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Entertainment

Oct 2006 Days beforehand that Deep Purple had to cancel the July 27 Lebanon date on its “Rapture of the Deep” tour: 4
Source:

Thames Talent Ltd. (Westport, Conn.)

Aug 2006

Number of films since 1960 that feature an evil albino: 55

Source:

Vail Reese (San Francisco)

May 2006Percentage of U.S. megachurches that “always” or “often” use electric guitar or bass in services: 93
Source:

Harper's research

Mar 2006Monthly fee that Court TV is charging for live Internet coverage of Saddam Hussein's trial: $5.95
Source:

Court TV (N.Y.C.)

Mar 2006Amount paid in January for one of William Shatner’s kidney stones: $25,000
Source:

GoldenPalace.com (Kahnawake, Quebec)

Jan 2006Minimum number of American colleges and universities that offer programs in video-game design: 82
Source:

Game Developer (San Francisco)

Jan 2006Price for a vibrator that plugs into an iPod and “stimulates you in time with your favorite music”: £29.99
Source:

LoveHoney U.K. (Bath, England)

Dec 2005Number of homeless San Franciscans hired to be extras in a movie with Will Smith as a formerly homeless millionaire: 250
Source:

Sony Pictures (Culver City, Calif.)

Nov 2005Percentage margin by which an MTV awards-show poll for best-dressed male attendee was decided this fall: 1
Source:

MTV (N.Y.C.)

Oct 2005Points a player earns for delivering a parcel of medicine, in the U.N. World Food Programme’s video game: 250
Source:

U.N. World Food Programme (Rome)

Oct 2005Number of terrorist acts that one song by the Houston-based rapper Arabic Assassin describes him committing: 4
Source:

Harper's research

Jul 2005Amount slated to be spent by 2007 to build a theme park in honor of Charles Dickens: £62,000,000
Source:

Dickens World, Ltd. (Chatham, UK)

Jul 2005Average number of Americans injured on amusement-park rides each year: 7,900
Source:

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (Bethesda, Md.)

Jun 2005Amount a Chinese online gamer made last year by selling a virtual sword he had borrowed from a friend: $850
Source:

Shanghai Zhen Xing Law Firm

Mar 2005Percentage of songs on Billboard’s Top 20 list during 2004 whose lyrics mention at least one brand name: 40
Source:

Agenda Inc. (San Francisco)

Feb 2005Amount that makers of the video game JFK Reloaded will pay the player who best replicates the murder of Kennedy: $100,000
Source:

Traffic Management (Stirling, Scotland)

Feb 2005Number of children's choir members from Pink Floyd's 1979 hit "Another Brick in the Wall" who are now seeking royalties: 1
Source:

RBL Music (Edinburgh)

Feb 2005Number of foxes eaten by a British performance artist to protest the protests of the proposed ban: 2
Source:

Mark McGowan (London)

Sep 2004Minimum number of Americans who registered to vote at strip clubs since May : 4,000
Source:

Association of Club Executives (Cleveland)

Jul 2004Percentage by which average earnings of a major U.S. film with no sex in 2003 exceeded those of one with graphic sex : 120
Source:

The Christian Film and Television Commission (Camarillo, Calif.)

Jul 2004Average number of "smoking incidents" per hour in major U.S. films in 1950 and 2002, respectively : 10.7, 10.9
Source:

"Back to the Future: Smoking in Movies in 2002 Compared with 1950 Levels," by Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., Karen W. Kacirk, and Charles McCulloch, Ph.D., February 2004 American Journal of Public Health

Jun 2004Ratio of the average number of television sets to the number of children : 7:2
Source:

U.S. Census Bureau (Washington)

Apr 2004Amount spent worldwide on mobile-phone ring tones, expressed as a percentage of the global music market : 10
Source:

ARC Group (London)

Apr 2004Number of MP3 players designed to be clipped inside an AK-47's ammunition chamber sold worldwide last year : 10,000
Source:

AudioBooksForFree.com (London)

Jan 2004Number of cast members of the movie Predator who have run for governor : 3
Source:

Sonny Landham for Governor (Ashland, Ky.)/Californians for Schwarzenegger (Santa Monica)/Office of the Governor of Minnesota (St. Paul)

Nov 2003Ratio of the Defense Department's Peacekeeping Institute’s budget to the estimated price of Jennifer Lopez’s engagement ring: 3:4
Source:

Harper’s research

Sep 2003 Age at which Katharine Hepburn made her acting debut, as the beast in a charity production of Beauty and the Beast: 11
Source:

Me, by Katharine Hepburn (Random House, 1992)

Sep 2003 Number of females on the American Film Institute's list of the fifty greatest movie villains, aliens included: 15
Source:

American Film Institute (Los Angeles)

Sep 2003 Number of females on the American Film Institute's list of the fifty greatest movie heroes, Lassie included: 7
Source:

American Film Institute (Los Angeles)

Aug 2003Number of magicians who won damages from Brazil's largest TV network in May after their tricks were revealed on the air: 22
Source:

Court of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil)

Jun 2003Minimum number of times that actor Martin Sheen has been arrested in political protests: 60
Source:

The Liberty Company (Santa Monica, Calif.)

Jun 2003Last year in which no film, screenplay, or performance relating to mental illness was nominated for an Oscar: 1953
Source:

Harper's research

May 2003Projected duration in years of John Cage's "As Slow as Possible," whose performance began last February in Germany: 639
Source:

Hans-Ola Ericsson (Pitea*, Sweden)

Jan 2003Years after rapper Chuck D called Elvis Presley "straight-out racist" that he claimed "a great deal of respect" for him: 14
Source:

Newsday 8/11/02/ Harper's research

Nov 2002Number of colleges that have organizations to elect John Cusack as U.S. president in 2004: 172
Source:

Cusack for President (Eugene, Oreg.)

Oct 2002Number of Hollywood films released in the last two years for which Senator Orrin Hatch has co-written songs: 2
Source:

Office of Sen. Orrin Hatch (Washington)

Oct 2002Average number of words of MTV's The Osbournes censored per minute: 2.8
Source:

David Katz (N.Y.C.)/MTV Networks (N.Y.C.)

Jul 2002Chances an American believes the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorist attacks: 2 in 5
Source:

First Amendment Center (Nashville)

Mar 2002Chances that a movie released in the U.S. last year was pornographic: 9 in 10
Source:

Adult Video News (Chatsworth, Calif.)/ACNielsen (Hollywood, Calif.)/Adams Media Research (Carmel Valley, Calif.)

Mar 2002Years by which the average life span of an Oscar-winning screenwriter is shorter than that of one merely nominated: 3.6
Source:

Donald Redelmeier, University of Toronto

Feb 2002Percentage of them in hotels awarded a four- or five-star rating by the Cuban Ministry of Tourism: 65
Source:

Ministry of Tourism (Havana, Cuba)

Dec 2001Number of mimes Guatemala's transit department hired last April to administer driver "education" at busy intersections: 20
Source:

Polic'a Municipal del Tr‡nsito (Guatemala City)

Oct 2001Amount Romania plans to spend by 2003 to build a Count Dracula theme park: $20,000,000
Source:

Romania Tourist Office (N.Y.C.)

Sep 2001Hours that Amherst College agreed to ban coffee last term as part of a student's performance piece about the drug war: 24
Source:

Amherst College (Amherst, Mass.)

Jul 2001Chances that an episode of The Simpsons contains at least one religious reference: 7 in 10
Source:

John Heeren, California State University, San Bernadino

Jun 2001Performance of Ricky Martin in bed, on a scale of one to ten, according to his new girlfriend: 20
Source:

New York Post (N.Y.C.)

May 2001Distance from Auschwitz, in miles, of a camp tannery in which an investor group proposed opening a disco in 1999: 2
Source:

Simon Wiesenthal Center (Paris)

Apr 2001Declared value of the jewelry stolen from rapper Prodigy last December after he left a music-video shoot in Queens: $343,000
Source:

New York City Police Department

Jan 2001Amount the U.S. Army plans to pay the entertainment industry this year to develop training videos for combat: $45,000,000
Source:

U.S. Army Press Office (Arlington, Va.)

Jan 2001Total number of hours spent on congressional hearings investigating violence in entertainment since May 1999: 16
Source:

U.S. Senate Commerce Committee

Nov 2000Number of felons enlisted from an Ohio halfway house last July as extras in the Cincinnati Opera's production of Aida: 21
Source:

River City Correctional Institute (Cincinnati)

Aug 2000Number of entertainment award ceremonies scheduled to be held in the U.S. this year: 332
Source:

Daily Variety (Los Angeles)

Mar 2000Rank of Adam Sandler and Bill Gates among the most popular role models with male college freshmen: 1,2
Source:

Jericho Communications (N.Y.C.)

Jan 2000Months' worth of salary lost by Groucho Marx in 1929's stock market crash: 28
Source:

Groucho Marx, Groucho and Me, B. Geis Associates (N.Y.C.)

Jan 2000Number of Americans now employed as “serfs” or “wenches” at Medieval Times entertainment complexes in the U.S.: 1,400
Source:

Medieval Times (Lyndhurst, N.J.)

Nov 1999Percentage of American ER viewers who say they learn important health-care information from the program: 53
Source:

The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation (Menlo Park, Calif.)

Nov 1999Portion of the words in Webster's New World Dictionary memorized by one non-English-speaking Thai Scrabble champ: 2/3
Source:

Wall Street Journal (N.Y.C.)

Nov 1999Percentage of the tiles included in Scrabble games produced in the U.S. this year that will be made in China: 100
Source:

Hasbro, Inc. (East Longmeadow, Mass.)

Nov 1999Number of films about Y2K disasters that Hollywood studios are planning to release in the next four months: 0
Source:

Exhibitor Relations Co., Inc. (Los Angeles)

Nov 1999Number of films about battling Satan that Hollywood studios are planning to release in the next four months: 2
Source:

Exhibitor Relations Co., Inc. (Los Angeles)

Oct 1999Hours after the Woodstock riots last summer that a participant told a reporter he couldn't wait to see them on TV: 6
Source:

Neil Strauss,New York Times (N.Y.C.)

Jul 1999Number of years that the U.S. military has been using video games to train soldiers to kill: 10
Source:

U.S. Army Simulation Training and Instrumentation Command (Orlando, Fla.)

Apr 1999Amount the world has spent since 1977 on licensed Star Wars merchandise: $4,500,000,000
Source:

Lucasfilm Ltd. (San Rafael, Calif.)

Apr 1999Estimated change since 1997 in attendance at America's top 50 theme parks: -2,000,000
Source:

Amusement Business (Nashville, Tenn.)

Feb 1999Percentage by which box-office receipts at theaters running the new Star Wars trailer rose on the day of its appearance: 25
Source:

Ziegfeld Theatre (N.Y.C.)

Feb 1999Number of Jeopardy! championships won by freshman Democratic Representative Rush Holt: 6
Source:

Office of Representative Rush Holt (Kingston, N.J.)

Feb 1999Number of DON'T IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT IF IT INTERRUPTS MY SOAPS! T-shirts printed by Soap Opera Digest last fall: 250
Source:

Soap Opera Digest New Media (N.Y.C.)

Oct 1998Rank of meeting the Spice Girls among the “greatest moments of my life” according to Prince Charles: 1
Source:

Buckingham Palace (London)

Sep 1998Percentage change since 1995 in U.S. sales of merchandise featuring The Three Stooges: +300
Source:

Comedy III Productions (Glendale, Calif.)

Aug 1998Percentage of Americans who have watched Seinfeld who say they will miss it “not very much” or “not at all”: 51
Source:

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (Washington)

Aug 1998Amount by which the decibel level of the scream of the new Godzilla exceeds that of a jackhammer: 18
Source:

The New York Times (N.Y.C.)

Jul 1998Amount Bill Clinton earned last year in residuals for his 1992 saxophone performance on Arsenio Hall : $76
Source:

The White House

Jul 1998Fee for which The Amazing Kreskin says he would be willing to intercede in Starr's investigation: $1
Source:

Department of Justice

July 21, 2009Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys announced that he has cancer. “It's a pain in the ass,” he said.
Source:

Sky News

March 4, 2009A Nevada man was found guilty of sexually assaulting two small girls. The verdict was based on a video that showed the man, an animal trainer for Siegfried & Roy named Chester Stiles, raping a two-year-old girl.
Source:

Las Vegas Review-Journal

February 17, 2009Drummer Louie Bellson, whom Duke Ellington called “the world's greatest musician,” died. Bellson once recalled the advice of tenor-saxophone legend Lester Young, who helped him learn to play bebop: “Lou, just play titty-bop, titty-bop, and don't drop no bombs.'”
Source:

LAT

January 18, 2009At a monster-truck rally in Tacoma, Washington, a metal part flew loose from a truck doing doughnuts, killing a six-year-old boy. “You go out for a night of fun,” said Jessie Hizey, the boy's father, “and you lose your son.”
Source:

Parts of Monster Truck Examined After Boy's Death

December 25, 2008 Eartha Kitt, who sang “Santa Baby,” died.
Source:

New York Times

November 11, 2008Huseyin Kalkan, the mayor of Batman, Turkey, said that the town would sue Warner Bros. for a portion of the royalties from the movie The Dark Knight .“ ”There is,“ said Kalkan, ”only one Batman."
Source:

Variety

October 16, 2008Jazz trumpeter and big-band arranger Neal Hefti, who wrote the “Batman” theme song, died at age 85. “He told me he tore up more paper on 'Batman' than on any other work he ever did,” said his son. “He had to find something that worked with the lowest common denominator, so it would appeal to kids, yet wouldn't sound stupid.” “Nananana, nananana, nananana, nananana,” went the song, a 12-bar blues that won Hefti his only Grammy, “Batman!”
Source:

NYT

September 27, 2008 Paul Newman died.
Source:

CNN

August 29, 2008Hip-hop mogul P. Diddy announced that the rising price of fuel had forced him to give up private-jet travel. “Can you believe this, I'm actually flying commercial!” he said. “Gas prices are too motherfuckin' high. I want to give a shout-out to all my Saudi Arabian brothers and sisters and all my brothers and sisters from all the countries that have oil. If y'all could please send me some oil for my jet, I would truly appreciate it.”
Source:

E!Online

August 22, 2008Nearly half a million people in developing nations were manufacturing virtual weapons and mounts to sell to players of online video games such as World of Warcraft.
Source:

BBC

July 27, 2008During a children's production of “Annie, Jr.” at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, 58-year-old unemployed truck driver Jim J. Adkisson opened fire on a packed sanctuary with a twelve-gauge shotgun. “We were just, 'Oh, my God, that's not part of the play,'” said Amira Parkey, 16, who was playing Miss Hannigan. After killing one man and wounding seven others (one of whom later died from her wounds), Adkisson was tackled by John Bohstedt, who was playing Daddy Warbucks.
Source:

AP

July 27, 2008Actress Estelle Getty died.
Source:

The Times

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, 2008A 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, 2008The 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 fuckGeorge Carlin died at 71.
Source:

WP

June 23, 2008Kyrgyz novelist Chingiz Aitmatov and television journalist Tim Russert died.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

New Yorker

June 18, 2008Kermit Scott, a former philosophy professor who inspired Jim Henson's puppet Kermit the Frog, died.
Source:

AP via Newsday

June 13, 2008After 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, 2008Dick 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, 2008Michael 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, 2008A 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, 2007A 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, 2007Duane “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, 2007The 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, 2007American 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, 2007Guitar 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, 2007In 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, 2007The 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, 2007Sony 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, 2007Angry crowds in India were burning Richard Gere in effigy.
Source:

Breitbart.com

April 3, 2007The 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, 2007Singer/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, 2007On 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, 2007Keith 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, 2007Six 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, 2007Dan 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, 2007Members 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, 2006The 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, 2006Matt 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, 2006The 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, 2006Actor Michael Richards, who played Kramer on the TV show Seinfeld, was videotaped repeatedly screaming a racial epithet at a heckler.
Source:

MSNBC

November 10, 2006Fifty 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, 2006In 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, 2006An 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, 2006The 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, 2006A 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, 2006A 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, 2006Pop 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, 2006Children in Dublin saw a clown crushed to death.
Source:

AP

August 28, 2006American 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, 2006Police 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, 2006In England the Archbishop of York played African drums and led a conga line as he wore a hoodie.
Source:

BBC News

May 1, 2006A 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, 2006Theater 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, 2006A 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, 2006Tresa 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, 2006A 38-year-old California clown kidnapped the 14-year-old girl who is carrying his child.
Source:

NBC San Diego

March 9, 2006Three 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, 2006The 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, 2006In 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, 2005Comedian Richard Pryor died.
Source:

The New York Times

November 29, 2005In 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, 2005The 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, 2005The 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, 2005A Canadian named Gordon Chin was sentenced to 18 months probation for owning cartoon porn, including naked Pokemon images.
Source:

XBiz News

October 20, 2005Lamb 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, 2005A 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

October 6, 2005It was also announced that a great white shark named for Nicole Kidman had been tracked as it swam from South Africa to Australia and back. “We suspect,” said a scientist, “that she went for reproductive reasons.”
Source:

Reuters

October 5, 2005It was announced that Tom Cruise had impregnated Katie Holmes.
Source:

People

October 4, 2005 Country music star Chris Cagle announced the birth of a new child and asked for privacy. “Both mother and child are in good health,” he wrote on his website. “Since the birth, however, we have discovered that biologically, the child is not mine.”
Source:

AZCentral.com

October 3, 2005 Burt Bacharach was recording a protest album with Dr. Dre. "Burt's pissed," explained a friend.
Source:

IOL.CO.ZA

September 29, 2005Novelist Michael Crichton was called before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works so that he could criticize the theory of global warming.
Source:

The New York Times

September 14, 2005 Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. was questioned by members of the Senate and managed to avoid direct answers to many of the questions posed to him. He did reveal, however, that "Dr. Zhivago" and "North by Northwest" were his favorite films. Antiabortion groups felt that Roberts was doing just fine.
Source 1:

KPAX

Source 2:

The Washington Post

September 9, 2005The Pentagon held a "Freedom Walk." Walkers were forced to register online ahead of time, to march along a fenced-in route, and to listen to Clint Black perform his song "Iraq and Roll."
Source:

The Washington Post

September 7, 2005 Bob Denver, best known for his role as the hapless, incompetent, shipwrecked Gilligan, died.
Source:

SFGate.com

September 5, 2005George Bush,” said rapper Kanye West, “doesn't care about black people.”
Source:

The Mercury News

September 3, 2005“I don't think,” said President George W. Bush, “anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the disaster “exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight.” The flooding had been anticipated by National Geographic magazine, Scientific American magazine, the Times-Picayune newspaper, FEMA, and Mr. Bill.
Source 1:

The New York Times

Source 2:

CNN.com

Source 3:

The Times-Picayune

Source 4:

The Independent

Source 5:

National Geographic

Source 6:

Scientific American

Source 7:

Mr. Bill

August 29, 2005 Suge Knight was shot in the leg.
Source:

GlobeAndMail.com

August 22, 2005A fourteen-year-old German boy was ordered to tear down the 300-foot-long roller coaster he had built in his back yard.
Source:

Ananova

August 22, 2005 Robert Moog died.
Source:

The New York Times

August 22, 2005 Chinese authorities were criticizing the televised Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest for its worldliness.
Source:

The Australian

August 17, 2005A file folder describing the affirmative-action work of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts went missing from the Reagan Library after it was reviewed by White House lawyers, and it was revealed that Roberts had once refused a request from Michael Jackson for a special letter of commendation from the Reagan White House.
Source 1:

The Washington Post

Source 2:

BBC News

August 16, 2005 Victoria Beckham, also known as Posh Spice, said that she had never read a book in her life, although she had written a 528-page autobiography.
Source:

The Guardian

August 9, 2005A British puppeteer was ordered to stop using a Saddam Hussein puppet as the sausage-stealing villain in his Punch and Judy show.
Source:

BBC News

August 9, 2005A South Korean man played video games for 50 straight hours, then died.
Source:

Reuters

August 4, 2005The Pentagon was teaching scientists how to write screenplays.
Source:

The New York Times

July 27, 2005Many Iraqis were hoping to be selected for a new reality television show, called "Labor and Materials," in which a construction crew shows up unannounced and rebuilds a family's bombed-out home. Three thousand people have applied in Baghdad alone.
Source:

Christian Science Monitor

July 22, 2005 Michael Jackson announced that he would build another Neverland near Berlin.
Source:

The Guardian

July 10, 2005The Godfather was being made into a video game.
Source:

The New York Times

July 8, 2005 Air Supply played the Karl Marx theater in Cuba.
Source:

ABC13.com

June 27, 2005 Tigger died, as did Piglet.
Source:

CBC.ca

June 16, 2005 Deep Throat and the Runaway Bride were both working on movie deals.
Source 1:

Sify.com

Source 2:

ABC News

June 16, 2005 Scotland's Cottle and Austin Circus fired Todd the Human Cannonball because he was afraid of flying and replaced him with Diego the Human Rocket.
Source:

The Times

June 14, 2005 Michael Jackson was acquitted.
Source:

The New York Times

June 12, 2005It was reported that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay tortured prisoners with the music of Christina Aguilera; it was also revealed that American military torturers performed a satirical puppet show for one victim.
Source:

Drudge Report

June 12, 2005 Pink Floyd announced that it would reunite for a concert.
Source:

Chron.com

June 8, 2005 Paul Anka released an album on which he sings "The Lovecats" by The Cure and "Eyes Without a Face" by Billy Idol.
Source:

New York Times

June 8, 2005 Anne Bancroft died.
Source:

The Belfast Telegraph-Digital

June 3, 2005Researchers discovered a formula to determine the humor value of a sitcom: (((R * D + V) * F) + S)/A.
Source:

The Guardian

May 31, 2005The British children's home Strawberry Field, which inspired the Beatles song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” closed.
Source:

Reuters

May 24, 2005 Sylvester Stallone was making a movie about Edgar Allen Poe.
Source:

The Guardian

May 23, 2005Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama said that a routine by television host Bill Maher bordered on treason. Maher had said that the Army had already picked all of the “low-lying fruit” like Lynndie England, and now needed “warm bodies.”
Source:

ABC News

May 22, 2005Warren Beatty was wondering whether he should run for governor of California.
Source:

ABC News

May 19, 2005A California man was arrested because he lived in a tent for two weeks in order to buy tickets to the new Star Wars movie; his doing so violated a requirement that, as a sex offender, he let police know if he changed lodgings.
Source:

NCTimes

May 17, 2005 Kylie Minogue announced that she has breast cancer.
Source:

BBC News

May 5, 2005It was revealed that Michael Jackson used chimpanzees to dust his house, clean his windows, and brush his toilets.
Source:

This is London

April 21, 2005A Vietnam veteran spit tobacco juice in Jane Fonda's face.
Source:

Reuters

April 14, 2005A Christian radio talk-show host was fired for questioning whether the dead pope would go to heaven.
Source:

Local6.com

April 14, 2005The United Nations released a video game called “Food Force” that lets players pretend they are feeding the starving.
Source:

BBC News

April 7, 2005Jenna Bush, the president's daughter, got on all fours and did the “butt dance.”
Source:

New York Post

April 3, 2005Robert Creeley, Terri Schiavo, Johnnie Cochran, Frank Perdue, Mitch Hedberg, and the pope died, as did the man who wrote the theme song to “Gidget.”
Source 1:

Indianapolis Star

Source 2:

Indianapolis Star

Source 3:

New York Times

Source 4:

New York Times

Source 5:

Fredericksburg.com

March 25, 2005 Anita Bryant was still alive.
Source:

TwinCities.com

March 24, 2005 Foghat's guitarist died.
Source:

AP

March 23, 2005 Ozzy Osbourne said that in times of loneliness he talks to his knees.
Source:

Ananova.com

March 22, 2005Several IMAX theaters in the American South decided not to show a film about volcanoes because it might offend Christians.
Source:

Greenville Online

March 22, 2005 Ugandans marched against Bob Geldof.
Source:

BBC News

March 21, 2005 Bobby Short died, as did John DeLorean.
Source:

The New York Times

March 2, 2005A Swiss synesthete who tastes music reported that Bach is creamy.
Source:

New Scientist

March 2, 2005 50 Cent expelled The Game from G Unit. Gunfire followed.
Source:

BBC News

March 1, 2005Three anonymous donors gave $3 million to resurrect the cancelled TV show “Star Trek: Enterprise.”
Source:

TrekUnited.com

March 1, 2005A poll found that Americans want a Democrat to be elected president in the next election on the television show “The West Wing.”
Source:

Zogby International

February 27, 2005 Progressive rock was making a comeback.
Source:

New York Timesimes

February 27, 2005Halle Berry received a “Razzie” award for the worst actress of 2004 for her role in the film “Catwoman.” “I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit,” she said. George W. Bush won the worst actor award for his role in “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Source:

Reuters

February 18, 2005An expert witness in the Robert Blake murder case testified that he once crawled into a cage filled with crack-smoking monkeys.
Source:

E! Online

February 11, 2005The government of Uganda was concerned about a production of the play “The Vagina Monologues.” “The author of the film is a known lesbian who lives with another woman,” said James Nsaba Buturo, the minister for information. “She worships the female sexual organ, seeing it as her god.”
Source:

All Africa

February 10, 2005 Arthur Miller died.
Source:

The New York Times

February 7, 2005A four-year-old Michigan boy snuck out of the house and drove his mother's car to a video store.
Source:

CNN.com

February 2, 2005Thirty-year-old actor Leonardo DiCaprio accepted a lifetime achievement award.
Source:

Elitestv.com

February 1, 2005Rapper Calvin "Snoop Dogg" Broadus was accused of sexual assault.
Source:

Yahoo.com

February 1, 2005The selection of a jury of Michael Jackson's peers began.
Source:

Reuters

January 12, 2005E! Television and Britain's BSkyB announced plans to broadcast 30-minute dramatizations of Michael Jackson's child molestation trial, based on the testimony from the previous day, in order to get around a ban on cameras in the courtroom.
Source:

Reuters

January 12, 2005The last reel-to-reel tape manufacturer in America went under, forcing indie rockers to hoard tapes.
Source:

The Wall Street Journal

January 11, 2005 Nas married Kelis.
Source:

USA Today

January 11, 2005 Performers in the 2005 inaugural parade, including marching bands, bell ringers, and Civil War reenactors, were instructed not to look directly at Bush as they pass the parade stand, nor to make any sudden moves.
Source:

The News-Herald

January 6, 2005Director Oliver Stone blamed audiences and the critics for the box office failure of "Alexander."
Source:

New Age Media Concepts

December 24, 2004 Adoptees and adoptive parents were calling on Fox TV to stop the broadcast of a game show called “Who's Your Daddy,” in which an adopted woman has to pick her biological father from a line-up; she wins a prize if she picks correctly.
Source:

Reuters

December 24, 2004Polls showed that “Stairway to Heaven” was the greatest rock song of all time.
Source:

AFP

December 24, 2004A poll found that Britney Spears was the number one star in America.
Source:

Irish Examiner

December 5, 2004Sheriff's deputies searched the Neverland estate for two days and took a DNA sample from inside Michael Jackson's mouth.
Source:

AP

December 3, 2004Sotheby's announced it would auction off items from five Kennedy family homes; items to be sold include Mason jars, broken china, used records, and old magazines.
Source:

New York Times

December 2, 2004Brian Williams replaced Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News.
Source:

New York Times

December 1, 2004And retail sales during the Thanksgiving weekend disappointed.
Source:

Reuters

November 22, 2004British programmers released a game called “JFK: Reloaded,” which recreates the Grassy Knoll. “Players will discover just how hard it is to place those three bullets in exactly the same way that Oswald did,” said a spokesman for the game company.
Source:

Guardian

November 20, 2004 Congress passed a $388 billion spending bill. The bill had $15.8 billion worth of “extras,” including $25,000 for the study of mariachi music and $2 million to buy back the presidential yacht, sold by Jimmy Carter in 1977. The yacht, the U.S.S. Sequoia, currently rents for $2,500 an hour. The bill also allows hospitals and HMOs to refuse to provide abortions, and gave two committee chairmen and their assistants access to income tax returns, without regard to privacy laws. Republicans acknowledged the mistake of the latter provision, and vowed to repeal it.
Source 1:

USA Today

Source 2:

USA Today

Source 3:

sequoiayacht.com

Source 4:

LA Times

Source 5:

AP

November 17, 2004 Egypt decided to allow foreign belly dancers.
Source:

ABC13, AP

November 13, 2004 Wu-Tang Clan co-founder Russell Jones, also known as O.D.B., Ol' Dirty Bastard, Dirt McGirt, and Big Baby Jesus, died at age 35.
Source:

ABC News

October 13, 2004The FCC fined Fox television $1.2 million for a broadcast of "Married by America" in April 2003 that featured strippers covered in whipped cream.
Source:

Washington Post

September 14, 2004A new study found that Legionella bacteria, the cause of Legionnaire's disease, lurks in a quarter of all hot tubs.
Source:

New Scientist

August 19, 2004Twenty people were stuck on a roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park after a power outage; eight people were stuck upside down.
Source:

CBS 2 New York

July 16, 2004A study found that children who watch two hours of TV a night risk becoming fat smokers with high cholesterol.
Source:

Associated Press

July 7, 2004 Japan's defense ministry said that it will issue its annual defense whitepaper as a "manga" comic book.
Source:

Reuters

July 2, 2004 Colin Powell sang and danced to "YMCA" for foreign ministers at a conference on Asian-Pacific security.
Source:

Associated Press

May 27, 2004 MTV declined to air advertisements for Super Size Me, a documentary about a man who eats nothing but McDonald's food for a month, because it was determined that the ads unjustly disparage fast food.
Source:

Reuters

April 30, 2004Six American soldiers, including a general, were facing court martial over the torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, which was famous for its torture chambers under Saddam Hussein. Photographs of the abuse were broadcast on U.S. television; one image depicted a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his genitals.
Source:

BBC

April 28, 2004"Brother Guide" Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya arrived in Brussels, along with his white stretch Mercedes limo and four female bodyguards wearing tight uniforms, to meet with European officials. He called on the United States and China to rid themselves of nuclear and chemical weapons. "Hopefully," he said, "nothing will force us to go back to the days when we used our cars and explosive belts."
Source:

New York Times

April 16, 2004American troops in Fallujah were playing AC/DC's album Back in Black very loudly to annoy gunmen. The troops were also broadcasting Arabic insults, such as "you shoot like a goat herder."
Source:

Associated Press

March 20, 2004 Virgin Atlantic Airways decided not to install urinals shaped like a woman's open lips at a first-class lounge at New York's JFK Airport.
Source:

ABC.com.au

March 14, 2004 Luciano Pavarotti gave his last staged performance.
Source:

Associated Press

March 6, 2004 Martha Stewart revealed that she was "distressed" to have been convicted for lying about an improper stock trade that saved her about $45,000. Stewart's television show was withdrawn by WCBS, and there was speculation that her company might not be able to survive its association with a convicted felon.
Source:

New York Times

March 2, 2004A video store was blown up in Afghanistan.
Source:

New York Times

February 9, 2004A British company was selling MP3 players designed to be attached to Kalashnikov rifles; the player, which replaces the ammunition clip on the rifle, holds 3,000 audio books or 9,000 songs.
Source:

News.com.au

January 17, 2004 Afghanistan's supreme court reimposed a ban on television images of women singing on TV, just a few days after the Taliban-era ban was lifted.
Source:

Reuters

December 25, 2003 Britain's Beagle 2 spacecraft apparently landed on Mars, though it failed to transmit its nine-note homing signal, which was composed by a pop band called Blur.
Source:

Daily Telegraph

December 19, 2003Nielsen Media Research said that a reality TV show featuring Internet sex star and hotel heiress Paris Hilton received better ratings than the Diane Sawyer interview with President Bush.
Source:

CNN

November 21, 2003Krist Novoselic, the former bassist for Nirvana, was thinking about running for lieutenant governor of Washington.
Source:

New York Times

October 23, 2003The emirate of Dubai announced that it will build a $5 billion amusement park that will include an artificial rain forest and a ski slope.
Source:

Associated Press

October 11, 2003 Clint Eastwood gave up acting,
Source:

Telegraph

October 10, 2003 Sting was made a commander of the British Empire, and Roger Moore, a former James Bond, was made a knight.
Source:

St. Petersburg Times

October 9, 2003 Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California and told his son that being governor will be a lot like making a movie.
Source:

New York Times

October 6, 2003Almost 3 million people in Britain watched an illusionist play Russian roulette live on television,
Source:

Guardian

October 4, 2003Roy Horn, of Siegfried and Roy, was mauled by a rare white Bengal tiger during a Las Vegas performance and dragged offstage.
Source:

San Francisco Chronicle

October 2, 2003a rapper named C-Murder was found guilty of murder,
Source:

Launch

September 25, 2003The recording industry let it be known that it was promoting a "stealing is bad" curriculum for the nation's schools that will include classes on the history of copyright and games such as Starving Artist, a role-playing game in which children pretend to be musicians who no longer receive royalties because their work has been copied on the Internet.
Source:

New York Times

September 25, 2003 Charlton Heston was named as the first recipient of the Charlton Heston Prize.
Source:

BBC

September 18, 2003The Dalai Lama met with singer Ricky Martin and then said that it was too early to tell whether the conquest of Iraq was a mistake.
Source:

New York Times

September 17, 2003 Los Angeles banned lap dancing.
Source:

New York Times

September 12, 2003The White House reopened for tourism.
Source:

New York Times

September 11, 2003Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that a new Security Council resolution would be helpful, because it would allow other countries to pretend that the Iraqi occupation was a multinational operation, which would justify sending more money. Rumsfeld said that tourism will soon be a major industry in Iraq.
Source:

New York Times

September 6, 2003A man died and several others were injured while riding Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
Source:

Austin American-Statesman

September 3, 2003Britney Spears, a pop star, declared her faith in President Bush: "Honestly," she said, "I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that."
Source:

CNN

September 2, 2003 Charles Bronson died.
Source:

New York Times

August 1, 2003A public-access television show in New York City held the world's largest picnic.
Source:

New York Daily News

July 31, 2003To dispel fears of SARS, the Canadian government sponsored a rock concert, popularly known as "SARSstock," for 430,000 attendees.
Source:

New York Times

July 28, 2003A British hip-hop DJ attempted to break the world record for playing records, but gave up after seventy hours due to "exhaustion." Said an employee at the community center where the feat was attempted: "We all feel a little deflated but seventy hours is a long time."
Source:

Ananova

June 16, 2003CBS News sent an interview request to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the American P.O.W. whose dramatic rescue in Iraq turned out to be largely simulated, that included "ideas" from CBS Entertainment, MTV, and Simon & Schuster; some news critics found the combination of news and entertainment offers "troubling."
Source:

New York Times

June 5, 2003The U.S. Air Guitar Championships were held at the Pussycat Lounge in New York City.
Source:

Time Out New York

February 4, 2003There were rumors of a lawsuit against Warner Brothers because Dobby the house elf in the latest Harry Potter movie so closely resembles President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
September 17, 2002Former president Bill Clinton told David Letterman that he has a room at home in Chappaqua where he takes his saxophone, shuts the door, and blows the night away.
July 16, 2002 Bono, the rock star, denied that he had a hair implant.
January 1, 2002 People in Minneapolis, Minnesota, were still bickering over the wisdom of putting up a statue of Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat in the air.
December 18, 2001An Italian lost part of his penis while watching a porno movie after he inserted it into a vacuum cleaner.
November 13, 2001 Harry Potter fans looted a theatre after the movie premiered in Scotland.
October 23, 2001An Israeli death squad assassinated a Hamas leader while he was praying on his roof. “This is not the first and not the last,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared. A few days later a Palestinian death squad assassinated Rehavan Zeevi, Israel's minister of tourism, who had been a strong advocate of “transferring” all Palestinians out of the occupied territories.
September 4, 2001Puff Daddy, a rapper, told a German magazine that the Queen of England has a poor fashion sense: “She should stick to muted shades and combine gray, black, and earth tones,” said Mr. Daddy. “Those pastel shades she wears don't suit her at all and she has to do something about that haircut.”
August 21, 2001Princess Diana's former butler was charged with stealing a diverse collection of objects from the royal family including “an Indiana Jones bullwhip,” snapshots and cards from “Mummy” to her boys, Versace handbags, a book, a pepper grinder, recordings of Abba, Phil Collins, Neil Diamond, Elton John, and Leo Sayer, and an autographed picture of David Hasselhoff.
August 14, 2001 NASA was planning to commission the boy-band Natural to compose a pop song to improve the agency's image among young people and to encourage an interest in space exploration. “If we have to do it by being hip,” said a NASA space nerd, “so be it.”
July 10, 2001 English students at Cambridge University were asked in a final exam to analyze the following lines from a 1979 Bee Gees song: “It's tragedy . . . Tragedy when you lose control and you got no soul, it's tragedy.” Professor John Kerrigan, chairman of the examination board, defended the inclusion of the Bee Gees: “There are elements to the Bee Gees songs that could have directed you to the great central canonical texts,” he said. “The line in the Bee Gees song where he sings 'the feeling's gone and you can't go on' is a fair summary of the end of King Lear.
June 26, 2001Minneapolis, hoping to boost tourism, was preparing to install a bronze statue of Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat in the air at the corner of Seventh Street and Nicollet Avenue, just like on TV. “Tossing the hat inspired so many women,” Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton told a reporter. “It showed us we're capable. We're bold. And we're cute.”
May 29, 2001 Charlton Heston was reelected president of the National Rifle Association.
May 22, 2001 Researchers found that Oscar-winning movie stars live longer, and that flying frequently across several time zones can shrink your brain.
February 6, 2001Four elementary students in Louisiana were strip-searched by a principal who was looking, unsuccessfully, for $20 that had been stolen; a memo was later issued advising that strip-searches of students was a “no-no.” A man in Maldonado, Uruguay, crucified himself to protest violence against children, which he blamed on a “lack of true love.” Newspapers continued to publish righteous editorials condemning the Grammy Award nomination of Eminem, a rapper whose songs are as popular as they are violent.
January 23, 2001At an inaugural party, before the stony gaze of Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Bush got up on stage and danced with Ricky Martin.
September 26, 2000Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman reassured Hollywood campaign contributors that they did not intend to censor entertainment products despite their claims to the contrary last week.
September 26, 2000A four-year-old boy was critically injured when he was pinned under Disneyland's Roger Rabbit Toon Spin ride.
August 22, 2000 Police fired tear gas, pepper spray, beanbags, and rubber bullets into a crowd of protesters after a Rage Against the Machine concert outside the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. According to one report, the police were tired and wanted to go home but hippies and anarchists refused to leave.

June 2012

WILD THINGS
Animal Nature, Human Racism, and the Future of Zoos
By David Samuels

MY OLD MAN
On the road, a Life real and Imagined
By Clancy Martin

Also: Richard Ford, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Underearners Anonymous--a new cure for a new disease?