PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JANUARY 29

 

On this day in 904, Sergius III comes out of retirement to take over the papacy from the deposed antipope Christopher.

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On this day in 1845, "The Raven" is published in the New York Evening Mirror, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe.

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On this day in 1886, the first ever gasoline-driven car is patented by Karl Benz, in Germany. Fly rides ensue.

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On this day in 1891, Liliuokalani is proclaimed Queen of Hawaii, its last monarch.

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On this day in 1959, Cuba's highly corrupt and unpopular Batista regime crumbles. Dictator Fulgencio Batista flees the country, and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro steps up, immediately earning the undying enmity of his neighbors to the direct northwest. Through decades of naval blockades, trade embargoes, CIA assassination attempts and other assorted fuckery, Castro endured, outlasting nine Presidents and communism's worldwide collapse, ending up as one of the superstars whose deaths made 2016 one of the darkest in living memory. Hard not to respect the guy, considering all that!

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On this day in 1967, the proclaimed "ultimate high" of the hippie era, the Mantra-Rock Dance, takes place in San Francisco and features Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg.

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On this day in 1976, the world-famous Zeiss Planetarium in the Netherlands is burned to the ground after a Laser Floyd show gets out of hand.

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 On this day in 1987, CIA director William J. Casey steps down after six years spent managing Black Ops, Wet Ops and Psy Ops for the Bush/Reagan regime. Lucky break for Bush the Elder that Casey should die just two days before he was scheduled to testify in the Iran/Contra hearings.

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On this day in 1996, President Jacques Chirac announces a "definitive end" to French nuclear weapons testing.

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On this day in the year 1998, pro-life terrorists score one for Jesus in Birmingham, Alabama, when they bomb an abortion clinic, killing a police officer and severely mutilating and blinding a receptionist.

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On this day in 2002, In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.