vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above and below, a revisitation of the Italian fumetto Pornostar, with cover art by Roberto Molino and interiors from Giovanni Romanini. A couple of websites say the physical aspects of Beba and Fiona are based on two showgirls from the Italian television program Striscia la notizia, but we checked and it turns out the show debuted three years after the comic. See our other entry on this comic here.
Below, twelve covers of the very racy Italian fumetto Pornostar, with its blonde protagonist Beba (and her dark-haired partner in crime Fiona). Pornostar is another Giovanni Romanini creation, along with Wallestein, Ulula, Lady Domina, et.al, circa mid-1980s, and the covers are by Roberto Molino. See a few more here.
The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.
American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.
The newspaper Pravda is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles living in Vienna. The name means “truth” and the paper serves as an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991.
An obscenity trial brought against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the counterculture City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reaches its conclusion when Judge Clayton Horn rules that Allen Ginsberg’s poetry collection Howl is not obscene.
After a long trial watched by millions of people worldwide, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Simpson subsequently loses a civil suit and is ordered to pay millions in damages.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed. He is confined to bed for weeks, but eventually resumes his duties, though his participation is little more than perfunctory. Wilson remains disabled throughout the remainder of his term in office, and the rest of his life.
Ten days before the opening of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, a peaceful student demonstration ends in the Tlatelolco Massacre. 200 to 300 students are gunned down, and to this day there is no consensus about how or why the shooting began.
