David Schmader is on vacation this week. Before he left, he wrote this history-spanning Last Days. Enjoy!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21 This week of old news, older news, and up-to-the-minute celebrity reportage kicks off with a day of firsts. On this date in 1804, the first self-propelling steam locomotive was unveiled in Wales. On this date in 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the first edition of The Communist Manifesto. 1878: first telephone book issued in US (in New Haven, Connecticut). 1925: first issue of the New Yorker published. 1937: first successful flying car—Waldo Waterman's Arrowbile—takes its first flight. 1953: first confirmation of the structure of DNA. 1958: first unveiling of the peace symbol, as designed by Gerald Holtom and commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Is there something about the 21st of February that inspires innovation, or has history simply racked up enough days and things that each day commemorates the first of many things? Our money's on option two, but that doesn't mean we won't offer a theory in support of option one. In late February, people feel crappy about failing on their fantastically ambitious New Year's resolutions and so devote themselves to more attainable goals, such as issuing phone books and building flying cars.

••Also on this day: Malcolm X was assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam (1965), and both David Foster Wallace and Chuck Palahniuk were born (1962).

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22 The week continues with another beginning, this one followed by a sudden, ignominious end. Our subject: Moose Murders, the self-described "mystery farce" that made its Broadway premiere on this night in 1983 and immediately closed. "From now on, there will always be two groups of theatergoers in this world: those who have seen Moose Murders, and those who have not," wrote Frank Rich in the New York Times. "A visit to Moose Murders is what will separate the connoisseurs of Broadway disaster from mere dilettantes for many moons to come." Written by Arthur Bicknell and tracking a weekend of saucy shenanigans at an Adirondack Mountains lodge, Moose Murders was supposed to herald the Broadway comeback of Eve Arden, the legendary actress best known to contemporary audiences as the fussy principal in the film version of Grease, and to homosexual men as Joan Crawford's best friend in Mildred Pierce. But when Arden withdrew from the show after its first preview (citing "artistic differences"), her role went to Holland Taylor, the Emmy-winning actress best known to contemporary audiences as Charlie Sheen's mom on Two and a Half Men, who gamely stepped in and led the cast of Moose Murders into infamy, as one of Broadway's few shows ever to open and close on the same night. Despite, or more likely because of, the gleefully vitriolic reviews (Rich dismissed the cast as "a crowd of unappetizing clowns"), Last Days lives in perpetual regret at having missed Moose Murders, which sounds awesome: "The [characters] include Stinky, a drug-crazed hippie who wants to sleep with his mother, and Gay, a little girl in a party dress," writes Rich. "Told that her father will always be 'a vegetable,' Gay turns up her nose and replies, 'Like a lima bean? Gross me out!' She then breaks into a tap dance." RIP, Moose Murders (which has recently enjoyed revivals in the Philippines and at performance-art readings in Rochester, New York).

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23 From art resulting in tragedy we turn to tragedy producing art, as on this day in 1945, during the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of US Marines and a US Navy corpsman attached an American flag to an old Japanese water pipe and hoisted it atop Mount Suribachi, at which instant they were photographed by Joe Rosenthal and cemented in American iconography forever. The men, however, proved heroically mortal, with three of the six flag-hoisters—Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Michael Strank—killed in the battle to come.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24 In lighter news: As any of Last Days' real-life acquaintances can tell you, we love gangster movies, primarily because they involve a naturalist milieu capable of exploding at any moment with fantastical drama, but also because so many of them are so fucking good, and today brings the birthdays of not one but two mob-movie superstars. First up: Abe Vigoda, the American actor born on this day in 1921, who distinguished himself in everything from TV's Barney Miller to 1997's Good Burger. But for mob-movie lovers, Abe Vigoda will forever be The Godfather's Tessio, the aging capo of the Corleone family who seals his fate by selling out to Don Barzini. (Tessio was whacked right after the confirmation of Connie and Carlo's son, but despite odd internet rumors to the contrary, Abe Vigoda is still alive.) Speaking of The Godfather, today also marks the birth of Dominic Chianese, the American actor born on this day in 1931, who distinguished himself as The Godfather: Part II's wily go-between Johnny Ola before scoring the role that will be his legacy: Uncle Junior on HBO's The Sopranos, a cunnilingus-loving ladies' man who sinks into convenient dementia. Happy birthday, pretend mobsters! (And get a job, real mobsters.)

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25 The week continues in the Philippines, where on this day in 1986, the People Power Revolution succeeded in toppling the authoritarian regime of President Ferdinand Marcos and restoring democracy in the Philippines. Hero of the day and beyond: Corazon Aquino, the revolution leader who became the country's 11th president (and the first popularly and democratically elected female head of state in Asia).

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26 Today we travel to New York City, where on this day in 1993, some radical Muslim freaks detonated a truck bomb parked beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring over a thousand more in what will be known as "the World Trade Center bombing" until September 11, 2001.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27 The week ends with the 2011 Academy Awards, handed out on tonight's shorter-than-normal broadcast that nevertheless felt like the longest Oscars ever. Main offenders: indentured servant cohosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway, two talented and attractive young stars who succeeded in making the entire nation hate them. (Franco was apparently stoned into spacey submission, Hathaway so aggressively eager to please she nearly chipped a tooth, and their chemistry-free banter—the would-be backbone of the show—made one long for a rogue wave.) Supplementary offenders: best supporting actress winner Melissa Leo (whose ham-drenched acceptance speech should have led to the revocation of her award), best actor winner Colin Firth (whose handsomeness was compromised by extended discussion of the stirrings in his abdominals), and the dozens of behind-the-scenes participants responsible for conceiving, writing, and permitting the existence of the entire evening-length debacle. Rays of light: a well-deserved best actress win for Natalie Portman (Black Swan is her Raging Bull, though we're sorry her triumph came at the expense of the also-deserving Annette Bening) and the PS 22 Chorus, whose earth-enhancing talents survived even their idiotic end-of-show performance slot. Condolences to the viewers and the unlucky Franco and Hathaway, whose names will be synonymous with awful Oscar hosting until someone does an even worse job of it. (Check back next year!)

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