"Always" by James Ingram

Birthday wishes go out today to James Ingram, whose 1986 single Always - from his second album, Never Felt So Good - spins the usual soulful sounds that fans of his earlier releases like Baby, Come to Me (a duet with Patti Austin featuring the background vocals of Michael McDonald) and Yah Mo B There had come to expect from him alongside the synth-driven sound of the times.

Ingram later followed up this lesser-known offering with a pair of smashes, including Somewhere Out There (a duet with Linda Ronstadt featured in Steven Spielberg's 1986 movie An American Tail - directed by Don Bluth) and 1990's I Don't Have the Heart.
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Pop History Moment: The Rise of Fidel Castro

On this day in 1959 Fidel Castro was sworn in as the youngest Prime Minister in Cuban history, succeeding José Miró Cardona, whose own resignation from the position was considered sudden. Cardona was later appointed ambassador to Spain by Castro.

Castro's leadership of the 26th of July movement against the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista - originating in 1953 with an attack on the Moncada Barracks - has come to be known as the Cuban Revolution in the five decades since it occurred.

The image* accompanying this post makes reference to various plots by the US government to assassinate the only communist leader in the Americas by means of - among other things - exploding cigars. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan all gunned for him; now they're all dead and he's still alive. Good job there guys.

*On a personal note, the Pop Culture Institute only recently acquired its own copy of the October 1963 issue of Mad magazine shown at right... I mean, seriously. How could we not?
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POPnews - February 16th

[During the aptly named Ash Wednesday fires 2,080 sq. km (513,979 acres) in South Australia and 2,100 sq. km (518,921 acres) in Victoria burned in a single day, with 5,196 sq. km (1,284,000 acres) in all burnt throughout the 1982/83 season; Victoria had 47 deaths, with 28 in South Australia, and 2676 injuries reported in total.]
1279 - Portugal's King Afonso III died; he was succeeded by his son Denis.

1742 - Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, became British Prime Minister.

1804 - Stephen Decatur, Jr. led a successful raid from the ketch Intrepid in Tripoli harbor to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia during the First Barbary War.

1899 - France's President Félix Faure died of a fit of apoplexy following an assignation with his mistress Marguerite Steinheil.

1918 - The Council of Lithuania unanimously adopted the Act of Independence, declaring Lithuania an independent state.

1923 - Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber within the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1934 - The Commission of Government was sworn in as form of direct rule for the Dominion of Newfoundland; the Commission governed until March 1949, when Newfoundland 'voted' to join the Canadian Confederation.

1936 - Democratic elections brought a leftist coalition called Popular Front to power in Spain, under the leadership of Manuel Azaña; a right-wing coup staged by Francisco Franco the following July not only unseated them but instigated the Spanish Civil War.

1945 - American forces landed on the Philippine island of Corregidor - at the entrance of Manila Bay - with the intent of recapturing it from the Japanese.

1957 - The so-called Toddlers' Truce - a controversial television closedown between 6 and 7 PM - was abolished in the United Kingdom.

1959 - Fidel Castro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba following the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1st.

1968 - In Haleyville, Alabama, the first 9-1-1 emergency telephone system went into service.

1983 - The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claimed the lives of 75 people; they remained the worst wildfires in Australian history until those of 2009.

1985 - The terrorist organization Hezbollah was founded.

1986 - The Soviet ocean liner Mikhail Lermontov ran aground and then sank off New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds, resulting in the death of one crew member; resting at a depth of only 37 metres, the ship is now a popular reef for scuba divers.

1987 - The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi guard dubbed 'Ivan the Terrible' in Treblinka extermination camp, started in Jerusalem.

1991 - Enrique Bermúdez, leader of the Nicaraguan Contras, was assassinated in Managua by person or persons unknown.

1993 - Australia's first woman Premier, Western Australia's Carmen Lawrence, was voted out of office; she was succeeded by Richard Court.

2005 - The Kyoto Protocol came into force, following its ratification by Russia.
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Happy Birthday Matt Groening

For merely creating Life in Hell, Matt Groening would have earned the eternal gratitude of the Pop Culture Institute; yet those koan-like drawings and their sharp dialogue were only the start... For creating The Simpsons, he's earned our slavish devotion as well, and that he could then complete the hat trick with anything as fine as Futurama has him well on his way to demigod status in our eyes...

All of which leaves me wondering what's next for the Oregonian (born on this day in 1954) whose gentle manner and abundant imagination has populated all of our lives, mainly with dozens of outstandingly blunt - and therefore unforgettable - yellow people.

That the candy-coloured world of Springfield often conceals a bitter or bad-tasting flavour makes it not only trenchant satire but also gives the show the potential to change the world. Tell me my faults and I will tell you you're wrong; show me my faults and make me laugh at them and just maybe I'll change my ways. For all his affable demeanour and studied ordinariness, this seems to be the message at the core of Groening's art, and I know I prefer it to the myriad judgements of religion.

As it is, The Simpsons looks poised to run forever; short of the simultaneous death or dismissal of all of the show's major voices, it seems as though Groening has not so much crafted a sitcom as created a perpetual motion machine, one that must keep moving forward with a shark's grace, feeding at the shoals of the very pop culture it so deftly and humourously skewers.
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"Souled Out" by Conor Oberst

Birthday wishes go out today to Conor Oberst, who was born on this day in 1980; musically and otherwise precocious, Oberst was writing and performing by the age of ten, releasing his own music at 13, and touring with Bright Eyes at 15.

Souled Out originally appeared on Conor Oberst's self-titled 2008 solo album.
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Pop History Moment: FDR Survives Assassination Attempt

[Here we see Anton Cermak, left, with then-Governor of New York Franklin Roosevelt, centre, and his son James Roosevelt, right, at the 1932 World Series in Chicago; FDR was at Wrigley Field on the evening of October 2nd to throw out the first ball of Game 4 during his campaign for the presidency.]
On this day in 1933, Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt and ended up shooting Chicago mayor Anton Cermak instead; Roosevelt and Cermak were touring Miami's Bayfront Park at the time of the attack, where a memorial plaque marks the event today. Zangara's original plot had apparently involved killing President Herbert Hoover - since, to his way of thinking, all politicians were the same.

The diminutive assassin was seized by members of the crowd after he'd fired just one shot; in the ensuing melee he shot wildly four more times, injuring four more. Cermak (who was standing on the running board of the car at the time he was fatally wounded) died of peritonitis 19 days later, having famously said to Roosevelt en route to hospital: 'I'm glad it was me and not you, Mr. President'.

Zangara was executed in March 1933 after just ten days on Death Row when he was led to the Florida State Penitentiary's electric chair, Old Sparky; having confessed fully upon his arrest, Zangara remained unrepentant as he met his death.
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World City-Zen: St. Louis

Initially home to Mississippian Mound Builders, on this day in 1765 Pierre Laclède established a trading post on the Mississippi, upriver from the port at New Orleans, which he named for the 13th Century French King Louis IX. As the region changed hands from the Spanish to the French to the Americans, the growing settlement at St. Louis - located near where the Mississippi River and the Missouri River meet - made the colony of Louisiana ever more valuable.

The Louisiana Purchase, negotiated by US President Thomas Jefferson, added 2,147,000 sq. km (or 828,800 square miles) to the fledgling nation* in April 1803; it cost the United States $11,250,000, plus the cancellation of debts worth $3,750,000, for a total cost of $15 million. The transfer was celebrated at St. Louis in March 1804 on the so-called Three Flags Day (which actually took three days).

That wasn't, however, the only momentous event to occur in the city that year - not by a long shot... The Lewis and Clark Expedition departed the city in August 1803 and returned there on September 1806, having made it all the way to the Oregon Coast and back. Aided by the arrival of steamboat traffic in 1817, fur trappers like Ashley's Hundred could reach overseas markets from St. Louis rather than having to go all the way to New Orleans to trade in person.

Missouri became the 24th US state in August 1821, and its principal city was incorporated in December 1822; a fire in May 1847 burnt much of the city (already devastated by a cholera outbreak) to the ground. A steady influx of immigrants meant there was ample labour to rebuild, and quickly; while the Civil War did little militarily to impede the city's growth, it did shut down trade with the South. Fortunately the city's pivotal role as a trade depot to both the Union's army and navy kept it financially solvent during this time.

The Gilded Age, which followed the Civil War, saw the city become headquarters to various huge companies - Ralston-Purina and Anheuser-Busch to name just two - and the city's ambitions at the time were made manifest by two pieces of infrastructure in particular: 1874's Eads Bridge, the first bridge built across the Mississippi, and 1892's Wainwright Building, which lays claim to being the world's first skyscraper**. Home to both the 1904 World's Fair and 1904 Olympic Games - the first Olympics ever held in the United States - the city played a crucial role (culturally and otherwise) during Prohibition and the Great Depression, as much a home to jazz and the blues as it was bootleg hooch.

One of America's more interesting inland cities, the principal icon of St. Louis today is the Gateway Arch, which opened in July 1967.

*Just about doubling its size in the process!
**Both are still extant today.
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"St. Louis Blues" by Bessie Smith

In honour of the founding of Missouri's pre-eminent city, St. Louis, here's the Empress of the Blues herself, Bessie Smith, in a rare (and very raw) filmed performance of St Louis Blues (written by W. C. Handy) from 1929 - which is the only known film footage of one of the 20th Century's most powerful singers.
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POPnews - February 15th

[The most indelible image from the funeral of George VI, on this day in 1952, was the sight of Three Queens - mother, widow, and heir - watching from the platform at Paddington Station in heavy mourning as the body of the King prepared to make its final journey to Windsor Castle.]
399 BCE - Socrates was sentenced to death, having been found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens; interestingly, Socrates was the subject of history's first recorded impersonation, having been roundly lampooned in Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds - a tribute which would later contribute to his downfall. Socrates' chosen means of death was drinking a mix of the poisonous hemlock, a demise to which Seneca paid homage at his execution in 65 CE and which I can't help thinking of whenever I find myself walking along Vancouver's Hemlock Street.

1637 - Ferdinand III became Holy Roman Emperor, having already become King of Hungary-Croatia, King of Bohemia, and King of the Romans.

1764 - The city of St. Louis, Missouri, was established by Pierre Laclède de Liguest.

1898 - The USS Maine was sunk in Havana Harbour, killing more than 260, and prompting the Spanish-American War; the cause of the explosion which sank the vessel (and the identities of its perpetrators) remains unknown. Throughout the hostilities that followed 'Remember the Maine' became a well-known battle cry.

1903 - The first Teddy Bear was produced by Morris Michtom; sales of the stuffed animal were so brisk that Michtom (originally proprietor of a candy store in Brooklyn) founded the Ideal Toy Company in 1907.

1906 - The UK's Labour Representation Committee renamed itself the Labour Party after winning 29 seats in the House of Commons, with Keir Hardie among the first members of the new party to take his seat.

1933 - Giuseppe Zangara attempted to assassinate President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Bayfront Park in Miami; instead he shot Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who died 19 days later of his injuries.

1942 - The Fall of Singapore followed an invasion by Japanese forces, and when the British General Arthur Percival surrendered, about 80,000 Indian, British and Australian soldiers became prisoners of war; the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history also prompted the Sook Ching massacre.

1952 - King George VI was buried in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle following a lying-in-state at Westminster Hall and a State Funeral; currently he rests in the George VI Memorial Chapel, alongside the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.

1961 - Sabena Flight 548 crashed in Belgium, killing 73, including the entire US Figure Skating team, several coaches and family members.

1965 - The Canadian flag was adopted to replace the Red Ensign; the occasion is marked (or ought to be, anyway) as National Flag of Canada Day.

1971 - British currency was decimalized on Decimal Day.

1976 - The most recent Constitution of Cuba was adopted by a national referendum.

1980 - Television One and Television Two (formerly South Pacific Television) went to air for the first time as the newly created Television New Zealand.

1982 - The oil drilling rig Ocean Ranger sank during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, killing 84 workers.

1989 - The Soviet Union officially announced that its attempted invasion of Afghanistan - begun in December 1979 - was over, with the last of its troops having left the country.

1991 - The Visegrád Agreement - establishing cooperation to move toward free-market systems - was signed by the leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland at a summit in the Hungarian castle town of Visegrád.

2003 - Between 8 million and 30 million people demonstrated for peace in more than 600 cities around the world, marking the largest anti-war protest in history.

2005 - YouTube went online.
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"Valentine" by Delays

And why not end Valentine's Day at the Pop Culture Institute with the song Valentine by Delays, which originally appeared on their 2006 second album, You See Colours?
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In Memoriam: Kevyn Aucoin

Of all the purveyors of beauty in recent memory, Kevyn Aucoin was one of the first to emphasize the beauty within; this refreshing lack of misogyny toward the female face made his early death in May 2002 from a pituitary tumour all the more grievous...

Born on this day in 1962, Aucoin was adopted as an infant in Shreveport; aware that he was gay from an early age, he wasted no time in hot-footing it to Manhattan. After a requisite (if brief) time of struggle, he was discovered by Vogue, and within a short period of time he became the highest paid makeup artist in history.

The most interesting aspect of Aucoin's work (at least in terms of the Pop Culture Institute) was the number of celebrity transformations he undertook, even going so far as to publish them in book form; turning Christina Ricci into Édith Piaf, Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins into Josephine Baker, and Winona Ryder into Elizabeth Taylor would have been enough on their own to make him famous, but seeing as he was already famous when he did them they actually represent his desire to continue improving his skills. Given that he'd attained the sort of pinnacle in his career normally inducive to laurel-resting makes his already impressive achievement even more so.

Aucoin's legacy rests in the three books he published - The Art of Makeup, Making Faces, and Face Forward - which continue to serve as inspiration to aspiring makeup artists everywhere.
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Happy Birthday Your Serene Highness

Hans-Adam II - the son of Franz Joseph II and Countess Georgina von Wilczek - is the fifteenth Prince of Liechtenstein, which role he has fulfilled since succeeding his late father in November 1989; in addition to being head of the Princely House of Liechtenstein he's Duke of Troppau and Jägerndorf.

Born on this day in 1945, in July 1967 the Prince married Marie Aglaë, Countess Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau; together they would have four children - Prince Alois, Prince Maximilian, Prince Constantin, and Princess Tatjana. In 1969 His Serene Highness graduated from the University of St. Gallen with a degree in business and economics. It's not gone to waste; as the owner of the LGT Banking Group, he's considered one of the wealthiest heads of state in Europe, with an estimated personal fortune approaching $5 billion.

Since August 2004 Prince Alois - Hereditary Prince and Count of Rietberg - has begun undertaking many of the day-to-day duties in the very hands-on management of the principality; one of the last of the executive monarchies left in Europe, in March 2003 the Prince was granted even more powers as the result of a referendum. He had threatened to abdicate if not given the absolute power to dissolve the country's parliament, suspend any law or indeed any government minister... In the end the measure passed by a firm two-thirds majority.
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Pop History Moment: Khomeini Issues Fatwa Against Rushdie

On this day in 1989 Iran's theocratic dictator Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (shown, bottom right) took literary criticism to a new level when he issued a fatwa against Indo-British author Salman Rushdie (shown, below left) and his publishers over Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses*; naturally enough, many of those who were so mightily offended by it (including him) had never even bothered to read it - which is precisely the sort of assertive ignorance usually favoured by the professionally censorious.

The provocation in Rushdie's book began with the title... It seems there's a passage from the Qu'ran which was dubbed the Satanic Verses by the historian Sir William Muir; since, in the opinion of the Prophet Muhammad, the words contained therein** hadn't been from Allah but rather from the Devil they were later redacted by him, and ever since then merely referring to this passage has been considered sacrilegious.

By entitling the book thusly, Rushdie had therefore instantly branded his whole work as being the work of the Devil, at least among orthodox Muslims - as personified by the Ayatollah. Since Rushdie was raised a Muslim, he must have known that his portrayal of the Prophet would be likely to raise some ire, but there you have it...

Of course, anyone familiar with Rushdie's work would know firstly that he holds nothing sacred except for his own iconoclasm, and secondly that he is not in the least religious; what the uber-religious consistently fail to understand about their threats of damnation (as happened in this instance) is that they only work on their own faithful and on no one else. Of course, Khomeini's condemnation of Rushdie wasn't religious but political in nature - although like the Ayatollah himself it was politics concealed in cleric's clothing. The very real threat of being murdered did, however, force Rushdie into hiding, necessitating a huge expenditure by the United Kingdom to nevertheless make a valid point that the quality of a society is determined by the artists it nurtures as much as by the safety those artists are given to comment upon and thus help to shape that society.

Khomeini's fatwa was a first in modern times for the West, but it wouldn't be the last - even that bitch who has everything, Barbie, is the subject of her own (no doubt bright pink) fatwa; what each subsequent experience has highlighted is the extent to which fundamentalist Islam is identical to other fervently religious communities in its desire to destroy culture and even those who create it if necessary.

The fact is that the 'issue' of Rushdie's wrongdoing wasn't an issue for moderate Muslims; they more sensibly felt that Rushdie's ultimate reckoning would be with his creator - whose wisdom in assessing what, if any, blasphemy had occurred would would be far superior to the judgement of any mere human. Except, of course, that Khomeini - whose personality cult fed his paranoia and ego to the extent that he felt he and he alone spoke for Allah on Earth - wasn't in the least bit reasonable.

Ultimately, Khomeini's fatwa and the ongoing jihad against the West it caused has been to the detriment of Islam, in much the same way the current zeal for identity politics hampers any reasonable dialogue about bigotry to occur, by reacting to the potential offense of an unenlightened inquiry rather than seeing it as an ideal opportunity to enlighten.

*Published in September 1988 and the winner of that year's Whitbread Award the following November 8th the bannings and the bombings it inspired began occurring more or less simultaneously. By March 1989 Britain had broken diplomatic ties with Iran as a result.
**The offending passages allow for prayers of intercession to be made to three Pagan Meccan goddesses - Allat, Uzza, and Manah - in direct contravention of Islam's monotheistic principles.
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In Memoriam: Jack Benny

Although Jack Benny's career began at the height of vaudeville, the success he had there left him ideally situated to be intimately involved in the foundation of each of the three new media that would eventually replace it - namely radio, television and (to a lesser extent) movies; unlike so many of his former colleagues, though, rather than washed up by the early 1930s when vaudeville was, he was still building momentum...

Born on this day in 1894, as a child Benny was trained in the violin, which would become his foremost prop in later years. Whenever his trademark low-key humour failed to impress out would come the violin, and after a few minutes of sawing away on that hapless instrument he'd have the audience right where he wanted them again - namely doubled over laughing. Despite this act of his, Benny was a very accomplished violinist indeed, and when he wanted to he could use it to easily wring a tear from even the most jaded eye.

Of course, Benny's comedic gifts were so subtle I can scarcely believe they worked in vaudeville, and so visual besides they would've been rendered impotent on radio as well; where Benny chiefly benefited was in having a certain command over (and an audience in) multiple forms of media at once - meaning radio audiences could easily visualize his rolled eyes and his slow burn, having seen them so often on stage or in film...

By the time The Jack Benny Program became one of the first sitcoms on CBS-TV in October 1950 it had already been on the radio for 18 years, a generation of broadcasting that had transformed a once-minor vaudevillian into a media institution, and even aided in the assistance of the sitcom genre; in many ways, Benny's show was a lot like Seinfeld - the main character had the same name as the star, and lived a vaguely similar life, whereas like his future counterpart in reality both the character and the life he led on camera were actually an inversion of the truth.

Unlike many stars, who took the funniest lines for themselves, Benny played a kind of mannered straight man off of whom everyone else could play - making him an incredibly generous and rare kind of performer indeed. As a result Benny's co-stars - his real-life wife Mary Livingstone, announcer Don Wilson, hapless tenor Dennis Day, friend and confidante Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, as well as his on-air rival Fred Allen - were all as hugely popular in their day as the man himself.

Having comported himself with grace and dignity for more than 60 years, Jack Benny died in December 1974, having passed on a role in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys - a role that would ultimately earn his longtime friend George Burns an Academy Award.
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"Aaiye meherbaan" by Madhubala

Shakti Samanta's classic 1958 film Howrah Bridge today provides us with an excellent example of the myriad charms of Madhubala - one of the biggest stars of the Indian cinema from its so-called Golden Age - singing Aaiye meherbaan*...

Born on this day in 1933, Madhubala died just nine days after her 36th birthday, in February 1969; she'd been living with a ventricular septal defect - more commonly known as a 'hole in the heart' - since it had first been diagnosed in 1950. At the time of her death she was married to fellow actor and playback singer Kishore Kumar, whom she'd married in 1960. Oddly enough (or not, considering the nature of Indian cinema) Madhubala's co-star in Howrah Bridge is her future brother-in-law, Ashok Kumar.

*I apologize in advance if you feel this spelling is incorrect; while conducting research for this piece I found the title of the song spelled at least five different ways. In the end I chose the spelling I considered to be the most prevalent. If there's a better way to do it, help a whitey out and leave a comment.
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Pop History Moment: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Possibly the most famous gangland hit in history, the St Valentine's Day Massacre was little more than a skirmish in terms of the ongoing turf war between the South Side of Chicago's Italian mob (run by the notorious Al Capone) and that city's North Side Gang (headed by the less famous but even more dangerous George 'Bugs' Moran). Originally planned by Patrick Leedom as Moran's assassination, in this sense the attack against the SMC Cartage warehouse at 2122 North Clark Street (in the city's Lincoln Park neighbourhood) was a complete and utter failure. Moran was running late and Capone's men, mistaking one of Moran's associates for him, moved in and carried out their orders before they should have.

In total seven men were lined up against a wall and Tommy-gunned to death by four of Capone's thugs that day (probably led by Fred 'Killer' Burke), including Peter Gusenberg and Frank Gusenberg (both Moran goons), Albert Kachalik (Moran's deputy), Adam Heyer (the gang's bookkeeper), Reinhard Schwimmer (a gang follower), Albert Weinshank (an associate of Moran's bearing a remarkable resemblance to the gangster, whose appearance that day likely saved Moran's life), and John May (a mechanic who had worked for Moran but wasn't a member of the gang); when he later found out that none of the men killed was the one he'd been gunning for Capone (vacationing in Florida to provide himself an airtight alibi) was reportedly apoplectic with rage.

In almost every other way as well, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was a disaster; in public relations terms, it galvanized the citizens of Chicago against organized crime, something the combined atrocities of the first lawless decade of Prohibition had failed to do. Over the next five years law enforcement would step up to address the problem of rampant crime brought about by, and entirely due to, Prohibition; by the event's fifth anniversary not only had Prohibition been repealed but the newly-empowered FBI had managed to neutralize most of the remaining key players, including Capone and Moran themselves...
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What's The Occasion? St. Valentine's Day

There have been many people called Saint Valentine - most of them martyrs in Ancient Rome - although none of them were deemed important enough to be mentioned in the Chronography of 354; it was Pope Gelasius I who first declared the Feast of St. Valentine in 469 CE - and about all we know concerning the saint being honoured by the day is his name and the fact that he was buried in Rome, on the Via Flaminia. And that there are at least two who fit that description!

Although first depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1463, St. Valentine is described as having been martyred during the reign of Claudius II when he was arrested and imprisoned upon being caught marrying Christian couples and otherwise aiding Christians; the Roman Martyrology, published in 1583, only mentions the one Saint Valentine - the same one 'known' to us today.

Valentine's feast day, of course, just happens to fall during the ancient feast of the Lupercalia, so while there's no appreciable crossover of rituals between the two, the ancient festival was one dedicated to fertility and childbirth; the more strenuously Christians insist, however, that their holidays were not imposed upon the pagan ones in a concerted effort to quash the old ways the less likely I am to believe them, and I was never much inclined to believe them before. Needless to say, of all the saints' days venerated by the Roman Catholic Church, that one in honour of an obscure bishop who just happened to be martyred on an important Roman holiday is about the only one still observed by all and sundry* - including many non-Christians - is a bit of a coincidence I for one cannot let pass without a suitably snide remark...

The day really became associated with romantic love in the High Middle Ages, during the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, as documented in his Parliament of Foules, and many subsequent 'scholars' merely backdated those associations to includes the figures and rites of Late Antiquity; no one knows quite when the day became associated with the persecution of single people, but most bets are on late in the 20th Century. Since the Lupercalia was observed with the slaughter of a goat, and since single people are currently being scape-goated for causing (among other things) global warming, perhaps the old ways and the new will once again unite when some loving couple somewhere will murder some pathetic single loser for ruining their expensive, chocolate-y day...

Only time will tell.

*Other than, of course, St. Patrick's Day!
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Pop History Moment: "First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's Tour Of The White House"

On this day in 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on a tour of the White House with CBS reporter Charles Collingwood; her restoration efforts included both interior spaces - such as the Blue Room, Green Room, Red Room, Yellow Oval Room, and Treaty Room - as well as exterior, and involved (among other things) restoring furniture pilfered over the years by outgoing presidents. Throughout the tour Mrs. Kennedy spoke knowledgeably about many of the pieces found in the house and their relationship to the executive mansion's former tenants.

Her efforts on behalf of restoration and preservation at the White House left a lasting legacy in the form of the White House Historical Association, the Committee for the Preservation of the White House which was based upon her White House Furnishings Committee, a permanent Curator of the White House, the White House Endowment Trust, and the White House Acquisition Trust.

Following her husband's assassination in November 1963 the East Garden was renamed the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden in honour of the woman who had done so much to return sophistication and grandeur to a White House which had become dowdy and lacklustre through lack of care.
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POPnews - February 14th

[When it came to tit-for-tat retaliations surely neither the the Allies nor the Nazis could have hoped for a worse Hell on Earth than Dresden; once the cultural and artistic capital of Germany, the morning after the city was relentlessly firebombed it was home to cinders and little more...
Yet from its ashes it has risen, reborn!]
842 CE - Charles the Bald and Louis the German swore the Oaths of Strasbourg in both German and French, allying West Francia and East Francia.

1556 - Protestant Thomas Cranmer - Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI - was declared a heretic by their Catholic successor, Mary I; he would be burned at the stake five weeks later.

1779 - Captain James Cook was killed by native Hawaiians near Kealakekua on the Island of Hawaii.

1859 - Oregon became the 33rd US state.

1912 - Arizona became the 48th US state.

1945 - On the second day of an intensive two-day operation Allied forces began a devastating aerial fire-bombing of Dresden; the event was later famously recounted in Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

1949 - The Asbestos Strike began, marking the beginning of Quebec's Quiet Revolution against the tyranny and cronyism of Union Nationale Premier Maurice Duplessis.

1962 - First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on a tour of the White House.

1966 - The Australian dollar was introduced on the day that country's currency was decimalized.

1979 - In Kabul, Muslim terrorists kidnapped Adolph Dubs, the American ambassador to Afghanistan; Dubs was later killed during the ensuing gun battle between his kidnappers and police.

1981 - A fire at Dublin's Stardust Nightclub killed 48.

1990 - 92 people were killed when Indian Airlines Flight 605 crashed near Bengaluru.

1994 - Andrei Chikatilo - also known as the Rostov Ripper - a Russian serial killer convicted of murdering 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990, was executed by a single bullet to the back of the head.

2005 - Lebanon's former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, was assassinated, prompting the country to once again fall into chaos.

(Although by tradition POPnews items are always an odd number - and I try my best to always include 19 items - in honour of Valentine's Day, today there are 14. ~ MSM)
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"There Are Worse Things I Could Do" by Stockard Channing

I couldn't find a copy of Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee that wasn't either in French or subtitled, so instead I have included this clip of birthday girl Stockard Channing wringing all the pathos (or is it bathos - I never could tell them apart) out of Betty Rizzo's bad-girl reputation in this classic number from the landmark 1978 film Grease.
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