Brenda Ann Spencer was only 16 years old when, one Monday, she took her father’s gun and began shooting at the school opposite her house. She fired 30 rounds, killing two and wounding eight others. The police were called and a siege ensued.
After seven hours, she surrendered to police, and told them that her motivation for the killings was simply that she didn’t like Mondays, and that this livened up the day. She was sentenced to a term of 25 years to life imprisonment – and has since been denied parole on several occasions (her next hearing is scheduled for 2019).
Referenced in:
Brenda Spencer – The Child Molesters
I Don’t Like Mondays – The Boomtown Rats
Made in the depths of Hell from the sufferings of the damned, Pain is a gray powder. It is treated much like snuff by the demons who take it, and usually stored in snuff boxes.
The effects it has on the demonic physiology are as many and as varied as those physiologies, although the two universal constants are that it enhances the pleasure of sex, and that, although it is possible to resist the drug’s effects, it is painful to do so.
When used by the damned themselves, it appears to intensify sensation to a painful degree.
Jan Palach was a twenty year old student in Prague when he set himself on fire. His action was intended as a protest of the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring the previous August, when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to put an end to the liberalisaton that was taking place under the government of Alexander Dub?ek.
Palach spent three days in excrutiating pain before he died of his injuries on January 19, 1969. In death, he became a martyr to the cause of Czechoslovakia liberation (and liberation in general). When the Velvet Revolution freed the Czechs and Slovaks from Soviet rule in 1989, Palach was one of those honoured with memorials by the new government.
Referenced in:
Euromess — Jean-Jacques Burnel
Nuuj Helde — The Janse Bagge Bend
Va De Du Jesus — Åge Aleksandersen
Pochodnie (Torches) — Jacek Kaczmarski
The Funeral of Jan Palach — The Zippo Band
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people… the Druids
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains
Hewn into the living rock… Of Stonehenge!
Stonehenge was constructed out of massive slabs of bluestone, by persons unknown using means unknown for reasons unknown, on a field on Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, England.
Theories abound as to its purpose, although as the lyrics above suggest, it is generally believed to have been something druidic. Suggestions include it being a burial ground, a primitive observatory, or a place for human sacrifice. Less likely theories argue that it was constructed by Atlanteans or aliens.
The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Aaron Presley, was born to Vernon Elvis and Gladys Love Presley in a two room house built by Vernon. He was preceded into the world by his stillborn brother, Jesse Garon Presley, some 35 minutes earlier.
Presley is one of the best known and most popular rock stars of all time, acheiving a level of fame and success in his 42 years that remains the yardstick by which all celebrities must still be measured, and if you don’t already know who he was… well, you were probaby born after 1977.
Also, although Guiness doesn’t keep records on it, he is also probably the most-frequently impersonated human being of all time.
In the year 3535, it appears that humanity lives in a brave new world where psychiatric drugs are mandatory – not so much prozac nation as prozac planet. And these drugs, well, they make lying impossible, so either we’re all much more guarded or we’re all much more blunt.
Either way, it makes me think of the film Equilibrium, because you’d probably need that sort of police force to run such a state.
Referenced in:
In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus) – Zager and Evans
The Rump Parliament was what remained of the British Parliament after Colonel Pride had purged it a month earlier, leaving only those parliamentarians who supported the army.
On January 6, 1649, the Parliament appointed a total of 135 men to constitute a High Court for the trial of King Charles I for tyranny. A quorum was declated to be twenty of these appointees.
The trial of Charles I commenced shortly thereafter, and duly returned the guilty verdict it was intended to.
Derived from the bodily fluids of one of the fastest of all mammals, Moongoose Blood is a superhuman level stimulant, capable of accelerating the bodies of users into speeds just short of light speed, visible to the naked eye only as lightning-like flashes.
Also known as ‘Goose Juice, the drug is highly illegal and the police force of Neopolis finds it a perennial problem.
An entire sub-culture has grown up around the use of Mongoose Blood, which can be best characterised as ‘extreme rave culture’. Goose music is so fast that to those not currently on the drug hear it only as a painfully high-pitched whine.
An accomplished bassist, pianist and bandleader, Charles Mingus is perhaps best-remembered today for his work as a composer. Between 1943 and his death in 1979, he composed and arranged numerous influential works of jazz – his final composition, Epitath, was appropriately never performed until after his death.
Mingus was a perfectionist, especially as a bandleader, and was notorious for his temper – he was widely known as ‘the Angry Man of Jazz‘ – but most of the musicians he worked with agreed that his perfectionism most often brought out the best in their performances.
The Boston Strangler – assuming it was only one man – was a serial rapist and murderer who terrorised Boston from June 1962 and January 1964. He killed thirteen people, all of them single women (ranging in age from 19 to 85), and all but three of them he also sexually assaulted. Despite his nom du crime, not all of his victims were strangled.
Although a man named Albert De Salvo later confessed to and was convicted of the Strangler’s crimes, there remains some doubt that he was actually responsible for all of the crimes – although he knew many details police had not released to the public, there were some inconsistencies in his testimony. To date, however, no one else has been charged with any of the crimes attributed to the Boston Strangler.
Referenced in:
The Boston Strangler – Macabre
Midnight Rambler – The Rolling Stones
Dedicated to Albert De Salvo – Whitehouse
Boston Strangler (Albert DeSalvo) – Church of Misery
First broadcast on the evening of January 3rd, 1989, “The Arsenio Hall Show” was a very popular talk and variety show in the United States. Hosted, as the name suggests, by comedian and actor Arsenio Hall, it rapidly became the place to be seen – especially if one was attempting to reach that market sector known as ‘the MTV Generation.’
The show ran for five years, for a total of 1248 episodes, before its cancellation. The final episode was broadcast on May 27th, 1994. Today, it is probably best-remembered for the June 1992 appearance of Bill Clinton on the show – he played “Heartbreak Hotel” on his saxophone, impressing many young viewers with his ‘coolness’.
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