PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 6

On this day in 1884, ten inches of snow falls in New England. This was the "year without a summer," thanks to all the crap thrown into the atmosphere by the massive explosion of the island of Krakatoa, near Indonesia. Don't bother looking for it on a map... it blew up real good, and it ain't there no more.

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On this day in 1933, the first drive-in theater opens in Camden, New Jersey, thus creating a market for films of a certain quality, not to mention behavior the likes of which nostalgic dreams are made of.

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On this day in 1934, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Act of 1933 into law, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission… for all the good it’s done us.

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On this day in 1984, one of the most addictive and best-selling video games of all time is unleashed on an unsuspecting public by sinister Soviet conspirators: TETRIS! Yes, that’s right, TETRIS was a global communist conspiracy designed to waste hour after hour of bourgeois capitalist time stacking imaginary blocks in an imaginary hole… and it WORKED!

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On this day in 1985, the grave of Wolfgang Gerhard – who drowned while swimming in 1979 – is exhumed in Embu, Brazil. These remains are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's "Angel of Death".

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On this day in 1988, President George Herbert Walker "Poppy" Bush promises to provide reparations and an official apology to the thousands of Americans of Japanese descent who were held in work camps for the duration of World War II. In May of 1989, Ol' Blurry Lips breaks his promise.

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On this day in 2002, in a successful attempt to steal media coverage from FBI agent Coleen Rowley’s testimony and concurrent media blitz, the Bush administration counters with a public relations event of its own. The same day that Rowley testifies, President Bush announces the proposed creation of the new, Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security - an agency proposed by Democrats and, up till then, one that Bush has vehemently opposed, preferring instead to make any such agency a subsidiary office within the White House. It will be the largest reorganization of the government since the implementation of the 1947 National Security Act, when the Defense Department, National Security Council, and CIA were created. To ensure that Rowley’s testimony would not dominate the headlines, Bush also gives an evening speech on prime-time television, again announcing the new department. In that speech, Bush calls the DHS the latest effort in the US’s “titanic struggle against terror.”