Barenaked Ladies – The Centre Cannot Hold

September 13, 2006 – Pluto is demoted from planetary status

By Loki 222 Content, Culture, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

Originally discovered in 1930, Pluto was at that time classed as a planet, and named for the Roman god of the Underworld. However, as the years went by, evidence mounted that it was not truly a major planet. Although it did have moons of its own, it also had an eccentric orbit (which crosses that of Neptune, the next furthest out planet) and a lower mass than any other planet.

The discovery that Pluto was just one of a number of bodies in the Kuiper Belt, many of them with comparable size and mass, also weakened the arguments for considering it a planet. Finally, a new definition of what a planet issued by the International Astronomical Union on August 24, 2006, excluded Pluto. On September 13, Pluto was named a Dwarf Planet, alongside Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris – all of which, other than Ceres, are also Kuiper Belt objects.

By NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker – http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Galleries/Featured-Images/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=543, Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

7 8 9 — Bare Naked Ladies
When I Was Your Age Pluto Was Still a Planet — Arsonists Get All the Girls

July 9, 1996 — LeAnn Rimes releases Blue

By Loki 222 Content, Culture, Rock n Roll History of the World, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

LeAnn Rimes didn’t exactly come from nowhere – by the time she released Blue in 1996, she’d been performing and recording for five years. In fact, Blue was her fourth album, and looking likely to be her last – none of its predecessors had charted. But since then, Rimes had changed labels, and decided to go for broke with this album. She moved away from the country sound of her earlier work to a more pop sensibility. This was recognised as the gamble it was, and hopes were not high.

But Blue defied expectations. It went on to become the number one album on the US country music charts, and actually entered the pop charts at number three (which was also the highest point it would reach there). Her two Grammy’s won the following year in the Best New Artist and Best Female Country Vocal Performance categories, were both on the strength of this album.

As mentioned in:

One Week – Barenaked Ladies

1993 — Encarta is first published by Microsoft

By Loki 222 Content, Dateless, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

Of all the events I’ve classified as Dateless here – meaning that, for one reason or another, no way existed to date them accurately, this is the most peculiar. But the information does not seem to be anywhere on the web – even Microsoft’s own site does not record the release date of this, the earliest version of their cd-rom encyclopaedia, Microsoft Encarta.

Encarta is in many ways a bridge between traditional encyclopedias such as the Britannica, and internet based encyclopedias such as Wikipedia. While its editing policies and hard-coded nature are in the tradition of the Britannica, its searchability represented a massive advance, as did its use of hyperlinking between articles and the inclusion of animations or archival footage to help illustrate articles.

By Source, Fair use, Link

As mentioned in:

The Big Bang Theory — Barenaked Ladies

If anyone reading this owns any copy of Encarta, I’d be curious to know whether Encarta’s entry for itself lists its original release date.

September 4, 476 — The Roman Empire falls

By Loki 222 Content, Politics, Rock n Roll History of the World, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

The Roman Empire had been in decline for centuries by the time Odoacer deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustus in 476 and declared himself ruler of Italy – the first time any non-Roman had done so.

His Italy remained more or less a client state of the Eastern Empire (the portion of the old Roman Empire that would become better known as Byzantium, and last for just under another millennium), and that in itself helps to illustrate the decay of Rome. From the point several centuries earlier at which Roman expansion ceased, to the splitting of the Empire into East and West in 395 after the death of Emperor Theodosius, the signs had been present for some time, and only growing stronger.

Even Odoacer’s sack of Rome was the third in less than seventy years, and when a nation can no longer defend its capital, you know things aren’t going well. Even so, the use of this date as the official Fall of Rome is fairly arbitrary – there are no shortage of other dates that have a just claim to the title.

By Unknown – 19th century illustration, Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Fall of Rome — James Reyne
Kill the President — The Offspring
It’s All Been Done — Barenaked Ladies

circa 2630 BCE — Imhotep designs and begins construction of the first Pyramid in Egypt

By Loki 222 Content, Dateless, Religion, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

Imhotep was an Egyptian polymath who was what we would later call a Renaissance man. Of course, Imhotep had a 4000 year head-start on Leonardo. He served the Third Dynasty pharaoh Djoser as vizier, although the complete list of his titles ran:
Chancellor of the King of Egypt, Doctor, First in line after the King of Upper Egypt, Administrator of the Great Palace, Hereditary nobleman, High Priest of Heliopolis, Builder, Chief Carpenter, Chief Sculptor and Maker of Vases in Chief.

His most notable work to modern eyes is the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, in which the pharaoh Djoser was buried. It was the first pyramid, and comparatively small and primitive, but for its time it was an engineering marvel.

After his death, Imhotep was deified, one of very few Egyptians to whom this occurred (other than the pharaohs).

By Olaf Tausch – Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link

As mentioned in:

The Big Bang Theory — Barenaked Ladies

circa 300,000 BCE — Mousterian tool kit evolves among Neanderthals

By Loki 222 Content, Dateless, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

The earliest known example of tool making by a hominid species, the Mousterian tools were created by members of the species homo neanderthalensis. They were primarily a flint-based technology, consisting mostly of cutting and scraping tools. Their name derives from Le Moustier in France, where such tools were discovered. However, it is unlikely that Le Moustier is the actual site of the tools’ origin, as similar tools have been found throughout Europe, the Near East and North Africa. Wherever they were invented, they clearly disseminated widely and – one assumes – swiftly.

The advent of tool making is the beginning of humanity’s technology-enabled conquest of the world. Up until this point, our ancestors were one species among many – a little smarter than most, but not especially better adapted than any other. Tool making changed that, making hominid species deadlier and more efficient hunters, and leading in time to the technological civilization that anyone reading this lives in today.

As mentioned in:

The Big Bang Theory — Barenaked Ladies

circa 3,900,000 BCE — Australopithecus evolves

By Loki 222 Content, Dateless, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

Australopithecus was an early proto-hominid that evolved in Eastern Africa around 4 million years ago. It consisted of a number of sub-species: A. anamensis, A. afarensis, A. sediba, and A. africanus; and two more sub-species whose genus is disputed: A. robustus and A. boisei. Over the course of two million years or so, the various Australopithecenes ranged across Eastern and Southern Africa.

The Australopithecines evolved about 2 million years after the split between the ancestral roots of humanity and chimpanzees (our closest relative), and one or more of the various sub-species of Australopithecus is likely to have been the progenitor of the Homo Genus, to which modern humanity (homo sapiens sapiens) belongs.

By Neanderthal-Museum, Mettmann – Pressebilder Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, , CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

The Big Bang Theory — Barenaked Ladies

circa 65,500,000 BCE — The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event wipes out the dinosaurs

By Loki 222 Content, Dateless, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

Everyone loves the dinosaurs. A lot of people – if the Jurassic Park films are to be believed – would like to see them come back. But without their extinction, we wouldn’t be here today.

Even now, it’s still not clear what exactly caused the extinction event – but the best known hypothesis is that of Luis and Walter Alvarez, which states that a meteoric or cometary impact caused a nuclear winter-like effect that altered the climate drastically, wiping out something like 75% of all species alive at the time. The effects were particularly felt by larger species – which included most dinosaurs.

In the wake of the event, now open evolutionary niches were occupied by mammals and birds, including our own ancestors.

As mentioned in:

The Power of Lard — Lard
The Big Bang Theory — Barenaked Ladies
Point of No Return — Immortal Technique

circa 250,000,000 BCE — The super-continent Pangaea forms

By Loki 222 Content, Dateless, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

Pangaea was a super-continent – an agglomeration of multiple continents – that came into being about 250 million years ago. It was composed of all the continents we know today fused into a single landmass, surrounded by a single ocean (called Panthalassa) – and was the last time such a thing occurred. In fact, it was slightly larger than the combined areas of the modern continents, as supercontinent formation tends to lead to lower sea levels.

Pangaea (the name comes from the Greek Pan meaning All and Gaea meaning Earth) existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, and its best known inhabitants were the dinosaurs. It began to break up approximately 75 million years after it formed, although the continents would not reach anything approximating their modern positions until only about 35 million years ago, when the Indian subcontinent collided with Asia.

Pangaea continents

As mentioned in:

The Big Bang Theory — Barenaked Ladies

circa 284,000,000 BCE — Bolosaurid Eudibamus is the first known biped

By Loki 222 Content, Dateless, Rock n Roll History of the World, Science, The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

The earliest known bipedal vertebrate, eudibamus cursoris was a small parareptile. The sole specimen that has been found (in Thuringia, Germany) measured about 25 cm long – about the size of a house cat. Reconstructions of it give it an appearance resembling a cross between a tiny velociraptor and a modern iguana.

The sole specimen of it known to science was discovered in 2000 by a paleontological team including David S. Berman, Robert R. Reisz, Diane Scott, Amy C. Henrici, Stuart S. Sumida and Thomas Martens. The species is believed to have existed for a span of about five million years or so.

Eudibamus BW

As mentioned in:

The Big Bang Theory — Barenaked Ladies