July 4: Aphelion (08:00 UTC, 2008); Independence Day in the United States; Filipino-American Friendship Day in the Philippines

993 – Pope John XV became the first pope to canonize a saint, Ulrich of Augsburg.
1776 – The Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies in British North America adopted a Declaration of Independence, considered to be the founding document of the United States.
1865 – Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (illustration of Alice pictured) was first published, based on a story he first told Alice Liddell and her sisters exactly three years earlier in a rowing boat travelling on the River Thames from Oxford to Godstow.
1941 – German AB-Aktion operation in Poland: After capturing Lwów, the Nazis executed approximately 45 professors of the University of Lwów.
1976 – Israel Defense Forces raided Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport to free hostages taken by hijackers.

from wikipedia.org

Happy Birthday

 no one special unless you’re into Neil Simon. If you are, he’s 81 today.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, or better known as Lewis Carrol, was an author, magician, clergy and photographer. His best known novels are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and it’s sequel Through the Looking Glass.

Here is a look at some of the most dynamic imagery to come out of the rabbit hole.

After 143 years, Alice remains a favorite of all ages, inspiring us all on journeys both surreal and unimaginable.

So taken are we with Alice, that so many have tried to reinvent her as their own.

The visions of Lewis Carroll spilled through green tinted glasses but which were true to the creator’s idea?

A sketch by Carrol (left) and a portait of Alice Liddell, the girl on whom Alice was based.

Alice has been transformed into ballet, film, television, art, toy, costume, cartoon, song and at over 140 years old, she still inspires us to take her visage as our own.

Alice’s first croquet mallet was not a flamingo at all, but an ostrich.

Tim Burton is set to direct an animated version released in 2010 that begins it’s journey in May ‘08 while Marilyn Manson started drinking it down last month.

Rumored to be a regular drug abuser and paedophile, Lewis was one of the Victorian era’s most prolific photographers and someone who captured the artistic trends of his time.

Ian Curtis committed suicide in 1980; epitaph read ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’

LONDON - Thieves have stolen a memorial stone for Ian Curtis, frontman of the influential British post-punk band Joy Division.

The stone, bearing the epitaph “Love Will Tear Us Apart” — the title of the band’s most famous song — was taken from Macclesfield Crematorium in northern England on Monday or Tuesday, police said.

Fans from all over the world would travel to the site to pay their respects, often leaving messages and tokens behind.

A married man, Curtis committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 23, shortly before the band, an inspiration for many other groups and musicians, were due to begin a U.S. tour.

He had struggled to deal with the demands of combining home life and being in the band, the strain of epilepsy and falling in love with another woman. His personal troubles were often reflected in dark, painful lyrics, which he wrote.

Local officials have appealed for the stone’s return.

“I’m shocked this has happened,” said Bill North of Macclesfield Borough Council. “Someone’s gone to a great deal of trouble to remove the memorial stone and I hope our appeal will help return it as soon as possible.”

Curtis’s widow Debbie had been informed, the council said.

“This is a very unusual theft and I am confident that someone locally will have knowledge about who is responsible or where the memorial stone is at present,” said police Inspector Gareth Woods.

Curtis returned to prominence after two films about his life were released last year. After his death, the three other members of Joy Division went on to form the successful band New Order.

The Smoking corset is inspired by traditional men’s formal wear. It features a lace-up back that extends from 3″ below the waist to the neck. The double-breasted front closure fastens with a hidden zipper and fully functional buttons. The two front pockets are completely operational and perfect for storing paper money or other small items. Hanging gracefully from the back of the corset are detachable tails. We suggest ordering the Smoking in black wool with silk satin trim (shown above) for that tuxedo look, though of course you can order it in other fabrics, leather, and patent leather as well.

$390 at Underground Aristocracy

 July 3: Independence Day in Belarus

1608 – French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec City, considered to be the first European-built city in non-Spanish North America.
1778 – American Revolutionary War: Loyalists and Iroquois killed or tortured over 300 Patriots at the Battle of Wyoming in Pennsylvania.
1844 – The last known pair of Great Auks (illustration by John Gerrard Keulemans shown), the only species in the genus Pinguinus, were killed in Eldey off the coast of Iceland.
1863 – Pickett’s Charge, a disastrous Confederate infantry assault against Union Army positions, occurred during the final and bloodiest day of fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg, marking a turning point in the American Civil War.
1938 – The LNER Mallard broke the world speed record for a steam railway locomotive, reaching a speed of 126 miles per hour (203 km/h).

from wikipedia.org

Happy Birthday

Tommy Girl (46)
Corey Sevier (24)
Ludivine Sagnier (29)
Patrick Wilson (35)
Audra McDonald (38)
Shawnee Smith (38)
Sandra Lee (42)
Connie Nielsen (43)
Yeardley Smith (44)
Hunter Tylo (46)
Montel Williams (52)
Betty Buckley (61)
Tom Stoppard (71)
Ken Russell (81)

Steamy gypsy hat features metal skull, a mouse, feather and other oddities. Surely unique but from the site, we can’t tell what in. Here at Kikirara for 36,000?

 
July 1: Canada Day

1520 – Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire: Conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés (pictured) were nearly annihilated in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, and barely succeeded in escaping by night.
1569 – The Union of Lublin was signed, merging the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1867 – The British North America Act came into effect, uniting the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia into the Canadian Confederation.
1916 – World War I: The first day of the Battle of the Somme became the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, with 57,470 casualties of which 19,240 were killed or died of wounds.
1997 – The United Kingdom transferred sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China, ending over 150 years of British colonial rule.
from wikipedia.org

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Canada (141)
Pamela Anderson (41)
Liv Tyler (31)
Sufjan Stevens (33)
Claire Forlani (36)
Missy Ellliot (37)
Karen Mulder (38)
Henry Simmons (38)
Andre Braugher (46)
Carl Lewis (47)
Evelyn “Champagne” King (48)
Dan Aykroyd (56)
Fred Schneider (57)
Terrence Mann (57)
Debbie Harry (63)
Karen Black (66)
Geneviève Bujold (66)
Twyla Tharp (67)
Leslie Caron (77)
Olivia de Havilland (91)

Posted Jun 30th 2008 3:25PM by TMZ Staff

Asking seemingly bloodless Dita Von Teese if she’s a vampire is a fair question … but not when she’s walking around in broad daylight. Someone needs to brush up on their “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

June 30: Independence Day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1960)

1758 – Seven Years’ War: Austria defeated Prussia at the Battle of Domstadtl, forcing Frederick the Great to leave Moravia.
1894 – London’s Tower Bridge (pictured), a combined bascule and suspension bridge over the River Thames, opened.
1905 – The Annalen der Physik scientific journal published Albert Einstein’s article “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, the third of his Annus Mirabilis Papers, introducing the theory of special relativity.
1908 – A massive explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, knocking over 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi).
1934 – Adolf Hitler violently purged members of the Sturmabteilung, its leader Ernst Röhm, and other political rivals on the Night of the Long Knives, executing at least eighty-five people.

from wikipedia.org

Happy Birthday

Fantasia (24)
Michael Phelps (23)
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Patrick Wolf (25)
Chan Ho Park (34)
Monica Potter (37)
Mike Tyson (42)
Bobby Vitale (43)
Vincent D’Onofrio (49)
David Alan Grier (53)
Lena Horne (91)

 June 29: Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (Roman Catholicism)

1613 – The original Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground after a cannon employed for special effects misfired during a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and ignited the theatre’s roof.
1880 – Pomare V, King of Tahiti, was forced to cede the sovereignty of Tahiti and its dependencies to France.
1956 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, officially creating the U.S. Interstate Highway System, one of the largest public works projects in history.
1995 – Shuttle-Mir Program: During the STS-71 mission, Space Shuttle Atlantis became the first space shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir (pictured).
2006 – The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, ruling that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both U.S. and international law.

from wikipedia.org

Happy Birthday

Nicole Scherzinger (30)
Will Kemp (31)
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Emily Skinner (38)
Jeff Burton (41)
Amanda Donohoe (46)
Sharon Lawrence (47)
Maria Conchita Alonso (51)
Richard Lewis (61)
Gary Busey (64)
Robert Evans (78)

Oh we are still oh so fascinated with hot living dead! That’s why we just bought this zombie light switch cover for only $5 at this Etsy seller

 June 28: Vidovdan in Serbia

1841 – Giselle, a ballet by French composer Adolphe Adam, was first performed at the Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique in Paris.
1880 – Police captured Australian bank robber and bushranger Ned Kelly (pictured) after a gun battle in Glenrowan, Victoria.
1914 – Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria during a motorcade in Sarajevo, sparking the outbreak of World War I.
1956 – Workers demanding better conditions held massive protests in Pozna?, Poland, but were violently repressed by the following day by 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie and Korpus Bezpiecze?stwa Wewn?trznego.
1969 – In response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, groups of gay and transgender people began to riot against New York City Police officers, a watershed event for the worldwide gay rights movement.

from wikipedia.org

Happy Birthday

Kathy Bates (60)
Kellie Pickler (22)
Alessandro Nivola (36)
Aileen Quinn (37)
Mike White (38)
Gil Bellows (41)
John Cusack (42)
Mary Stuart Masterson (42)
Bruce Davison (62)
Mel Brooks (82)

Rawr! Look how uber steamy this is with a touch of sex kitten! This is done well my friends!

 June 27: Veterans’ Day in the United Kingdom; Mixed Race Day in Brazil

678 – Saint Agatho began his reign as Pope.
1898 – Canadian-American seaman and adventurer Joshua Slocum completed the first solo circumnavigation of the globe sailing on his refitted sloop-rigged fishing boat Spray (pictured), a distance of more than 46,000 miles (74,000 km).
1967 – The world’s first electronic automated teller machine was installed in Enfield Town, London by Barclays Bank.
1991 – Yugoslavia invaded Slovenia, two days after the latter’s declaration of independence from the former, starting the Ten-Day War.
2007 – An operation by the Rio de Janeiro Military Police against drug dealers in the Complexo do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro killed at least nineteen people, many of whom had no relations with drug trafficking.

 from wikipedia.org

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Ed Westwick (21)
Drake Bell (22)
Tobey Maguire (33)
Vitamin C (38)
Jo Frost (38)
Robi Draco Rosa (38)
JJ Abrams (42)
Michael Ball (45)
Tony Leung (46)
Isabelle Adjani (53)
Julia Duffy (57)
Vera Wang (59)

Goth Lyfe:
In this episode, Todd makes friends with the goths at his school.