PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JULY 16

On this day in 622, the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) begins his Hijra - i.e. "schlep" - from Mecca to Medina, thus marking the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

***

On this day in 1054, three Roman legates break relations between Western and Eastern Christian Churches through the act of placing an invalidly-issued Papal bull of Excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia during Saturday afternoon divine liturgy. Historians frequently describe the event as the start of the East–West Schism, splitting the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.

***

On this day in 1661, the first banknotes in Europe are issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco, thus beginning the era of "paper money" that is working out so well for us all. I am referring, of course, to the recent revelation that putting 250 dollars into a Chase "savings account" will net you 12 cents a year in accumulated interest while costing you 4 dollars a month in assorted bank fees.

***

On this day in 1790, the District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act. After Vatican City and the City of London, it features one of the most conspiracy-spawning civil engineering layouts of any big city in the world.

***

On this day in 1935, the world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

***

On this day in 1945, the Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The test site was named Trinity, after one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets, and Manhattan Project chief Robert Oppenheimer recalled a passage from the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad-Gita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Heavy shit, and not without cause.

***

On this day in 1948, the storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane in history.

***

On this day in the year 1951, a former member of the CIA’s psychiatry division unleashes on an unwitting public one of the greatest hypnotic trigger mechanisms ever created. That man is J.D. Salinger. The mechanism is his novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which was a favorite of at least three crazed "lone" gunmen: Sirhan Sirhan (who was involved in the assassination of RFK), Mark David Chapman (who assassinated John Lennon) and John Hinkley Jr (who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan on behalf of the Bush Crime Family)..

***

On this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 rocket is launched at the moon. Sitting atop this rocket is the Lunar Module. On board are three men: Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins. Armstrong and Aldrin will be the first human beings (that we know of) to walk on the lunar surface. Unfortunately for Collins, Commander Neil caught him trying to steal one of Buzz's Tang packets, and as punishment, was not allowed to leave the module. Collins is bitter to this very day, and vows that when he dies, his ghost will haunt the moon forever. Just kidding.

***

On this day in 1979, Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Uncle Sam's Man in Baghdad... Saddam Hussein.

***

On this day in 1994, fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smash spectacularly into Jupiter, poking huge holes in the giant planet's gassy atmosphere.

***

On this day in 1999, there was absolutely nothing worth being suspicious about in relation to the small airplane crash that took the lives of pilot John Kennedy Jr, his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette. Nope... nothing at all worth being suspicious about.

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR MAY 25

It was on this day in 240 BC that ancient astronomers first recorded the perihelion passage of the celestial body that would eventually come to be known as Halley's Comet. Clear records of its appearances had been made by Chinese, Babylonian, and medieval European chroniclers over time, but it wasn't until 1705 that Edmond Halley realized it was the same object making return trips to our Solar System once every 75 years or so. Halley's Comet's last fly-by took place in 1986, and it won't be back until 2061.

***

On this day in 1521, rogue cleric Martin Luther is declared an outlaw by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who ends the Diet of Worms by declaring the Edict of Worms: "For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, where upon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work." To protect him, Prince Frederick of Saxony had Martin Luther kidnapped and hidden away in Wartburg Castle. Jeez... warts, worms... this story is making me nauseous. Let's move on, shall we?

***

On this day in 1895, playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison. While at Reading Gaol, he writes De Profundis, essentially one of the best-written break-up letters of all time.

***

On this day in 1926, Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, the head of the Paris-based government-in-exile of the Ukrainian People's Republic, ostensibly in retaliation for the latter's failure to prevent anti-Semitic pogroms in his former homeland during his two-year reign (1918-20).

***

On this day in 1953, the United States military conducts their first - and final - nuclear artillery test, at the Nevada Test Site. Fired as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole and code named Shot GRABLE, a 280 mm shell with a gun-type fission warhead was fired 6.2 miles and detonated 525 feet above the ground with an estimated yield of 15 kilotons. The shell was 4.5 feet long and weighed 805 lbs. It was fired from a special, very large, artillery piece, nicknamed Atomic Annie. About 3,200 soldiers and civilians were present to witness the impressive fireworks display.

***

On this day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of the Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade. Some people believe we made it, but a growing number beg to differ. Personally, whether we got to leave our footprints on the Moon or not, I think the whole thing was just a feel-good cover story for pouring billions into the development of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles... but what do I know?

***

On this day in 1986, a massive public event featuring a boatload of creepy participants taking part in an activity that is more than a little reminiscent of a massive occult ritual takes place. I refer, of course, to Hands Across America. I shudder to think what would have happened if the opposite ends of such a tremendous human circle had come together, Ouroboros-style. Perhaps...

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR MAY 22

On this day in 1176, a group of hired killers from Rashideddin Sinan's "Masyaf" branch of the Ismaili Hashshashin sect - also known as the Assassins - make their second attempt to murder Saladin, a world-historic figure who founded the Ayyubid dynasty, ruling Egypt, Syria and beyond. They come close, but fail.

***

On this day in 1844, the Báb announces to the world the coming of "He whom God shall make manifest", thus founding the religion of Bábism, a new religious movement that represented a break with traditional Islam, and which was brutally suppressed in Persia. However, since he is considered the forerunner of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, and seeing as Baha'i still revere the teachings of the Báb, it wasn't a total waste of time.

***

On this day in 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks sneaks up on, then beats the high holy hell out of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a wooden cane because the latter insulted the former's state - as well as his uncle's "honor" - in an anti-slavery speech. It was the first act of physical violence to take place in the Congress, and is considered an important precursor to the Civil War.

***

On this day in 1906, the Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine."

***

On this day in 1954, Robert Zimmerman - that’s Bob Dylan to you, me, and Jesus - officially becomes a man when he’s Bar Mitzvahed! Mazeltov!

***

On this day in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces social reforms to bring an "end to poverty and racial injustice in America", calling it the Great Society. Today, the only thing that remains of these reforms is the neoconservative reaction to them.

***

On this day in 1968, the Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores. The Navy still isn't sure what happened.

***

On this day in 2002, the remains of Chandra Levy, an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, are found in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. She'd been banging Congressman Gary Condit (D-California) at the time of her disappearance in early 2001, and for a while he was a suspect... in the media, if not officially. Eventually, the September 11 terrorist attacks knocked Levy off the front page and police pinned the murder on illegal Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique. Case closed.

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR MAY 21

Leopold, Darrow and Loeb

On this day in 1863, the Seventh Day Adventist Church - an offshoot of the Apocalyptic creed of Millerite Protestantism - is organized in Battle Creek, Michigan. Today, there are over seventeen million "Sevvies" around the world, and they are one of the most ethnically diverse branches of the Christian faith. Seventh Day Adventists celebrate the Sabbath day on Saturday, in the Old Testament style of the Jews, and they place a strong emphasis on healthy eating and living. Probably the most lasting impact that they've had on popular culture is the introduction of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals to the North American diet.

***

On this day in 1871, French troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting. By the close of "Bloody Week" some 20,000 anarchist and Marxist "communards" will have been killed and 38,000 arrested. Thus ended a historic, two-month experiment in self-rule by the people of Paris.

***

On this day in 1924, two young, well-to-do homosexuals named Leopold and Loeb murder 14 year-old Bobby Franks. At the time, this murder was considered one of the vilest and most sensational crimes in U.S. history, because the killers did it just for kicks. Defending the young murderers in court, legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow claims that the boys would never have become killers if they hadn't read the works of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose theory of the Ubermensch - a highly evolved idealization of humanity who exists above and beyond the mundane conceptions of "good" and "evil" - he claims twisted their minds.

***

On this day in 1946, physicist Louis Slotin is blasted with a fatal dose of radiation in a "criticality incident" during an experiment with the aptly-named Demon Core - a 6.2 kilogram sub-critical mass of plutonium - at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was the second time that such an incident resulted in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent death of a scientist. After these incidents, the core was used in an atomic bomb test in 1946, and proved in practice to have a slightly increased yield over similar cores which had not been subjected to criticality excursions. Here's a dramatization of the Slotin incident from the movie Fat Man and Little Boy.

***

On this day in 1969, Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for killing Robert Kennedy in a Los Angeles restaurant kitchen. The sentence is never carried out, as California got rid of the death penalty.

***

On this day in 1979, the White Night Riots take place in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan "Twinkie Defense" White for the assassinations of mayor George Moscone and openly gay city councilman Harvey Milk.

***

On this day in 1981, the Italian government releases the membership list of Propaganda Due, also known as the P2 Lodge, a Masonic lodge operating under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy from 1945 to 1976 (when its charter was withdrawn), and a pseudo-Masonic or "black" or "covert" lodge operating illegally (in contravention of Italian constitution banning secret lodges and membership of government officials in secret membership organizations) from 1976 to 1981. During the years that the lodge was headed by Licio Gelli, P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries, including the collapse of the Vatican-affiliated Banco Ambrosiano, the murders of journalist Mino Pecorelli and banker Roberto Calvi, and corruption cases within the nationwide bribe scandal "Tangentopoli". P2 came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona's financial empire. It has also been connected to the CIA-connected European right-wing black-ops org known as Gladio.