie Ellis Bextor

Birthday wishes go out today to the UK's Nu-Disco phenom Sophie Ellis-Bextor, who is herself the offspring of a show business marriage; her father, Robin Bextor, is an award-winning director - most notably with The Earl of Wessex's ill-fated Ardent Productions - while her mother, Janet Ellis, is a sometime actress and former presenter on kids' TV stalwart Blue Peter.

Murder on the Dancefloor originally appeared on Ellis-Bextor's 2001 album Read My Lips; as a follow up to her hugely popular cover version of Take Me Home (originally recorded in 1974, by Cher) Murder on the Dancefloor certainly did its job... It remains her biggest hit to date.
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POPnews - April 10th

[Due to the efforts of Julius Sterling Morton, as many as a million trees were planted in Nebraska on the first Arbor Day; curiosity has me wondering how many of them might still be standing. Certainly this one no longer is...]

1606 - The Charter of the Virginia Company of London was given by England's King James I with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.

1815 - Following several centuries of dormancy Mount Tambora, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, began to erupt - a period of eruption that would last more than three months.

1821 - Following that year's Easter Sunday Mass Constantinople's Patriarch Gregory V was removed from the Patriarchal Cathedral by the Turks and hanged from the main gate of the Patriarchate, following which his body was thrown into the Bosphorus; the corpse was later recovered by Greek sailors, and is today interred in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens.

1856 - The Theta Chi Fraternity was founded, at Vermont's Norwich University.

1864 - Austrian Archduke Maximilian was elected Emperor of Mexico; his reign was unpopular both in Mexico and the rest of the world right from the start, and would struggle to last three years - after which time he was summarily executed.

1866 - The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.

1874 - The first Arbor Day was celebrated, in Nebraska City; a holiday designed to honour trees, its importance - like them - ought to be growing with each passing year. Yet with up to a quarter of urban tree cover at risk due to real estate development, and an ongoing soil erosion issue which threatens ground water levels in both rural and urban settings, promising an increase in drought - and let's not forget the wholesale destruction of rain forests in South America (due to cutting) and North America (due to the mountain pine beetle)! - each successive Arbor Day promises to be a hotter, drier, nastier one than any of those that came before.

1912 - The 'unsinkable' RMS Titanic left port in Southampton on her first and only voyage.

1919 - Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata was ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos.

1941 - Europe's Axis Powers established the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia, with Ante Pavelić's Ustase fascist insurgents in power.

1944 - Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Birkenau dressed in Dutch clothing; once safely across the Polish-Slovakian border they dictated a 32-page dossier - now known as the Vrba-Wetzler Report and published by Dr Oscar Krasniansky - which became the first-ever first-hand account of the goings-on inside a Nazi death camp.

1953 - Warner Bros premiered House of Wax - the first 3-D film to be accompanied by sterephonic sound; the film starred Vincent Price and Carolyn Jones (the future Morticia Addams).

1959 - Japan's Crown Prince Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, wed commoner Michiko Shōda at a solemn Shinto ceremony in Tokyo - despite the objection of Empress Kōjun, and other conservatives in the Imperial Household.

1963 - 129 people died when the submarine USS Thresher sank at sea off Cape Cod.

1968 - The TEV Wahine - a ferry connecting Lyttelton to Wellington across Cook Strait in New Zealand - foundered on Barrett Reef and capsized at Steeple Rock near the entrance to Wellington Harbour; of the 610 passengers and 123 crew on board, 53 people lost their lives.

1970 - Paul McCartney announced the break up of The Beatles, a week before the release of his debut solo album McCartney.

1972 - 20 days after he was kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Paraguayan businessman Oberdan Sallustro was executed by communist guerrillas from the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo.

1991 - The Italian ferry Moby Prince collided with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, killing 140.

1998 - The Belfast Agreement was signed.
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Pop History Moment: Marian Anderson Lets Freedom Ring

Owing entirely to their policy of official segregation, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused permission for noted operatic soprano Marian Anderson to give a recital at Constitution Hall in the spring of 1939; even though Anderson's manager Sol Hurok had been trying to book his client into one of DC's premiere musical venues for three years - and been rebuffed every time - somehow this refusal seemed to incite a little more umbrage in people.

For one thing, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt got wind of it, and resigned her membership forthwith - an entirely courageous move, especially in those days; in due time she would be joined by thousands of others - a major embarrassment for the organization, which had hitherto been a pillar of the establishment...

On this day in 1939 Marian Anderson sang instead at the Lincoln Memorial, at an open air concert planned by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes; Mrs. Roosevelt was there in the front row for this concert, though, along with 75,000 attendees in person and untold millions more on the radio. Anderson's recital ended with a rousing rendition of My Country, 'Tis of Thee. The concert not only had the intended benefit of highlighting the depth of American racism, it would have at least one unintended benefit as well, as it inspired the future good works of a certain 10-year old named Martin Luther King, Jr.

Proof of Anderson's classiness came when she later accepted the DAR's apology with the words 'You lose a lot of time hating people', and they finally invited her to perform - albeit for a whites-only audience - at a concert for war relief in 1942; although the District of Columbia abandoned its official policy of segregation following World War II the DAR would not follow suit until 1952.
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Happy Birthday Jenna Jameson

When I started the Pop Culture Institute, it was my intention to make history interesting for the masses, and to examine both the past and present through what a more pretentious person would call an 'entertainment lens'* but which I prefer to call 'pop culture'**; well, any educator will tell you that they learn as much or more from the process of teaching as they manage to impart, which has certainly been my experience here.

The main thing blogging has taught me is that the vast majority of people don't give as much as a gnat's dump about history. Thousands of words a week I publish, most of which comes and goes without being seen, let alone commented on - nothing! Longtime readers will recall that I used to be bitter about this, but I haven't been since I learned an even more important lesson...

What people really care about is sex. Which is why the mere mention of a porn star's name gives my traffic a noticeable bump***; not just major porn stars like our birthday gal Jenna Jameson here, either, but even obscure gay porn stars who died twenty years ago.

Jameson, of course, has proven to be one of the adult film industry's highest profile ambassadors as porn has made its inexorable trek from dirty little secret to the mainstream over the past couple of decades. Best known for her girl-on-girl work - which, like everything else I write about on here, I extensively researched - Jameson was also one of the first porn stars to embrace the Internet, which she did with her now-ex-husband Jay Grdina (better known by his nom de porn Justin Sterling).

When Jameson really went mainstream, though, was upon the publication of her memoirs, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale in August 2004; that led to a hosting gig on Playboy TV's Jenna's American Sex Star in November 2005. For obvious reasons, she remains tabloid fodder to this day...

*Movies, books, television - crap like that...
**Thus this blog is not called the Entertainment Lens Institute, or some similar abomination.
***Heh heh heh...
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"The Masochism Tango" by Tom Lehrer

In honour of Tom Lehrer's birthday I watched half a dozen performances by the man himself in his hey-day in search of the ideal song of his to post here; it is just such tasks which make research my single favourite part of blogging... Well, that and being able to do it in your underwear.

I eventually chose The Masochism Tango because there was something in the lyrics which spoke to me; admittedly, it mostly spoke to the masochist part of me - and it didn't so much speak as taunt - but there you have it. The song originally appeared on Lehrer's establishment offending 1959 album An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, alongside such fellow classics as Oedipus Rex, The Elements, and Poisoning Pigeons in the Park - although he'd been performing it for some years before that in his cabaret act.
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Pop History Moment: The Marriage of Charles and Camilla

On this day in 2005 The Prince of Wales wed his longtime mistress Camilla Parker Bowles at a much smaller event in Windsor than accompanied his first marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales in July 1981.

Immediately upon the announcement of the impending nuptials a series of constitutional snarls arose, regarding what titles Mrs. Parker-Bowles would have (both now and in the the future), and even whether a member of the royal family could marry in a civil ceremony (since they are technically the property of the State). It turns out that the royals are covered by the Human Rights Act 1998 - which is only fair, since they are the smallest minority community in the UK - and that legislation cleared the way for the marriage.

The couple's stated desire to have the ceremony at Windsor Castle would have opened the floodgates for all sorts of people to marry there, so during the planning stage the venue was changed to the Guildhall in Windsor, which is just outside the gates of the majestic castle. Finally, the date of the wedding had to be postponed one day to allow for the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

All of which could have been avoided by simply allowing them to marry when they first met in 1969. Still, the various compromises which have allowed them to be together - for instance, her use of the title Duchess of Cornwall now rather than Princess of Wales, and her future use of the title Princess Consort rather than Queen - seem to have outraged everyone, indicating that they are, in fact, compromises*.

*The word 'compromise' being Latin for 'nobody gets what they want'.
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POPnews - April 9th

[The Mercury Seven - Alan Shepard Jr., Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Leroy Cooper Jr. (L to R, back row) and Walter (Wally) Schirra Jr., Donald (Deke) Slayton, John Glenn Jr., Malcolm Carpenter (L to R, front row) - looking somewhat like the Andromeda Five, here pose for their only photograph together in uniform even though Slayton and Glenn aren't wearing their proper space boots but rather spray-painted work boots! My question is... Why not just put them in the back row, rather than front and center?]

715 CE - Pope Constantine died; he was succeeded by Gregory II on May 19th.

1024 - Pope Benedict VIII died; he was succeeded by John XIX on April 12th. Most interestingly, the new pope and his predecessor had been brothers, both being sons of Gregory I, Count of Tusculum, and his countess, Maria. As if that weren't interesting enough*, John XIX would be succeeded upon his death in October 1032 by his teenaged nephew, who reigned as Benedict IX.

*And chances are it wasn't...

1241 - At the Battle of Liegnitz Mongol forces under Baidar, Kadan, and Orda Khan defeated the Polish and German armies of Henry II the Pious.

1413 - Henry V was crowned King of England following the death of his father, Henry IV.

1440 - Christopher of Bavaria was appointed King of Denmark, and would eventually become King of both Sweden and Norway as well.

1682 - Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River, claimed it for France, and named it Louisiana.

1865 - Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the more than 25,000 troops of the Army of Northern Virginia led by Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, effectively ending the American Civil War.

1867 - The treaty with Russia which authorized the Alaska Purchase was passed in the US Senate by a single vote.

1909 - The US Congress passed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act.

1937 - The Kamikaze arrived at London's Croydon Airport - making it the first Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe, which it did in 51 hours, 17 minutes and 23 seconds.

1948 - Popular presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán's assassination provoked the Bogotazo, a series of violent riots in Bogotá and a decade-long spasm of violence in the rest of Colombia - a period now known as La Violencia. The man murdered by the mob for the crime - Juan Roa Sierra - may have been an innocent bystander.

1959 - NASA announced the selection of America's first seven astronauts, who would serve their country in the Mercury Program; the press quickly dubbed them the Mercury Seven.

1965 - The Houston Astrodome opened, and the first indoor baseball game was played.

1975 - The first game of the Philippine Basketball Association, the second oldest professional basketball league in the world, was held at Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.

1989 - During the April 9 Tragedy in Tbilisi a series of peaceful anti-Soviet demonstrations and hunger strikes, demanding the restoration of Georgian sovereignty was dispersed by the Soviet army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries. A memorial to the tragedy was later erected on the city's Rustaveli Avenue.

1991 - Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union, following an attack on a peaceful demonstration by occupying troops, two years to the day after a similar tragedy; the day is still observed as there as the Day of National Unity.

1999 - Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, the President of Niger, was assassinated at the culmination of a coup as he was boarding a helicopter at the airport in the capital city, Niamey; he was succeeded by the leader of the coup, Daouda Malam Wanké.

2002 - The funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother took place at Westminster Abbey, and in untold millions of living rooms around the Commonwealth and the world.

2003 - Baghdad fell to American forces during their invasion of Iraq.
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