PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 24

On this day in 1374, a sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. Don't take the brown bread, man!

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On this day in 1497, English explorer John Cabot lands in North America at Newfoundland, leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.

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On this day in 1604, French explorer Samuel de Champlain discovers the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

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On this day in 1717, the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now known as the United Grand Lodge of England), is founded in London, England. Is there no mercy for the widow's son?

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On this day in 1880, the first ever performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français.

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On this day in 1916, Canadian cutie Mary Pickford becomes the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract.

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On this day in 1947, the first widely reported UFO sighting is reported by Kenneth Arnold near Mount Rainier, Washington. Read all about it, in his own words.

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On this day in the year 1963, the first ever videotape recorder is demonstrated before a rapt audience at BBC Studios in London... and thus, the first, tentative steps in the Great Pornpgraphy Revolution are taken.

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On this day in 1997, at a United Nations Earth Summit, the leaders of various island nations describe an apocalyptic scenario of flooded islands and submerged cities unless swift action is taken to curb Global Warming. Good thing we got right on that!

PARACULTURAL CALENDAR FOR JUNE 23

On this day in 1611, the mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crewmembers adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay, one of the harshest, most unforgiving bodies of water on the planet. They are never heard from again, obviously.

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On this day in 1713, French-speaking residents of Acadia are given one year to declare allegiance to the British Crown, or be forced to leave their homeland. Most refuse, and are forcibly deported.

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On this day in 1810, Illuminati bloodline family head John Jacob Astor forms the Pacific Fur Company. Evil ensues.

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On this day in 1960, the US FDA declares Enovid to be the first officially approved combined oral contraceptive pill in the world, taking yet another step in the engineering of human population levels.

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On this day in 1961, the Antarctic Treaty comes into force. It sets aside the Antarctic as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent. Of course, this is only because the world elites want to hide a) the Mountains of Madness, b) the hole to the Hollow Earth, c) a secret alien base, d) the remains of a pre-catastrophic Atlantis, or e) all of the above.

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On this day in 1970, one-hit-wonder Chubby Checker is arrested for possession of marijuana. Twisting ensues.

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On this day in 1972, President Richard Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s investigation into the Watergate break-ins.

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On this day in 1985, a terrorist bomb aboard Air India flight 182 brings the Boeing 747 down off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 aboard, including 268 Canadians, 27 British citizens and 24 Indians. It was the largest mass murder in Canadian history and the deadliest aviation disaster to ever occur over a body of water. Canadian law enforcement determined that the main suspects in the bombing were members of the Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa and other related groups based in Canada. Though a handful of members were arrested and tried, Inderjit Singh Reyat, a Canadian resident, was the only person convicted of involvement in the bombing. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for building the bombs.

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On this day in 1993, Lorena Gallo Bobbitt slices off the top of hubby John Wayne's cock and tosses it into an empty field. Late-night talk show hosts are only now allowing us to forget this sordid bit of sorry trivia.

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On this day in 2001, a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief with the title Bin Laden Attacks May Be Imminent is sent to top White House officials. This means President George W. Bush received the warning during the previous day’s President Daily Briefing. Also on this day a CIA cable is distributed with the title, Possible Threat of Imminent Attack from Sunni Extremists. The cable warns that there is a high probability of near-term “spectacular” terrorist attacks resulting in numerous casualties. 

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On this day in 2006, the Miami Seven are arrested in connection with an alleged Sears Tower Plot. Check out this classic Daily Dirt article - THE MIAMI SEVEN : TERROR CELL OR WU-TARD CLAN? - to find out more about this ridiculous "gimme" for the US DOJ.

THE BEST END OF THE WORLD MOVIE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IN YOUR LIFE

With 1998's Last Night, Canadian director Don McKellar created a work of transcendent beauty and almost unbearably intense emotional poignancy. The end of the world has never felt so intimate, so possible, so viscerally present as it does in this film.

If you consider yourself an aficionado of apocalyptic cinema and you have yet to see this film, be prepared to make room in your personal Top Ten list. It's incredible to me that McKellar was still in his 30's when he directed this. 

The thing that he seems to get, and convey so eloquently, is that, in such a global endgame scenario, regret would loom just as large as dread, and that all our emotions - bad and good - will be heightened to an almost supernatural degree. 

Anyway, I've said too much already. Watch, experience, share. This film deserves to be seen by everyone... starting with you.

ON THIS DAY IN PARA-CULTURE, MAY 29

NO, EINSTEIN, WHY DON'T YOU DO THE MATH?!

POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS ALERT! On this day in 1733, the right of Canadians to keep slaves is upheld in a Quebec City legislative assembly. 100 years later, in 1833, slavery would be abolished throughout Canada. In fact, it is a well kept secret that the only Canadian population to ever enthusiastically practice slavery... were the natives. The Haida were particularly vicious enslavers and slave-traders, venturing as far south as California on kidnapping raids. As for the European side of things, historian Marcel Trudel has documented precisely 4,092 recorded slaves throughout Canadian history, of which 2,692 were native peoples owned by the French, and 1,400 blacks owned by the British, together owned by approximately 1,400 masters. There can be no accurate accounting of native enslavement of other natives, but it surely totals in the millions, over a much longer time span.

Happy Birthday to para-political heavy-weight philosopher Oswald Spengler, who was born in Germany on this day in 1880! Spengler's hugely influential book, The Decline of the West, put forth his fascinating Civilizations Model, which posits that every epoch goes through a cycle of seasons, from Spring to Winter, after which comes an ultimate and unavoidable collapse. Cheerful stuff.

On this day in 1913, the Paris premiere performance of composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav Nijinski's ballet The Rite of Spring: Pictures from Pagan Russia provokes a riot when detractors and supporters of the gloriously asynchronous, poly-rhythmic music and primal, violent dancing begin fighting each other in the aisles. Despite the ruckus, which spilled out into the street, the 33-minute ballet was performed in its entirety. Stravinsky's score remains one of the most important and impressive pieces of Modernist music ever composed - an "it's all there" key to understanding where serious composition was headed in the 20th century - and, as a well-rounded human being, you really do owe it to yourself to take the time and give this horizon-expanding, mind-blowing, eardrum-pounding creation an uninterrupted listen with your complete and undivided attention. "Farewell la Belle Epoch, welcome the New Age."

In another defining moment of the Modern Age, it was on this day in 1919 that scientists Arthur Eddington and Andrew Crommelin conducted the first-ever real-world test of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. They set up camp on the island of Príncipe, near Africa, and prepared to watch a solar eclipse. According to general relativity, stars with light rays that passed near the Sun would appear to shift due to their light curving through the Sun's gravitational field - an effect only noticeable during eclipses, since otherwise the Sun's brightness would obscure the affected stars. They discovered that Newtonian physics could only account for half the shift that they recorded - a shift that was accurately predicted by Einstein's theory. All of a sudden, the Universe seemed like a whole lot stranger place, indeed... especially to those elite few with minds capable of grasping the physics of it all.

On this day in 1954, at the Hotel de Bilderberg near Arnhem in the Netherlands, the first ever Bilderberg conference is held. The whole ball of wax got rolling when several people, including Polish politicians Józef Retinger and Andrew Nielsen, became concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe. They proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States could come together and promote a better understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe and foster cooperation on political, economic, and defense issues. That's the official line. For a more accurate take on the goals, activities and origins of every conspiracy theorist's favorite honest-to-gosh actual global conspiracy, check out SourceWatch's excellent Bilderberg dossier. You'll be glad you did. Or not...

A PICASSO OF STRAVINSKY - IT DOESN'T GET MORE MODERN THAN THAT!