| July 5, 2008 | -
Bozo the Clown and Jesse Helms died, and the new waxwork Hitler at the Berlin Madame Tussauds museum was beheaded.
| Source 1:
CNN.com
Source 2:
BBCNews.com
Source 3:
BBCnews.com
|
| July 3, 2008 | - A judge ruled that Google subsidiary YouTube must provide Viacom, which is suing over copyright claims, with details of the viewing habits of everyone who has logged in and watched a video.
| Source:
BBCNews.com
|
| June 30, 2008 | - The Maine National Guard has been offering “Flat Daddies” and “Flat Mommies,” life-size cardboard cutouts of deployed service members, to spouses, children, and relatives waiting for them to return.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| June 23, 2008 | -
Air Force veteran, comedian, and self-described “old fuck” George Carlin died at 71.
| Source:
WP
|
| June 23, 2008 | - Kyrgyz novelist Chingiz Aitmatov and television journalist Tim Russert died.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New Yorker
|
| June 18, 2008 | - Kermit Scott, a former philosophy professor who inspired Jim Henson's puppet Kermit the Frog, died.
| Source:
AP via Newsday
|
| June 13, 2008 | - After twice watching a video that, prosecutors alleged, showed R&B singer R. Kelly having sex with and urinating on his then 13-year-old goddaughter, a jury in Chicago acquitted the 41-year-old on 14 counts of child pornography.
| Source:
CNN
|
| May 26, 2008 | - Dick Martin, co-host of Laugh In, died at 86.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| May 8, 2008 | -
Pop country singer Eddy Arnold, known for such hits as “Make the World Go Away,” died just days before his ninetieth birthday. “He died,” said Grand Ole Opry star Jim Ed Brown, “of a broken heart.”
| Source:
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
|
| April 13, 2008 | -
Bob Dylan won a Pulitzer Prize.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 17, 2008 | - Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M., announced that he is gay. “I thought it was pretty obvious,” said Stipe, who has been explaining that he is not heterosexual for nearly a decade.
| Source:
US Weekly
|
| February 5, 2008 | -
Tom Jones insured his chest hair for $7 million.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| February 4, 2008 | - A video released by hip-hop musician will.i.am showed Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kate Walsh, and Scarlett Johansson chanting and singing, “Yes, we can,” in support of Barack Obama, and a representative for John Cougar Mellencamp, a John Edwards supporter, asked John McCain to stop playing Mellencamp's “Our Country” and “Pink Houses” at his campaign rallies.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Rolling Stone
|
| December 14, 2007 | - A surprising number of very young actors were among those nominated for the Golden Globe Awards. “If you are old enough to pick up a gun and go to Iraq and kill someone,” explained the chief executive of Focus Features, “you should have the resources to express yourself in the grandest possible way.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 13, 2007 | -
Ike Turner died.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 5, 2007 | -
Rapper Jay-Z was flashing euros in a recent video, and supermodel Gisele Bundchen was refusing to accept payment in dollars.
| Source 1:
YouTube
Source 2:
Telegraph.co.uk
|
| November 2, 2007 | -
Hollywood screenwriters went on strike. “I'm really scared,” said Oren Ashkenazi, a dry cleaner who caters to Warner Brothers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 2, 2007 | - Duane “The Dog” Chapman's cable show, Dog the Bounty Hunter, was suspended indefinitely after a tape surfaced in which Chapman used a racial slur to describe his son's girlfriend. “It's not 'cause she's black,” said Chapman. “It's because we use the word 'nigger' sometimes here. I'm not gonna take a chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for for 30 years because some fucking nigger heard us say 'nigger' and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine.” Chapman's son subsequently sold the tape of the conversation to the National Enquirer.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Star Bulletin
Source 3:
National Post
|
| October 10, 2007 | - The Colombian game show “Nothing but the Truth” was canceled after a woman won $25,000 for admitting to have hired a hit man to kill her husband.
| Source:
AP
|
| October 8, 2007 | -
British clergy were condemning the nomination of video game “Resistance: Fall of Man,” which features a fire-fight scene set in Manchester Cathedral, for an award. “For a global manufacturer to recreate one of our great cathedrals with photo-realistic quality,” said the Bishop of Manchester, “and encourage people to have gun battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible.”
| Source:
vnunet.com
|
| October 7, 2007 | - American pastors were luring teenage boys to church by installing large-screen game consoles equipped for group sessions of the video game “Halo.” Responding to concerns that the explicit and realistic violence in “Halo” is at odds with Christian values, Gregg Barbour, a youth minister in Colorado, stated, “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell.” “Teens are our 'fish',” he wrote in a letter to parents. “So we’ve become creative in baiting our hooks.”
| Source:
NYT
|
| October 1, 2007 | -
Sylvester Stallone, filming the sequel to “Rambo” near the Burmese border, described the country as “a hellhole beyond your wildest dreams.”
| Source:
AP via MyWay
|
| October 1, 2007 | -
Miss Moneypenny died.
| Source:
AFP
|
| September 22, 2007 | -
Marcel Marceau died quietly.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 31, 2007 | -
Princess Diana had been dead for ten years.
| Source:
NY Times
|
| August 30, 2007 | - Guitar player Bo Diddley suffered a heart attack.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 4, 2007 | -
Eddie Murphy confirmed that he fathered a child with Scary Spice.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 31, 2007 | - In India, where dung-smoke clouds were warming the upper atmosphere, more than 1,000 people had been killed in recent floods, and Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to six years of “rigorous imprisonment” for possession of illegal firearms. “Don't get perturbed,” the judge told Dutt, “for you have many years to go and work like the 'Mackenna's Gold' actor Gregory Peck.”
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
Mumbai Mirror
Source 3:
Mumbai Mirror
Source 4:
BBC
Source 5:
ABC News (Australia)
Source 6:
The Hindu
|
| July 30, 2007 | -
Ingmar Bergman
died.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 19, 2007 | - The Swedish government recognized that one man's preference for heavy metal music constitutes a disability, making the man eligible for state benefits.
- The Swedish government recognized that one man's preference for heavy metal music constitutes a disability, making the man eligible for state benefits.
| Source:
The Local
|
| June 12, 2007 | - Sony apologized to the Church of England after a gun-filled computer game set in a British cathedral prompted the church to accuse the company of “virtual desecration.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| April 27, 2007 | -
David Halberstam and Jack Valenti died.
| Source 1:
The New Yorker
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| April 16, 2007 | - Angry crowds in India were burning Richard Gere in effigy.
| Source:
Breitbart.com
|
| April 3, 2007 | - The estate of deceased actor James Doohan, who was best known for his performance as the space mechanic “Scotty” on Star Trek, paid $495 to have his ashes rocketed into orbit.
| Source:
Playfuls.com
|
| April 3, 2007 | - Singer/songwriter Billy Joe Shaver, author of such hits as “Georgia on a Fast Train” and “I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)” was sought by police in Texas after he shot a “drunk, aggressive stranger.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| March 1, 2007 | - On
The Late Show with David Letterman
, Senator John McCain confirmed that he is running for president. Candidly discussing the war in Iraq, he said, “We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.” In response to Democrats who scolded him for using the word ”wasted,” McCain replied, ”I should have used the word 'sacrificed'.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 19, 2007 | -
Actor Ralph Fiennes admitted to having sex in an aircraft bathroom with a stewardess, whom his spokeswoman called a “sexual aggressor.”
| Source:
ThisIsLondon
|
| February 17, 2007 | -
Britney Spears
shaved her head.
| Source:
AP via CNN
|
| February 10, 2007 | -
Anna Nicole Smith dropped dead on the floor of a casino hotel in Hollywood, Florida.
| Source:
The online wire
|
| February 7, 2007 | - Keith Urban, a country singer, sued Keith Urban, a painter, after the latter Urban registered the Internet domain name keithurban.com “with the intent of producing confusion.”
| Source:
Playfuls.com
|
| February 1, 2007 | -
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was awarded France's highest civilian honor, the Legion d'Honneur, and was kicked in the head by a camel.
| Source 1:
AP via CHINAdaily
Source 2:
Reuters via iol.co.za
|
| January 25, 2007 | - Six teenage girls were arrested on conspiracy charges after a list of 300 assassination targets, including Tom Cruise and the Energizer Bunny, was discovered in a trash can in a rural Tennessee high school. “I was very scared, my friends were scared,” said sophomore Lakyn Ledford, who stayed home after learning that student-athletes were also on the list.
| Source:
AP via SFGate.com
|
| January 11, 2007 | - Dan Gulley Jr., an Alabama septuagenarian, turned himself in to police after shooting his friend David Brooks Jr. twice in the stomach during a quarrel about the height of deceased soul singer James Brown.
| Source:
Breitbart
|
| January 10, 2007 | - Members of the Baker's Dozen, an all-male Yale
a cappella group recuperating from injuries they suffered when a gang of prep school students attacked them on New Year's Eve, were asked by police to return to San Francisco to identify their assailants. “The kids are scared shitless,” said a father of one of the singers.
| Source:
San Francisco Chronicle
|
| December 6, 2006 | - The invention of rap was traced back to Muhammad Ali.
| Source:
ESPN
|
| November 30, 2006 | -
Danny Devito called the president a “numbnuts.”
| Source:
National Ledger
|
| November 28, 2006 | - Matt Lauer, host of the Today Show, declared the onset of civil war in Iraq. Lauer's former co-host and current CBS anchor Katie Couric refused to agree with Lauer, insisting instead that Iraq had only slipped “ever closer” to civil war; ABC's Charles Gibson, another former morning television host, said, “You can call it anarchy, you can call it chaos, you can call it civil war . . . "
| Source:
Boston Globe and Newsbuster.org
|
| November 20, 2006 | - The host of a popular satirical Iraqi
television show was found murdered. “He was a star in the galaxy of Iraqi
arts,” said the show's director. “Now, he's another sacrifice on the altar of this slaughtered country.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| November 20, 2006 | -
Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes in a Scientology ceremony in Italy.
| Source:
Canada.com
|
| November 20, 2006 | - Actor Michael Richards, who played Kramer on the TV show Seinfeld, was videotaped repeatedly screaming a racial epithet at a heckler.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| November 10, 2006 | - Fifty performances of “Saddam at the Gallows,” a new play due to open in Kolkata, India, had already sold out.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 10, 2006 | -
Ed Bradley and Jack Palance died.
| Source 1:
CBS News
Source 2:
Los Angeles Times.
|
| October 16, 2006 | - In New York City, CBGB closed, but the Russian Tea Room will reopen.
| Source 1:
AP via USA Today
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2006 | -
Tower Records, which is bankrupt, announced that it had been sold and that its assets would be liquidated.
| Source:
The Hollywood Reporter
|
| October 5, 2006 | - An aid group in Afghanistan was showing children a movie about landmines. “I learned,” said an 11-year-old girl, “that you should stay away from fields that have red stones.” At the end of the film, a puppet named Chuche is given back his arms and legs.
| Source:
The Christian Science Monitor
|
| September 28, 2006 | - The U.S. military, short of buglers who can play taps at military funerals, was waiting for an order of 700 automated $500 digital bugles.
| Source:
The St. Petersburg Times
|
| September 22, 2006 | -
Michael Jackson was considering opening a leprechaun-themed
amusement park in Ireland.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| September 20, 2006 | - A poll conducted by the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery found that 46 percent of American women wanted to be surgically altered to resemble Jennifer Aniston.
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 19, 2006 | - A survey showed that rap music fans are unlikely to recycle.
| Source:
Innovations Report via Nerve.com
|
| September 14, 2006 | -
Russia said that it could send Madonna into space as early as 2009.
| Source:
Russia-InfoCentre
|
| September 5, 2006 | - Pop star Prince disputed Justin Timberlake's claim to have “brought sexy back.”
| Source:
Contactmusic.com via Nerve.com
|
| September 5, 2006 | -
Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died after a stingray stabbed him in the heart.
| Source:
NEWS.co.au
|
| August 29, 2006 | - Children in Dublin saw a clown crushed to death.
| Source:
AP
|
| August 28, 2006 | - American heavy-metal band Fecal Corpse were denied entry to Canada.
| Source:
Toronto Sun
|
| August 18, 2006 | -
Sir Mick Jagger lost his voice.
| Source:
The Daily Mail
|
| July 14, 2006 | - Police in Seattle were looking for a gang of angry machete-wielding clowns.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| July 14, 2006 | -
Red Buttons died.
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| June 22, 2006 | -
Daryl Hannah was forcibly removed from a walnut tree in South Los Angeles.
| Source:
Philadelphia Inquirer
|
| June 21, 2006 | -
Angelina Jolie called her income “stupid.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 17, 2006 | -
Paul McCartney turned 64.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 14, 2006 | -
Marine Corporal Joshua Belile apologized for appearing in “Hadji Girl,” an Internet-distributed
video in which he plays guitar and jokes about killing an Iraqi family. “They should have known,” he sang, “they were fuckin' with a Marine.”
| Source:
The Mercury News
|
| May 31, 2006 | -
Elizabeth Taylor denied reports that her health was failing.
| Source:
Breitbart
|
| May 30, 2006 | -
Ted Nugent denied both poking his erect penis through a map of West Virginia and urinating on a nun.
| Source:
Belfast Telegraph
|
| May 15, 2006 | -
Snoop Dogg was banned for life from the United Kingdom.
| Source:
FemaleFirst.co.uk
|
| May 2, 2006 | - In England the Archbishop of York played African drums and led a conga line as he wore a hoodie.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 1, 2006 | - A Vatican official called on Catholics to boycott the "Da Vinci Code" movie.
| Source:
Catholic News Service
|
| April 30, 2006 | -
Keith Richards fell out of a coconut tree.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 18, 2006 | -
Singer Mary J. Blige said that she had found God. “My God is a God who wants me to have things,” she said. “He wants me to bling.”
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| April 12, 2006 | - Theater programs for the deaf, operating on a shoestring, were trying to figure out who in Congress cut their $2 million in federal funding in December 2004.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| April 11, 2006 | -
Iran announced that it had successfully produced low-grade enriched uranium; to celebrate, men in traditional dress danced with uranium samples.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| April 5, 2006 | -
Katie Couric announced that she would leave NBC's "Today" show to become the anchor of "The CBS Evening News."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 25, 2006 | - A Los Angeles judge ordered David Hasselhoff to stay at least 100 yards from his estranged wife, Pamela Bach.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| March 19, 2006 | - Tresa Waggoner, an elementary school music teacher in Bennett, Colorado, was suspended from her job after local parents complained that she was a lesbian devil worshiper; the parents drew this conclusion after learning that Waggoner showed her classes a videotape of the opera Faust performed with sock puppets.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| March 13, 2006 | - A 38-year-old California
clown kidnapped the 14-year-old girl who is carrying his child.
| Source:
NBC San Diego
|
| March 9, 2006 | - Three college students in Alabama were arrested for setting nine churches on fire. One of the students, Benjamin Moseley, was planning to appear in a school theater production called "Young Zombies in Love."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 26, 2006 | -
Don Knotts died.
| Source:
The New York Post
|
| February 19, 2006 | - The U.S. Army was using a computer game called “Tactical Iraqi” to teach Marines how to interpret Iraqis' gestures; “Tactical Pashto” and “Tactical Levantine” are in development.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 4, 2006 | -
"Grandpa" Al Lewis died.
| Source:
Newsday.com
|
| February 3, 2006 | -
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi performed a love ballad on Rome radio. "You are chocolate and coffee," he sang. "The samba that you have within you comes to me as I come to you."
| Source:
The Scotsman
|
| January 26, 2006 | - In Manchester, England, the BBC was planning an Easter tribute in which Jesus Christ will sing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division before joining Judas in a duet of "Blue Monday" by New Order. Later, as Roman soldiers flay him, Jesus will sing "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" by The Smiths.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| January 24, 2006 | -
Disney announced it would buy Pixar.
| Source:
E! Online via Yahoo! News
|
| January 24, 2006 | -
President Bush said that he had not yet seen the film "Brokeback Mountain."
| Source:
NBC13.com
|
| January 6, 2006 | -
Lou Rawls died.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 11, 2005 | - Comedian Richard Pryor died.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 29, 2005 | - In New York City, a defense contractor named David H. Brooks rented out two floors of the Rainbow Room for his daughter Elizabeth's bat mitzvah. Tom Petty, Kenny G, and members of Aerosmith performed, as did 50 Cent. The total cost of the party was reported as $10 million. “Go shorty,” rapped 50 Cent, “it's your bat mitzvah, we gonna party like it's your bat mitzvah.”
| Source:
New York Daily News
|
| November 22, 2005 | -
Chris Whitley, Pat Morita, and George Best died.
| Source 1:
Rolling Stone
Source 2:
The Star
Source 3:
Herald Sun
|
| November 19, 2005 | - The Senate refused to consider a Democratic resolution to honor Bruce Springsteen.
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| November 18, 2005 | -
Dick Cheney visited Iraq and informed American soldiers that he was not Jessica Simpson. He also watched as Iraqi soldiers holding imaginary guns practiced a vehicle sweep.
| Source:
SFGate.com
|
| November 10, 2005 | -
California
voters rejected four initiatives proposed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “If I was to make another Terminator movie,” said Schwarzenegger, “I would tell Terminator to travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have another special election.” Schwarzenegger then visited China, where he was greeted by hundreds of flag-waving children.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| November 5, 2005 | -
U.S. and Iraqi forces launched Operation Al Hajip Elfulathi (Steel Curtain) in Husaybah, a town on Iraq's Syrian border that serves as a transit point and staging area for militants. The offensive began on the third day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan. “Instead of having my family for a picnic in an amusement park,” said a refugee named Omar Obaidi, “I am taking them out of the town, walking and expecting death every moment.” A statement promising retaliation for the offensive, purported to be from Al Qaeda, was posted on a local mosque. In Baquba the spokesman for the Iraqi National Dialogue Council was shot five times.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 3, 2005 | - The mayor of Las Vegas called for vandals who deface freeways to have their thumbs cut off on TV. “They would get a trial first,” he offered.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| October 28, 2005 | -
George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu on Star Trek, announced that he is gay.
| Source:
Advocate.com
|
| October 24, 2005 | -
William Shatner
passed a kidney stone.
| Source:
14WFIE
|
| October 20, 2005 | -
Republican groups were calling on the federal government to halt all funds to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which currently receives $400 million each year in federal funding. "That is enough money," said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, "to build 40 elementary schools."
| Source:
CBC.ca
|
| October 20, 2005 | - A Canadian named Gordon Chin was sentenced to 18 months probation for owning cartoon porn, including naked Pokemon images.
| Source:
XBiz News
|
| October 20, 2005 | - Lamb and Lynx Gaede, thirteen-year-old twin sisters who perform as the band Prussian Blue, were under criticism for singing songs that praise Rudolph Hess. "We just want to preserve our race," explained Lynx.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| October 20, 2005 | - A video recording was released that showed U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan shouting insults through a loudspeaker after setting alight the corpses of two Taliban fighters. "Wow, look at the blood coming out of the mouth on that one," said a soldier. "Fucking straight death metal."
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| October 15, 2005 | -
Prince was told he should undergo hip-replacement surgery to repair the damage done from years of performing in high heels.
| Source:
Herald Sun
|
| October 10, 2005 | -
UNICEF released a short film that shows an airstrike attack on a village of Smurfs.
| Source:
News.telegraph
|
|
