POPnews - June 9th

[Rapidly rebuilt following a devastating fire on this day in 1873, the 'Ally Pally' (so dubbed, legend has it, by legendary entertainer Gracie Fields) has served many purposes throughout its long life; in 1936, for instance, the BBC opened a television station on the site, the majority of which is today a museum showcasing vintage broadcasting equipment. The building's iconic radio mast, though, is still in use.]
53 CE - Roman Emperor Nero married his first wife, Claudia Octavia; the only daughter of Roman Emperor Claudius and his wife Valeria Messalina, she was named for her grandmother Octavia Minor, and was the elder sister of Emperor Augustus, half-sister of Claudia Antonia and full sibling to Britannicus. Nero was also technically her stepbrother. All of which must have made for a pretty wild reception...

62 CE - Claudia Octavia was executed, having been divorced from Nero, who went on to marry Poppaea Sabina and had already fathered a child by the freedwoman Claudia Acte. Following her execution, Octavia's head was cut off and sent to Poppaea amid the lamentations of the Romans, amongst whom Octavia had been enormously popular.

68 CE - Arriving at the villa of a freedman on the outskirts of Rome with four servants, all in disguises, Roman Emperor Nero (shown, at left) directed them to dig him a grave, all the while keening 'What an artist the world is losing!' Having quoted Homer's Iliad - Hark, now strikes on my ear the trampling of swift-footed coursers!, only in Latin of course - upon the approach of soldiers intent on arresting him, Nero committed suicide, imploring his secretary Epaphroditos to help him slit his throat to evade a Senate-imposed death by flogging*. The horseman arrived too late to save him, but not too late to hear his last words: 'Too late! This is fidelity!' Rather than the humble grave his servants had dug, the anything but humble disgraced monarch was buried in the Mausoleum of the Domitii Ahenobarbi in Rome's Pincian Hill. Nero's death brought an end to the Julio-Claudian dynasty and sent the Empire into the turmoil known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

*Ah, the good old days, when the Senate could order the execution of a corrupt tyrant; as recently as 2006 they couldn't even get it together long enough to impeach one.

721 CE - Odo of Aquitaine defeated the Moors under Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani at the Battle of Toulouse.

1310 - Duccio's Maestà Altarpiece - a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance - was unveiled and installed in Siena Cathedral.

1650 - The Harvard Corporation - the more powerful of the two administrative boards of Harvard - was established, making it the first legal corporation in the Americas.

1667 - The Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet began; the battle lasted for five days and resulted in a decisive victory by the Dutch over the English in the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

1732 - James Oglethorpe was granted a royal charter for the Province of Georgia by its namesake, England's Hanoverian King George II.

1873 - London's Alexandra Palace - named for Alexandra, Princess of Wales - burned down, just 16 days after being opened by Queen Victoria; three members of the building's staff died in the blaze. Rebuilt and re-opened within two years, the 'Ally Pally' is today the crown jewel of Alexandra Park and dominates the northern boroughs of Wood Green and Muswell Hill.

1909 - Alice Huyler Ramsey, a 22-year-old housewife and mother from Hackensack, New Jersey, became the first woman to drive across the United States; in fifty-nine days, with three female companions - none of whom could drive a car - Ramsey drove her Maxwell 3,800 miles from Manhattan to San Francisco.

1915 - US Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned over a disagreement regarding the United States' handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

1930 - Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle was killed during rush hour at Chicago's Illinois Central train station - possibly by the Leo Vincent Brothers, and allegedly over a $100,000 gambling debt owed to Al Capone. Initially lionized for his mob-busting journalism, Lingle's death brought the truth of his underworld connections to light, permanently tarnishing his reputation; in 1959, Lingle's murder was dramatized on the popular television show The Untouchables.


1958 - Elizabeth II officially re-opened London Gatwick Airport.

1959 - When the USS George Washington was launched, it became the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles.

1970 - Jordan's King Hussein escaped an assassin's bullet.

1973 - Secretariat won the Triple Crown.

1983 - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party were re-elected in a landslide, an event extensively chronicled in such pop culture sources as Sue Townsend's book The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole and Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Line of Beauty.

1985 - American professor Thomas Sutherland was kidnapped from his home in Beirut by Islamic Jihad; he was released in 1991, on the same day as Terry Waite, after 2354 days in captivity.

1995 - Andrew Richards was sent to jail for life in the United Kingdom for his attempted rape of another man, the first conviction of its kind in British history.
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Joan Rivers on Parkinson

As jaded as Sir Michael Parkinson must be, having spent many decades herding celebrity cattle across a series of increasingly better looking sofas, it's nice to see him reduced to helpless laughter on purpose (as opposed to unintentionally) by a guest whom he's frequently cited as one of his favourites, Joan Rivers.
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Happy Birthday Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers' 1986 memoir Enter Talking, written in collaboration with Richard Meryman, was the first such book to find its way onto one of my shelves; in the same way I couldn't wait to get my hands on her album What Becomes A Semi-Legend Most some years before, I'm sure I haunted my neighbourhood bookseller until they were convinced I was a shoplifter*.

So while I have been a fan of hers since at least 1982, I almost didn't post this; it took me so long to find a picture of her I liked, I almost gave up in the name of efficiency. I mean, I always used to think she was pretty - at least, I did until she started reverting to her alien form. Thanks to Google Image Search I have been subjected to a slide show of her descent into self-loathing, and the only thing it wasn't was pretty.

Fortunately, her comedy also retains its power to shock me; in a show business which has grown increasingly anodyne, there are very few of the old serial offenders left - Don Rickles, really, and of course Joan herself. These days, only Lisa Lampanelli comes close to achieving the visceral reaction from audiences that Rivers once had (and, in fact, still has); yet Lampanelli's humour is entirely external, whereas Rivers has always made herself the primary recipient of her own vitriol, although I'm sure Elizabeth Taylor would disagree with me.

Seriously, babe - can we talk? - ease up on the scalpel. Whew!

*The fact that I was is only incidental to the story.
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Pop History Moment: Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" Published

On this day in 1949 George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, by London's Secker and Warburg...

Reception to the novel was originally cool, but once it started being banned, interest understandably picked up; today it is considered a classic not only of dystopian science fiction but of world literature, having been translated into sixty-two languages. Over the past six decades, many of its terms have entered the public lexicon as well, as has its author's name been adjectivized. So while the world today looks nothing like the world described in the novel, its depiction of media-enforced Fascism as predicted by its author cannot be discounted.

The book follows an ordinary man, Winston Smith, as he attempts to find a glimmer of enjoyment in his highly regimented life; he undertakes a forbidden love affair with a young woman named Julia, but his real crime turns out to be a combination of critical thinking and keeping a diary to record it. Later arrested for thoughtcrime, the Thought Police incarcerate him in the ironically named Ministry of Love, where he is tortured in Room 101.

Given the novel's accurate depiction of the role the media would play in controlling the populace of the future - viewscreens in every room, both visible and audible and entirely unavoidable wherever one goes - the real media has sought to dull some of the book's harsher concepts by turning them into easily mocked television programs, shows whose ubiquity only serves to prove my point. The genuine fear of an overarching dictator such as Big Brother has become a reality show in which yobs and yobettes struggle mightily to reduce the already vile opinion of humans in each others eyes to an even lower ebb; similarly, Room 101 has been reduced from the epitome of horror to a chat show in which celebrities get to indulge in public hating, presided over by the genial (if slightly sinister) Paul Merton.
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"Julia" by Eurythmics

A Eurythmics video is one of those things I need very little provocation to post; to whit, today is the anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's spooky (not to mention eerily prescient) novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eurythmics contributed music to Michael Radford's movie version of the novel - music which he disliked, and later refused to incorporate into the finished film; undismayed, the duo released the album anyway, since it was 1984 and the book was experiencing something of a resurgence in popular culture. Today, among Eurythmics fans at least, it's considered one of their best.

1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) contains many haunting and ethereal tracks drawn from the original text, including this one; named for the woman with whom Winston Smith carries on an illicit affair which provides his downfall, Julia is a pop song rendered most elegant by Dave Stewart's low-key arrangement and Annie Lennox's ethereal voice.
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POPnews - June 8th

[162 people still live on the rocky outcrop of Lindisfarne, which is now a Nature Reserve and major tourist attraction in Northumbria; in its heyday, though, the Holy Island was a bustling religious community capable of producing something as beautiful as the Lindisfarne Gospels - which are dedicated to St. Cuthbert and thought to be largely the work of Eadfrith, who became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 698 and died in 721. During the raid on Lindisfarne on this day in 793 CE the book's cover was destroyed, but a replacement was made in 1852; the well-preserved tome (a priceless example of Insular art) currently resides at the British Library in London.]
68 CE - The Roman Senate accepted Galba as Emperor, making him the first to serve in the so-called Year of the Four Emperors.

536 CE - St. Silverius became Pope following the death of his predecessor Agapetus I.

793 CE - Vikings raided the abbey at Lindisfarne, a date commonly accepted as the beginning of the Viking Age - a period of Scandinavian invasions against England which wouldn't end until the Battle of Stamford Bridge in September 1066.

1191 - England's King Richard I arrived at the city of Acre during the Third Crusade.

1405 - Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, were executed in York on the orders of England's King Henry IV.

1690 - Siddi general Yadi Sakat razed the Mazagon Fort in Mumbai.

1776 - At the Battle of Trois-Rivières, American attackers led by William Thompson of the United Colonies were driven back by Sir Guy Carleton and Simon Fraser at Trois-Rivières, Quebec.

1783 - Iceland's Laki volcano began an eight-month eruption which killed over 9,000 people and started a seven-year famine.

1789 - James Madison introduced 12 proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in the US House of Representatives; 10 of them were later ratified by the state legislatures and became the Bill of Rights.

1856 - The community of Pitcairn Islands and descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty consisting of 194 people arrived on the Morayshire at Norfolk Island commencing the Third Settlement of the Island.

1906 - US President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.

1912 - Carl Laemmle incorporated Universal Pictures.

1948 - Milton Berle hosted the debut of TV's Texaco Star Theater.

1950 - Sir Thomas Blamey was created the only Australian-born Field Marshal in that country's history.

1953 - During the Flint-Worcester tornado outbreak sequence a tornado hit Flint, Michigan, killing 115; it was the last tornado in US history to claim more than 100 lives.

1959 - The USS Barbero and United States Postal Service attempted the delivery of 3000 commemorative postal covers (like the one shown, at right) via Regulus cruise missile... All things considered, and given the US military's luck with missiles, bombs, and the like, we should be grateful that a) the Missile Mail arrived safely, b) it didn't wipe out a neighbouring town or the base itself, and c) it was never attempted again.

1968 - James Earl Ray was arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. at London's Heathrow Airport, having been captured while traveling on a Canadian passport under the name Ramon George Sneyd.

1986 - Former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim was elected president of Austria.

1992 - The first World Ocean Day was celebrated, to coincide with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro.
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Happy Birthday Your Royal Highness

Prince Joachim of Denmark - born on this day in 1969 - is the younger son of that country's Queen Margrethe II and her husband Henrik, The Prince Consort; known as something of a tearaway (at least in comparison to his much more stable brother, Crown Prince Frederik) His Royal Highness dated extensively before marrying the first of his two wives.

Divorced from his first wife Alexandra Christina, Countess of Frederiksborg in April 2005 after a decade of marriage (which produced two children, Prince Nikolai and Prince Felix), the Prince was remarried, in May 2008*, to the newly created Princess Marie - formerly Marie Cavallier. In May 2009 the Danish Royal Family welcomed its newest member, Prince Henrik, who was born at Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet.

*On what would have been the 73rd anniversary of his grandparents, King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid.
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"God Save The Queen" by The Sex Pistols

In that same week of 1977 when most of Britain was celebrating the Silver Jubilee, the minority who were not were busy nicking the Sex Pistols' anti-anthem God Save the Queen (originally entitled No Future) from those few shops that were stocking it. In fact, it has always been rumoured that the record sold enough copies to qualify for that week's #1 spot, but was held to #2 for political reasons*. Bass player Sid Vicious joined the group shortly before the recording of this song - replacing Glen Matlock, who was said to be "too nice" - making this one of only two Sex Pistols singles on which Vicious played.

In later years, Johnny Rotten defended the song as a nationalist anthem, going so far as to say that it wasn't about the Queen at all, but about the system she embodies; despite the song's supposed working class values, the working classes in Britain have always been strongly monarchist, with the majority of republican sentiment since the time of Queen Victoria coming from the middle classes. Rotten, careful not to jeopardize his street cred, has always been very delicate when discussing this particular tune, going so far as to allude to his empathy for the Queen as well as his desire to liberate her from what is, in his perspective, a stultifying life.

*The week's official #1 song was the far-less controversial double A-side The First Cut Is the Deepest / I Don't Want To Talk About It, by Rod Stewart.
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Pop History Moment: UK Celebrates Queen's Silver Jubilee

On this day in 1977 Elizabeth II kicked off celebrations in honour of her Silver Jubilee; she was joined by her subjects around the country and the Commonwealth as they celebrated with a series of street parties. So ubiquitous was the Jubilee that it even made its way into the story-lines of two long-running programs in the UK - Coronation Street and Doctor Who*.

Her Majesty is shown here on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl Mountbatten, Princess Anne (pregnant with Peter Phillips) and the cleverly concealed Capt. Mark Phillips.

*The 1983 episode Mawdryn Undead starring Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor.
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POPnews - June 7th

[First opened to the public on this day in 1982, Graceland was was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in November 1991 and declared a National Historic Landmark on March 2006.  It remains the second most-visited private home in America - after the White House.]
1099 - The Siege of Jerusalem began; taking back the city from Muslim occupation had been the principal purpose of the First Crusade.

1494 - Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the New World between the two countries, in keeping with a decree made by the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI.

1654 - Louis XIV was crowned King of France.

1692 - The Jamaican town of Port Royal was hit by a catastrophic earthquake, causing two-thirds of it to sink into the Caribbean; in just three minutes, 1,600 people were killed and 3,000 were seriously injured. The calamity caused a shift of legislative and commercial responsibility to Kingston, which is still Jamaica's capital today.

1776 - Richard Henry Lee presented the Lee Resolution to the Continental Congress; the motion was seconded by John Adams, and led to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.

1863 - During the so-called French intervention, Mexico City was captured by French troops.

1905 - Norway dissolved its union with Sweden.

1906 - The Cunard Line's ill-fated RMS Lusitania was launched at the John Brown Shipyard in Glasgow.

1919 - During the Sette giugno riot four people - Ġużeppi Bajjada, Manwel Attard, Wenzu Dyer and Karmenu Abela - were killed in Valletta; the event is still commemorated on this day in Malta.

1940 - Norway's King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav and the Norwegian government left Tromsø aboard HMS Devonshire (escorted by HMS Glorious, HMS Acasta, and HMS Ardent) to go into exile in London; five years later to the day the King and his family returned to Oslo.

1945 - Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes - based in part on 'Letter XXII' of George Crabbe's 24 poem collection The Borough (published in 1810) and with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater - was premiered at Sadler's Wells in London, conducted by Reginald Goodall. When it was broadcast in its entirety on the radio just ten days later it became the first to be thus transmitted by the BBC.

1948 - Edvard Beneš resigned as President of Czechoslovakia rather than signing a Constitution making his nation a Communist state.

1955 - Lux Radio Theater signed off the air permanently; the show, first launched in New York on NBC's Blue Network in 1934, featured radio adaptations of Broadway shows and popular films.

1965 - The US Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples.

1968 - The body of assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy was flown to New York City, where it lay in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

1981 - The Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor during Operation Opera; the facility could have been used to make nuclear weapons.

1982 - Priscilla Presley opened Graceland to the public, although in an all-too rare display of good taste for the 23-room mansion the bathroom where Elvis Presley had died five years earlier was kept off-limits.

1991 - The Philippines' Mount Pinatubo exploded, generating an ash column 7 km (4.5 miles) high.

2001 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Labour Party won a second consecutive landslide victory in a General Election.
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Blast From The Past: Harvey Fierstein in 1983

While searching YouTube for a clip to include with Harvey Fierstein's birthday I came across this startling bit of footage: the man himself as interviewed by Vito Russo in 1983 for the landmark WNYC television show Our Time. Russo, of course, was also the author of the book The Celluloid Closet*, the definitive work on the passive-aggressive homophobia which has always plagued Hollywood.

In the clip Fierstein discusses the success of his play Torch Song Trilogy, the typically surreal reception afforded him by David Letterman, and his role in the creation of the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (alongside Jerry Herman).

*Last revised in 1987, shortly before Russo's death from AIDS in 1990, the book became a documentary, narrated by Lily Tomlin, in 1996.
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Happy Birthday Harvey Fierstein

'I do believe we're all connected. I do believe in positive energy. I do believe in the power of prayer. I do believe in putting good out into the world. And I believe in taking care of each other.' These words, from playwright, actor, and commentator Harvey Fierstein - one of only two people (the other is Tommy Tune) to win Tony Awards in four separate categories - pretty neatly sum up the goals he seems to have set out for himself in his career...

Acclaimed for the stage version of Torch Song Trilogy (which he wrote, natch) he was a standout in the movie version* as well. He then wrote the book for the hugely successful 1983 Jerry Herman musical La Cage aux Folles; Legs Diamond, a 1988 collaboration with Peter Allen, was not so lucky. Fierstein's narration of the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk gave that production the necessary gravelly gravitas.

Since the 1980s Fierstein has struggled a bit to find his niche as a performer; in 1994 when he appeared in the short-lived CBS sitcom Daddy's Girls (opposite Dudley Moore and a very young Keri Russell) his role became one of the few openly gay characters played by an openly gay man in the history of American television. In 1995 he released a concert album entitled This Is Not Going To Be Pretty, which resides in a place of honour in the collection at the Pop Culture Institute. In 2003 he triumphed again, originating the role of Edna Turnblad in the Broadway musical Hairspray, a role previously played only by the divine Divine in the John Waters film of the same name. Alas, his name was not sufficiently big enough to star in the movie version of the musical, an honour which went to John Travolta - a bit of stunt casting which caused considerable grumbling by the blogosphere.

*As a sad aside, Anne Bancroft, Fierstein's costar in the film, died on this day in 2003.
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"Follow Me" by Uncle Kracker

Because I am a hardcore masochist I love - for the sake of blog fodder - to tell the story of the day I heard that Uncle Kracker (aka Matthew Shafer, born on this day in 1974) was getting married...
Like the comedian I am, as soon as I found myself among people I brought this up, and openly speculated about the identity of his bride*. In retrospect, given the deadly earnest nature of the group I was meeting with - and given the dearth, nay even the paucity, of a sense of humour inherent in that class - perhaps referring to this woman as Aunt Spread was not a good idea.

Indeed, it wasn't. I was instantly branded as worse than Hitler (and worse) for having just been a total misogynist and dupe to the patriarchy; similarly I was once likened to Dow Chemical by the same group for wearing scented deodorant, and I won't even bother you with the time I accidentally wore a t-shirt from the Vancouver Aquarium and made one of them actually burst into tears. But I digress... Throughout the rest of the evening I was made to feel like a shitheel for having just made a joke I knew many of them would be repeating as their own later**.

A n y w a y... Originally a protege of Kid Rock, Uncle Kracker came into his own following the release of 2001's Double Wide, which spawned the surprisingly mellow smash hit Follow Me - a paean to the joys of dating married women, but without the sleazy connotations a similar song by, say, Shaggy might have. It's apt to play it here, I think, because summer is soon upon us, and this is one of those songs that, whenever I hear it, makes me feel like I'm drifting down a river in an innertube at the height of summer - even though, sadly, I've never the occasion to do such a thing...

*A lovely woman, I'm sure, named Melanie.
**It probably goes without saying, but I have since severed all ties with these judgemental schmucks.
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Happy Birthday Sandra Bernhard

Sandra Bernhard appeared to me at a time when I most needed guidance, for which I will always consider her an angel...

I bought the cassette of her legendary one-woman show Without You I'm Nothing for a dollar in a second-hand store near my apartment in Ottawa in 1989, and over the next five years I played that thing for all it was worth, until I had it memorized. Good thing too, because that's when my 'friend' Shani 'permanently borrowed' it, and as far as I know it's been lost* forever. Which reminds me, I really should get on Facebook and razz her about that**.

The lessons I gleaned from this bravura performance are still with me today: Go big or go home, confound all expectations, and as long as you do your own thing eventually you'll draw a crowd.

Without You I'm Nothing was later made into a film, and although the CD of the concert wasn't available for many years it has been re-released through Bernhard's website, and is now available here.

*Not that it matters, since I haven't owned a tape deck in ten years.
**I have since razzed her about it to her face...
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Pop History Moment: The D-Day Landings

On this day in 1944 Allied troops made a massive, co-ordinated assault on France's Normandy coast during Operation Overlord in an effort to regain Europe from Fascism, during the most famous D-Day of them all...

In all, more than 850,000 troops were included in the amphibious landings at Gold, Juno, Omaha, Sword and Utah beaches all along the coast at dawn, following an air assault which had taken place shortly after midnight. There were approximately 10,000 Allied casualties that day, of which 1,465 were American, 2,700 British, and 359 Canadian; these men died to defend my right to sit in my bathrobe and take bitchy swipes at politicians on this blog - which act of heroism I gladly honour today in all sincerity.

The Normandy Landings were depicted in all their queasy detail in Steven Spielberg's 1998 film Saving Private Ryan, as well as in the 1962 film The Longest Day.
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"Me So Horny" by 2 Live Crew

Thanks to the dim bulb illiterates who seem to form the bulk of Wikipedia contributors, I have been actively trying to confirm the following enticing bit of pop history:

June 6th, 1990 - U.S. District court judge Jose Gonzales ruled that the rap album As Nasty As They Wanna Be by 2 Live Crew violated Florida's obscenity law; he declared that the predominant subject matter of the record is "directed to the 'dirty' thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect and the mind."

My inability to confirm the accuracy of this item (at least as far as it regards today's date) means I couldn't in good conscience include it amongst the other POPnews items for today; try as I might to make POPnews as accurate as possible, I am as consistently thwarted in this aim by, for instance, the Julian calendar* as I am by the many pranksters Wackypedia seems to attract. Still, I was intrigued by it, and so in the name of free speech**, decided to put it in its own post anyway.

Me So Horny caused enough controversy to ensure its success when it was released in 1989; not only was it one of the first smash hits of the hip-hop era, the Dirty Rap ditty made it all the way to #26 on the Billboard Charts as well, and the video was in heavy rotation on MTV (albeit in a heavily censored form). This version, though, seems to be entirely uncensored, and is thus proudly presented here on the Pop Culture Institute.

*You cannot imagine how much I hate the Julian Calendar.
**Plus I was looking for a video to post.
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POPnews - June 6th

[The glittering skyline of Brisbane is just one of Queensland's many treasures...]

1513 - During the War of the League of Cambrai, at the Battle of Novara, Swiss troops defeated King Louis XII's French army under Louis de la Tremoille, forcing them to abandon Milan, whereupon Duke Massimiliano Sforza was restored to his throne.

1523 - Gustav Vasa was elected King of Sweden, marking the end of the Kalmar Union.

1654 - Charles X succeeded to the throne of Sweden left vacant by his cousin, the famed Queen Christina, who'd abdicated in order to become Catholic.

1674 - Shivaji, founder of the Maratha Empire, was crowned at the hilltop fortress of Raigad.

1752 - A devastating fire destroyed one-third of Moscow, including some 18,000 homes.

1808 - Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, was crowned King of Spain.

1809 - Sweden promulgated a new Constitution, which restored political power to the Riksdag of the Estates after 20 years of Enlightened absolutism.

1813 - During the War of 1812's Battle of Stoney Creek a British force of 700 under John Vincent defeated an American one three times its size under William Winder and John Chandler.

1857 - Sophia of Nassau married the future King Oscar II of Sweden-Norway.

1859 - Queensland was established as a separate colony from New South Wales, a day still celebrated in that Australian state as Queensland Day.

1889 - The Great Seattle Fire destroyed the entirety of downtown Seattle, Washington.

1906 - Paris Métro Line 5 was inaugurated, with its first section connecting Place d'Italie to the Gare d'Orléans (now known as Gare d'Austerlitz).

1912 - The eruption of Alaska's Novarupta began; it would become the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, the largest being Mt. Pinatubo.

1933 - The world's first drive-in theater opened, in Camden, New Jersey.

1944 - Alaska Airlines commenced operations.

1968 - Presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy died of gunshot wounds received from Sirhan Sirhan during an assassination attempt the previous evening at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

1971 - Soyuz 11 was launched as part of the Soviet Union's Soyuz program.

1974 - A new Instrument of Government was promulgated, making Sweden a parliamentary monarchy.

1985 - The grave of one 'Wolfgang Gerhard' was exhumed in the Brazilian city of Embu... The remains found there were later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, the so-called 'Angel of Death' who was best known for conducting macabre experiments on the inmates of Auschwitz; Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in February 1979.
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Happy Birthday Joe Clark

Just so you don't think I'm a total hater, there are a few Tories I like. Well... One, anyway. It's a start.

Of course, it helps that I've met Mr. Clark and his charming family - including his lovely if intimidating wife Maureen McTeer and daughter Catherine - before. As you may have guessed, there's a dark secret at play here as to how or why I could have met them, but I think I'll save the details of that sordid business for another time.

Clark was Prime Minister of Canada for nine months in 1979-80, following which Brian Mulroney stabbed him in the back, in much the same way Ronald Reagan did to Gerald Ford in the United States at the same time; it's an apt parallel to draw, since after his election, Mulroney pretty much did whatever Reagan wanted him to do. For a consolation prize, Mr. Clark served as minister of External Affairs from 1984 until 1992.

For many years the butt of jokes (his nickname in the Canadian media has long been Joe Who?) by the time he finally withdrew from the stinking morass that is Parliament in 2004 - disgusted, as many of us have been, with the American-style social conservatism espoused by Stephen Harper - his name had become a byword for integrity in government, as his long career was entirely untainted by scandal, a feat rarely accomplished by someone of his political stripe.
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"Language Is A Virus" by Laurie Anderson

In 2008 on Laurie Anderson's birthday I posted the video for O Superman; last year the enemies of Fair Use (namely the record labels) forbade me from doing so, and I resorted to posting yet another of her amazing musical performances, namely 1986's Language is a Virus, from the soundtrack of her concert film Home of the Brave, from which this video is taken.

Fortunately my persistence is longer-lasting than their censoriousness, although neither of them, I'm sure, has the longevity of her talent; I was planning this year to post Babydoll, or maybe Big Science, or possibly...  But then I didn't need to, because this is still here!
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"Ode To Walt Whitman" by Federico Garcia Lorca

By the East River and the Bronx
boys were singing, exposing their waists
with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
and children drawing stairs and perspectives.

But none of them could sleep,
none of them wanted to be the river,
none of them loved the huge leaves
or the shoreline's blue tongue.

By the East River and the Queensboro
boys were battling with industry
and the Jews sold to the river faun
the rose of circumcision,
and over bridges and rooftops, the mouth of the sky emptied
herds of bison driven by the wind.

But none of them paused,
none of them wanted to be a cloud,
none of them looked for ferns
or the yellow wheel of a tambourine.

As soon as the moon rises
the pulleys will spin to alter the sky;
a border of needles will besiege memory
and the coffins will bear away those who don't work.

New York, mire,
New York, mire and death.
What angel is hidden in your cheek?
Whose perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat?
Who, the terrible dream of your stained anemones?

Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies,
nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon,
nor your thighs pure as Apollo's,
nor your voice like a column of ash,
old man, beautiful as the mist,
you moaned like a bird
with its sex pierced by a needle.
Enemy of the satyr,
enemy of the vine,
and lover of bodies beneath rough cloth...

Not for a moment, virile beauty,
who among mountains of coal, billboards, and railroads,
dreamed of becoming a river and sleeping like a river
with that comrade who would place in your breast
the small ache of an ignorant leopard.

Not for a moment, Adam of blood, Macho,
man alone at sea, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
because on penthouse roofs,
gathered at bars,
emerging in bunches from the sewers,
trembling between the legs of chauffeurs,
or spinning on dance floors wet with absinthe,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, point you out.

He's one, too! That's right! And they land
on your luminous chaste beard,
blonds from the north, blacks from the sands,
crowds of howls and gestures,
like cats or like snakes,
the faggots, Walt Whitman, the faggots,
clouded with tears, flesh for the whip,
the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers.

He's one, too! That's right! Stained fingers
point to the shore of your dream
when a friend eats your apple
with a slight taste of gasoline
and the sun sings in the navels
of boys who play under bridges.

But you didn't look for scratched eyes,
nor the darkest swamp where someone submerges children,
nor frozen saliva,
nor the curves slit open like a toad's belly
that the faggots wear in cars and on terraces
while the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror.

You looked for a naked body like a river.
Bull and dream who would join wheel with seaweed,
father of your agony, camellia of your death,
who would groan in the blaze of your hidden equator.

Because it's all right if a man doesn't look for his delight
in tomorrow morning's jungle of blood.
The sky has shores where life is avoided
and there are bodies that shouldn't repeat themselves in the dawn.

Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.
This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks,
war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats,
the rich give their mistresses
small illuminated dying things,
and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.

Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire
through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body.
Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Time
a breeze that drowses in the branches.

That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,
against the little boy who writes
the name of a girl on his pillow,
nor against the boy who dresses as a bride
in the darkness of the wardrobe,
nor against the solitary men in casinos
who drink prostitution's water with revulsion,
nor against the men with that green look in their eyes
who love other men and burn their lips in silence.

But yes against you, urban faggots,
tumescent flesh and unclean thoughts.
Mothers of mud. Harpies. Sleepless enemies
of the love that bestows crowns of joy.

Always against you, who give boys
drops of foul death with bitter poison.
Always against you,
Fairies of North America,
Pájaros of Havana,
Jotos of Mexico,
Sarasas of Cádiz,
Apios of Seville,
Cancos of Madrid,
Floras of Alicante,
Adelaidas of Portugal.

Faggots of the world, murderers of doves!
Slaves of women. Their bedroom bitches.
Opening in public squares like feverish fans
or ambushed in rigid hemlock landscapes.

No quarter given! Death
spills from your eyes
and gathers gray flowers at the mire's edge.
No quarter given! Attention!
Let the confused, the pure,
the classical, the celebrated, the supplicants
close the doors of the bacchanal to you.

And you, lovely Walt Whitman, stay asleep on the Hudson's banks
with your beard toward the pole, openhanded.
Soft clay or snow, your tongue calls for
comrades to keep watch over your unbodied gazelle.

Sleep on, nothing remains.
Dancing walls stir the prairies
and America drowns itself in machinery and lament.
I want the powerful air from the deepest night
to blow away flowers and inscriptions from the arch where you sleep,
and a black child to inform the gold-craving whites
that the kingdom of grain has arrived.
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