April History

April History

April is…
Autism Awareness Month
BLT Sandwich Month
Child Abuse Prevention Month
Confederate History Month
Financial Literacy Month
Florida Tomato Month
Grilled Cheese Month
Garlic Month
Keep America Beautiful Month
Lawn & Garden Month
National Humor Month
Jazz Appreciation Month
Occupational Therapy (OT) Month
Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month
Pecan Month
Poetry Writing Month
Rape Awareness Month
Sexual Assault Awareness Month
Soft Pretzel Month
Soyfoods Month
Stress Awareness Month
In April of 1912, the violinist of the Titanic was billed posthumously for the cost of his uniform, since his wages weren’t enough to cover the cost of the brass buttons. When asked if the White Star Line would return his body to the family, they replied that standard shipping rates would apply.

April 1 History
In many countries, April 1 is known as April Fools Day or All Fools’ Day.

1392 – Some say… the first reference to April Fool’s Day was in Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”. True – it was probably a mistaken reference to March 32 in the story.

1789 – Pennsylvania Representative Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg was elected the first US Speaker of the House of Representatives.

1853 – The first professional, full-time US fire department with salaried firemen was established in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1875 – Sir Francis Galton published the first newspaper weather map, in The Times in London, England

1877 – Edward Schieffelin founded Tombstone, Arizona, best known as the place where Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers had their shoot-out with the Clantons and McLaurys at the O.K. Corral in 1881

1934 – Bonnie and Clyde kill two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas.

1938 – The first panda to live in captivity outside China, Su Lin, died after a twig lodged in his throat at the Brookfield Zoo, Chicago.

1957 – The BBC broadcast the ‘spaghetti-tree hoax’ on its current affairs program Panorama, showing spaghetti being harvested from trees.

1960 – The first weather observation satellite, Tiros I, was launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, and made the first television picture from space.

1960 – Dr. Martens released its first boots, the model 1460.

1963 – ABC premiered General Hospital, the daytime drama that eventually became the network’s longest-running (soap opera) serial program produced in Hollywood. On the same day, NBC debuted The Doctors.

1970 – President Richard Nixon signed legislation officially banning cigarette ads on television and radio.

1976 – Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.

1977 (Tornado) Madaripur and Shibchar, Bangladesh

1979 – Nickelodeon kid’s cable channel was launched

1984 – Singer Marvin Gaye was shot three times and killed by his father during a domestic dispute.

1997 – As part of a crossover April Fools joke, Pat Sajak hosted Jeopardy, and Alex Trebek hosted Wheel of Fortune.

2004 – Gmail was announced on April 1, 2004, making many believe the service was a joke.

April 2 History
1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed near what is now called St. Augustine, Florida, and declared the land for Spain.

1792 – The Coinage Act was passed, establishing the United States Mint.

1827 – Lead pencils began being manufactured by Joseph Dixon, who built his factory in Salem, Massachusetts

1882 – Tombstone reads, “Jesse W. James, Died April 3, 1882, Aged 34 years, six months, 28 days, Murdered by a traitor and a coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.” For reward money, Jesse James was shot and killed by frenemy Robert Ford. The bank robber had a $5,000 bounty, but they gave Ford $500 and then arrested him.

1902 – “Electric Theatre”, the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opened in Los Angeles.

1917 – The first woman ever elected to the US Congress, Jeannette Rankin, takes her seat as a representative from Montana.

1953 – The journal Nature published a paper with this date from Francis Crick and James Watson, titled Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, in which they described a double helix structure for DNA.

1956 – As the World Turns and The Edge of Night first aired on the CBS network in the United States, as the first half-hour serial dramas.

1956 – Elvis Presley sang Heartbreak Hotel on the Milton Berle Show, with an estimated 25% of the United States population viewing.

1973 – The first portable cell phone call was placed in New York City.

1973 – Launch of the LexisNexis legal research service.

1978 – Dallas premiered on CBS.

1978 – Velcro, the hook-and-loop fastener patent, expired. Velcro comes from “vel” or velvet and “cro” from the French word crochet, which means hook.

1992 – In New York, Mafia boss John Gotti is convicted of murder and racketeering and is later sentenced to life in prison.

1992 – Pope John Paul II died.

1996 – Suspected ‘Unabomber’Theodore Kaczynski was arrested at his Montana cabin.

April 3 History
1860 – Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously left St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. They used horses, not ponies.

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler was granted a German patent for his engine design.

1891 – Emma Elizabeth Smith may have been the first murdered by Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, London.

1953 – TV Guide published its first issue

1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announced it would defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges.

1956 – Elvis Presley appeared on the Milton Berle Show.

1966 – The USSR’s Luna 10, the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, entered lunar orbit and completed its first orbit 3 hours later.

1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech, in Memphis, Tennessee.

1973 – Inventor Martin Cooper placed the first portable phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

1978 – At the 50th annual Academy Awards at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won the Best Picture of 1977 Oscar.

1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, was unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.

1986 – Merv Griffin sold Merv Griffin Enterprises to The Coca-Cola Company, for $250,000,000.

1996 – “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski was captured at his cabin in Montana.

2000 – Microsoft was ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors.

2010 – Apple released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.

April 4 History
1561 – UFOs were reported flying over Nuremberg, German

1841 – US President Harrison died of pneumonia after one month in office

1850 – Los Angeles, California was incorporated as a city.

1871 – Mary Florence Potts of Ottumwa, Iowa Patented (#113,448) the “Mrs. Potts’ sad iron” – a set of three irons with detachable handles, so two irons could be heating up while you were using the other.

1877 -A pianist performed in Philadelphia, and an audience heard the performance in New York, via the telephone.

1932 – Professor C. Glen King, of the University of Pittsburgh, discovered vitamin C.

1933 – a dirigible Akron crashed in New Jersey, killing 73 people.

1949 – Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

1964 – The Beatles occupied the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States, with Can’t Buy Me LoveTwist and ShoutShe Loves YouI Want to Hold Your Hand, and Please Please Me.

1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.

1969 – CBS abruptly cancelled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and replaced it with Hee HawHee Haw episodes were ready to premiere in mid-June.

1973 – The World Trade Center in New York was officially dedicated.

1975 – Microsoft was founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico

1983 – Space Shuttle Challenger’s maiden voyage into space (STS-6).

2013 – Famed movie critic Roger Ebert died

April 5 History
1614 – In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe.

1753 – The British Museum was founded with the purchase of the 50,000-volume library of Sir Hans Sloane and his collection of 69,352 items of nature and art.

1922 – The American Birth Control League, the forerunner of Planned Parenthood, was incorporated.

1923 – Firestone Tire and Rubber Company begins production of balloon-type tires.

1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, “forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates” by US citizens.

1936 (Tornado) Tupelo, Mississippi

1949 – Fireside Theater debuted on NBC.

1987 – FOX debuted two shows, Married… with Children and The Tracey Ullman Show.

1991 – Katie Couric was designated a co-host of the Today Show.

1994 – Lead Singer of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide, and was found three days later.

1997 – The Crocodile Hunter premiered on Animal Planet

2006 – The first case of H5N1 avian flu was confirmed in the UK after tests on a dead swan found in Cellardyke, Fife.

2012 – Scandal premiered on ABC

April 6 History
648 BC – Earliest solar eclipse recorded by the Ancient Greeks.

1748 – Excavations began at Pompeii, covered by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

1830 – Joseph Smith founded The Mormon Church in Fayette Township, New York.

1852 – Edward Sabine announced that the 11-year sunspot cycle was “absolutely identical” to Earth’s geomagnetic cycle.

1895 – Oscar Wilde was arrested, later found guilty of being a homosexual, and sentenced to two years of hard labor.

1896 – In Athens, the first modern Olympic Games was opened 1,500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I.

1930 – Hostess Twinkies snack cakes were invented by James ‘Jimmy’A. Dewar, at the Continental Baking Company in Chicago

1931 – Little Orphan Annie debuted on the Blue Network of NBC.

1936 (Tornado) Gainesville, Georgia.

1938 – Roy J. Plunkett and Jack Rebok accidentally discovered the chemical compound polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), later marketed as Teflon by DuPont.

1947 – The first Tony Awards were presented for theatrical achievement.

1957 -Trolley cars ended service in New York City.

1965 – Launch of Early Bird, the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit via NASA by the Space and Communications Group of Hughes Aircraft Company.

1966 – Hundreds of children and their teachers reported seeing a UFO over Melbourne, Australia.

1973 – NASA launched Pioneer 11 to Jupiter and Saturn.

1974 – Waterloo won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden. ABBA went on to pop music success for much of the 1970s.

1998 – Travelers and Citicorp merged (the merger was completed on October 8), forming Citibank.

April 7 History
1795 – France adopted the meter as the unit of length and the base of the metric system.

1896 – Patent (#557,994) for “justifying lines of type” was issued to Tolbert Langston.

1906 (Volcano) Mount Vesuvius erupted and devastated Naples.

1927 -The first public display of a long-distance television transmission was viewed by a group of newspaper reporters and dignitaries in the auditorium of AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories, New York, via telephone lines from Washington, DC.

1933 – Prohibition in the United States was repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight.

1940 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.

1945 – Allied forces sank the Japanese battleship Yamato off the coast of Okinawa.

1946 – Syria’s independence from France was officially recognized.

1948 – The United Nations established the World Health Organization.

1954 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous “domino theory” speech, regarding communism in Southeast Asia.

1959 – The first distinguishable echo was recorded of a radar signal bounced off the Sun by the Radioscience Laboratory at Stamford University.

1967 – Film critic Roger Ebert published his first film review in the Chicago Sun-Times.

1969 – The Internet’s symbolic birth date: Publication of RFC 1 (A Request For Comments).

1970 – John Wayne won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in 1969’s True Grit.

1970 – Midnight Cowboy won the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars.

1980 – The United States severed relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

2001 – Mars Odyssey was launched to orbit Mars. The mission was named as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, after his book 2001: A Space Odyssey.

April 8 History
1730 – Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in New York City, was dedicated.

1820 – The Venus de Milo statue was discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

1838 (Tornado) Calcutta, India.

1873 – The first commercially successful margarine manufacturing process was Patent (No. 137,564) by Alfred Paraf of New York.

1879 – “Fire Escape Ladder” was Patented (#214,224) by J.R. Winters.

1879 – Echo Farms Dairy Co. of New York sold milk in glass bottles for the first time in the US.

1952 – US President Harry Truman announced the seizure of all domestic steel mills to prevent a nationwide strike.

1953 – Man in the Dark, the first 3D motion picture produced and released by a major company, opened at the Globe Theater in New York City.

1959 – A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper met to discuss creating a new programming language, leading to COBOL.

1964 – Gemini 1, an unmanned test flight, was launched.

1990 – Twin Peaks premiered on ABC

1994 – Lead Singer of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, was found dead, having committed suicide three days earlier.

2005 – Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph agreed to plead guilty. A security guard named Richard Jewell was initially considered the prime suspect in the case.

April 9 History
1865 – At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, ending the US Civil War.

1867 – The Alaska Purchase – the United States bought Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million, in a treaty ratified by the US Senate.

1945 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission was formed.

1947 (Tornado) Higgins, Texas and Woodward, Oklahoma.

1959 – NASA announced the selection of America’s first seven astronauts for Project Mercury. They were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Donald Slayton – the “Mercury Seven”

1962 – Sophia Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for Two Women.

1965 – Astrodome opened with the first indoor baseball game played. It was an exhibition game between the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees. The Astros won 2-1.

1967 – The first Boeing 737 made its maiden flight.

1974 – Phil Brooks was issued a US patent (#3,802,434) for a disposable syringe.

1981 – Nature published the longest scientific name in history. With 16,569 nucleotides, the systematic name for human mitochondrial DNA is 207,000 letters long. That would be over 1000 typical web pages.

1998 – The Price Is Right aired its milestone 5,000th episode. Every prize given away in that episode was a car.

April 10 History

1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, was enacted in Great Britain.

1790 – George Washington approved the US Patent Office.

1815 (Volcano Eruption) Mount Tambora (Year Without A Summer). The eruption lasted 3 months, killing 10,000 people directly and 80,000 more via disease and famine.

1849 – The first US Patent (#6,281) for a safety pin was issued to Walter Hunt of New York City.

1866 – The American Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was founded in New York City.

1906 – O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi was published.

1916 – The Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) was founded in New York City.

1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published.

1953 – The House of Wax, in 3-D and starring Vincent Price, opened at New York’s Paramount Theater.

1963 – USS Thresher, an atomic submarine, sank in the Atlantic Ocean, killing the entire crew of 129.

1970 – Paul McCartney announced the breakup of the Beatles

1971 – The People’s Republic of China hosted the US table tennis team for a week-long visit.

2009 – Parks and Recreation premiered on NBC

2010 – Matt Smith debuted as the eleventh Doctor of Doctor Who on BBC America

2014 – Kathleen Sebelius resigned as Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, after the faulty rollout of HealthCare.gov.

April 11 History
1876 – The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was organized in New York City.

1876 – The stenotype was patented (#175,892) by John C. Zachos of New York City

1909 – The city of Tel Aviv was founded.

1919 – The International Labor Organization(IOL) was founded.

1945 – The American Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany.

1957 – The Ryan X-13 Vertijet became the first jet to take off and land vertically, at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

1963 – Pope John XXIII issues Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) – the first encyclical addressed to all instead of Catholics alone.

1964 (Tornado) Bhabanipur, Bangladesh

1970 – Apollo 13 was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The difficult trip back home was the topic of the film, Apollo 13.

1976 – The Apple Computer 1 (Apple I) was created. They were initially all hand-built by Steve Wozniak.

1981 – Van Halen’s lead guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, married One Day at a Time actress Valerie Bertinelli

1988 – Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian) won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in 1987’s Moonstruck.

1989 – The Philadelphia Flyers’ Ron Hextall becomes the first goaltender in NHL history to score a goal in the playoffs.

2006 – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had successfully enriched uranium.

April 12 History
1606 – The Union Jack (the Union Flag) was adopted as the flag of English and Scottish ships.

1633 – Galileo was convicted of heresy, for announcing that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

1892 – The first US Patent (#472,692) for a portable typewriter, the Blickensderfer, was issued to George Blickensderfer of Stamford, Connecticut.

1914 – Mark Strand Theatre opened in New York City. It was the first official “movie theater.”

1934 – The strongest surface wind gust ever recorded on Earth, at 231 mph, was measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

1945 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt died while in office, and Vice President Harry Truman became President upon Roosevelt’s death.

1955 – The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, was declared safe and effective.

1961 – Aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space.

1981 – The first launch of a Space Shuttle (Columbia), named NASA’s STS-1 mission.

1987 – 21 Jump Street premiered on FOX.

1992 – The Euro Disney Resort officially opened with its theme park, Euro Disneyland. It was later renamed Disneyland Paris.

1994 – Laurence Canter created a software program that flooded Usenet message boards with a notice for the ‘Green Card Lottery’ to solicit business for his law firm of Canter & Siegel, in an early instance of commercial spam.

1995 – Drew Barrymore appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, and, because it was his birthday, she danced on his desk and flashed him on the air.

April 13 History
1204 – Constantinople fell to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade.

1570 – Guy Fawkes was born (died in 1606)

1742 – Handel’s Messiah premiered in Dublin, Ireland.

1743 – US President Thomas Jefferson, born April 13, 1743, in Albemarle County, Virginia, died on July 4, 1826 in Albemarle County, Virginia.

1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act gave Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in the UK’s Parliament.

1869 – The first US Patent (#88,929) for an air brake was issued to George Westinghouse of Schenectady, N.Y., called an “Improvement in steam-power-brake devices.”

1870 – The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded.

1902 – James C. Penney (now Penneys) opened his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1943 – The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC.

1970 – An oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13, but everyone survived. It was also the major plot for the 1995 film, Apollo 13.

1974 – Western Union, with NASA and Hughes Aircraft, launched the US’ first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.

1976 – The United States Treasury Department reintroduced the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note.

1997 – Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.

April 14 History
1775 – The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.

1828 – Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language.

1863 – The US Patent (No. 38,200) for a continuous-roll printing press was issued to William Bullock, enabling two sides of a newspaper to be printed simultaneously. It was first used by the New York Sun.

1865 – John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a play (Our American Cousin) at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC.

1881 – Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight occurred on El Paso Street, El Paso, Texas. Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire accounted for three of the four fatalities with his twin .44 caliber Colt revolvers.

1912 – RMS Titanic hit an iceberg, killing 1514 people that evening, and into the next day.

1933 – Jack Mackay and his wife reported seeing the Loch Ness Monster – ‘Nessie,’ although the earliest report was in 565 AD when St. Columba turned away a giant beast that was threatening a man in the Ness River, which flows into the lake.

1935 – ‘Black Sunday Storm’ – the worst dust storm of the US Dust Bowl, hit from the Oklahoma Panhandle and Northwestern Oklahoma to the Texas Panhandles.

1939 – The Viking Press first published the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

1953 – The CIA started to give unwitting subjects LSD in a search for a mind-controlling drug.

1961 – The manmade element 103 – Lawrencium (Lw), was produced in the US by Albert Ghiorso, Torbjørn Sikkeland, Almon Larsh, and Robert M. Latimer.

1969 (Tornado) East Pakistan, Pakistan

1969 – Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter) and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) tied for Best Actress Oscar

1984 – My Little Pony premiered, in syndication

1990 – In Living Color premiered on FOX

1994 – The 24-hour movie channel Turner Classic Movies made its debut.

2003 – The Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.

April 15 History
1755 – Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London.

1817 – The Erie Canal was authorized, to link Buffalo on Lake Erie and the Hudson River at Albany, New York,

1892 – The Edison General Electric Company (General Electric Company) was formed.

1912 – Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, near Newfoundland & Nova Scotia, Canada, after hitting an iceberg the night before.

1912 – The fourth dimension was referred to ‘as Time’ by Albert Einstein.

1923 – Insulin became available for use by people with diabetes.

1924 – Rand McNally published its first road atlas.

1927 – The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 began.

1941 – Igor Ivor Sikorsky made the first helicopter flight over one hour in his Vought-Sikorsky VS-300.

1947 – Jackie Robinson became the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

1955 – McDonald’s opened its first franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois.

1964 – Chesapeake Bay Bridge- The Tunnel was opened to traffic, connecting the Eastern Shore to Virginia Beach.

1983 – Tokyo Disneyland opens to the public.

1984 – The inaugural World Youth Day was held in Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City.

2013 – At approximately 2:50 PM (EDT), in a terrorist attack, two explosions around Copley Square were caught live on camera during the telecast of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring 260.

April 16 History
73 AD – Masada, a Jewish fortress, fell to the Romans after several months of siege.

1881 – In Dodge City, Kansas, gunslinger Bat Masterson fought his last gun battle. He paid an $8 fine and retired.

1908 – Natural Bridges National Monument was established in Utah.

1910 – The Boston Arena opened.

1912 – American aviator Harriet Quimby became the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel. She was also the first US-licensed female pilot.

1943 – Albert Hoffmann accidentally discovered the psychedelic effects of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)

1947 – The Texas City Disaster, an ammonium nitrate explosion, killed 571 people.

1947 – Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coined the term ‘Cold War ‘ to describe relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

1962 – Walter Cronkite became the news anchor for the CBS network.

1990 – ‘Doctor Death’, Jack Kevorkian, participated in his first assisted suicide. Janet Adkins was the patient, in Detroit, Michigan.

1995 – Governor George W. Bush named April 16 as Selena Day in Texas, after the singer was killed two weeks earlier.

2007 – Virginia Tech massacre: Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and injured 17 before committing suicide.

April 17 History
1397 – Geoffrey Chaucer told The Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II.

1815 (Volcano) Tambora volcano in Indonesia killed almost 100,000 people.

1861 – The first oil well fire occurred at the Little and Merrick well at Oil Creek, near Rouseville, Pennsylvania, killing 19 people.

1897 – A UFO supposedly crashed into a farm owned by J.S. Proctor in Aurora, Texas.

1906 – San Francisco was hit by a disastrous earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 7.8.

1907 – The Ellis Island immigration center in New York processed 11,747 people, more than any other day.

1937 – Daffy Duck’s first appearance was in Porky’s Duck Hunt.

1960 – Singer Eddie Cochran died, and Gene Vincent was injured in a UK car accident.

1961 – The unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion began.

1964 – Geraldine ‘Jerrie’ Mock landed in Columbus, Ohio, becoming the first woman to complete a solo airplane flight worldwide.

1964 – The Ford Mustang was introduced to the North American market.

1966 – Policemen Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff reported chasing a UFO at 5:00 AM in Portage County, Ohio

1973 (Tornado) Balurchar, Bangladesh

2011 – Game of Thrones premiered on HBO

2014 – NASA’s Kepler confirmed the discovery of the first Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of another star.

April 18 History
1506 – The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica was laid.

1738 – Real Academia de la Historia (“Royal Academy of History”) was founded in Madrid, Spain.

1775 – Paul Revere’s Ride took place. He probably said, “The Regulars are coming out,” rather subtly since there were British Troops everywhere.

1846 – The first US Patent (#4,464) for a telegraph ticker that would print letters of the alphabet was issued to R.E. House of New York City.

1902 – Quetzaltenango, the second largest city in Guatemala, was destroyed by an earthquake.

1906 (Earthquake) At 5:13 AM, an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California.

1909 – the Catholic Church beatified Joan of Arc, the first step toward sainthood. Pope Benedict XV canonized Joan on May 16, 1920.

1923 – Yankee Stadium, ‘The House that Ruth Built,’ opened.

1924 – Simon & Schuster published the first crossword puzzle book.

1925 – The first Woman’s World’s Fair in the US was officially opened in Chicago, Illinois, by First Lady Mrs. Calvin Coolidge.

1930 – BBC reported no news, then played out piano music.

1966 – James M. Schlatter applied for a Patent (#3,492,131) for Peptide Sweetening Agents, an invention that eventually led to the marketing of aspartame under the name NutraSweet

1983 – The Disney Channel began as a cable channel

1983 – A suicide bomber destroyed the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people.

1989 – In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), student protests grew until the Chinese government eventually suppressed them in June, during what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

1995 – Rox became the first television show distributed via the internet

2012 – Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand and New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, died.

2014 – 16 people were killed in an avalanche on Mount Everest.

April 19 History
1775 – The American Revolution began in Lexington, Massachusetts.

1892 -The first Duryea automobile was operated by pioneer manufacturer Charles E. Duryea in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1897 – The first Boston Marathon was held.

1919 – Leslie Irvin made the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a self-contained parachute.

1927 – Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex in New York. She served eight days with two days off for good behavior.

1956 – American actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

1963 (Tornado) Cooch Behar, India.

1975 – India’s first satellite, Aryabhata, was launched.

1977 – The Amazing Spider-Man debuted on CBS.

1982 – NASA announced that the first black astronaut would be Guion S. Bluford, Jr., and the first woman astronaut would be Sally K. Ride.

1985 – Two hundred ATF and FBI agents laid siege to the compound of the neo-Nazi survivalist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas.

1987 – The Tracey Ullman Show featured a short with ‘The Simpsons‘.

1993 – At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, the FBI launched a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound, ending with a fire that killed 81 members, including 22 children.

1995 – A massive truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people.

2009 – Cake Boss premiered on TLC.

April 20 History
1657 – Freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (New York City).

1832 – Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas was established as a reservation by an act of Congress. Technically, it was the first United States National Park.

1841 – The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allen Poe, was published in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. It is considered the first detective story.

1871 – The Third Force Act, also known as the Ku Klux Act, Congress authorized President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law to stop the Ku Klux Klan.

1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed the first test of pasteurization. Jars at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences.

1912 – Opening day for baseball’s Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, and Fenway Park in Boston.

1926 – Western Electric and the Warner Brothers film studio officially introduced the Vitaphone, a new process that would enable the addition of sound to film.

1940 – Invented by Dr. Vladimir Zworykin at the RCA laboratories, Camden, New Jersey, the first (US) electron microscope was demonstrated across the Delaware River, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1964 – Tthe first picturephone transcontinental call was made between New York City and Anaheim, California.

1999 – At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 13 people and wounded 23 more before killing themselves.

2008 – Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy Car race

2010 – The Deepwater Horizon, run by British Petroleum (BP) drilling rig, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers.

April 21 History
753 BC – Romulus and his twin brother Remus founded Rome.

1509 – Henry VIII ascended the throne of England.

1878 – The first US firehouse pole was installed in New York City, by Capt. David B. Kenyon at Engine Company 21.

1895 – Woodville Latham and his sons, Otway and Gray, demonstrate the “Panopticon” – the first movie projector developed in the United States.

1918 – Above the Somme River in France, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, was killed by Allied fire, either by an air fight or from the ground.

1930 – 320 people were dead, and another 130 were seriously injured in a prison fire at the Ohio State Penitentiary.

1962 – At the Seattle World’s Fair, Seattle’s Space Needle Restaurant opened.

1981 – “Weird Al” Yankovic made his first national television appearance on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder

1986 – Geraldo Rivera hosted a live, highly promoted two-hour syndicated special, The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault. They found nothing

1990 – Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue aired, a special program that warned children about the dangers of drugs, and featured characters from several Saturday morning children’s shows. It was simulcast by ABC, BET, CBS, Fox, NBC, USA Network, and Nickelodeon.

1992 – The first discoveries of planets outside of our solar system (two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12) were announced by astronomers Alexander Wolszczan and Dale Frail.

April 22 History
1056 – First seen by the naked eye last saw July 2, 1054, the supernova in the Crab Nebula.

1519 – Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés established a settlement at Veracruz, Mexico.

1864 – The US Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1864, which mandated that the inscription ‘In God We Trust’ be placed on all coins minted as United States currency.

1876 – The first-ever National League baseball game was played in Philadelphia. Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Red Stockings. Boston won the game 6-5.

1912 – Pravda, the “voice” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, began publication in Saint Petersburg.

1964 – The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair opened for its first season.

1970 – Earth Day was started by John McConnell, Denis Hayes, Fred Kent, Pete Grannis, Kristin and William Hubbard, and Ira Einhorn.

1978 – The Blues Brothers (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) first appeared on Saturday Night Live.

1993 – The Mosaic web browser is released.

1998 – Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened at Walt Disney World in Florida.

2000 – US Federal Agents seized six-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami, and sent him back to Cuba.

April 23 History
1564 – William Shakespeare was born. He went on to write 38 plays and invent dozens of English words.

1635 – The first American public school, the Boston Latin School, was founded in Boston.

1792 – US President James Buchanan, born April 23, 1791, in Gap, Pennsylvania, died on June 1, 1868 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

1916 – The Chicago Cubs played their first game at Weeghman Park (now Wrigley Field).

1940 – Rhythm Club Fire (or The Natchez Dance Hall Holocaust) Natchez, Mississippi, killed 198 people.

1940 – A leak-proof flashlight battery (the Ray-o-Vac) was patented (#2,198,423) by Herman Anthony.

1961 – Judy Garland performed at Carnegie Hall; the performance is often called “the greatest night in showbiz history.”

1985 – Coca-Cola changed its formula and released ‘New Coke.’

1994 – Physicists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory discovered the subatomic particle called the top quark.

2005 – First YouTube video was uploaded, titled “Me at the Zoo.”

April 24 History
1184 BC – The fall of Troy (with the Trojan Horse) took place, according to tradition.

1704 – The first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, the News-Letter, was published in Boston, Massachusetts.

1800 – The Library of Congress was established.

1885 – American sharpshooter Annie Oakley joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

1895 – The first person to sail single-handedly worldwide, Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston, Massachusetts, aboard the sloop “Spray.”

1907 – Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey initially for the exclusive use of his employees, was opened.

1908 (Tornado) Amite, Louisiana and Purvis, Missouri.

1913 – The 57-floor Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York City opened.

1928 – The fathometer was Patented (#1,667,540) by Herbert Grove Dorsey. It was designed to measure the depth of water.

1953 – Queen Elizabeth II knighted Winston Churchill.

1970 – The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, was launched.

1981 -The first IBM personal computer was completed.

1982 – Jane Fonda’s first Workout video was released.

1990 – STS-31 – The Space Shuttle Discovery launched the Hubble Space Telescope.

April 25 History
1644 – The Chongzhen Emperor, the last Emperor of Ming Dynasty China, committed suicide during a peasant rebellion.

1719 – Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was published.

1792 – Highwayman (thief) Nicolas J. Pelletier became the first person executed by guillotine in Paris, France.

1859 – Ground was broken to open the Suez Canal by British and French engineers. The 100-mile canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Seas opened ten years later, on November 17, 1869.

1901 – New York became the first US state to require automobile license plates.

1944 – The United Negro College Fund was incorporated.

1947 – President Harry Truman opened the two-lane White House bowling alley.

1953 – Francis Crick and James D. Watson published Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1954 – Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrated the first practical solar cell.

1961 – Robert Noyce patented The integrated circuit (#2,981,877).

1982 – Israel completed the withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula per the Camp David Accords.

1983 – Pioneer 10 traveled beyond ex-planet Pluto’s orbit.

1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in space from the Space Shuttle Discovery to an orbit 381 miles above Earth.

1992- Growing Pains and Who’s The Boss aired their final episodes

April 26 History
662 (Earthquake) Iran

1278 – Imprisoned for murder, John le F*cker sent a letter asking for bail, the earliest recorded instance of the English swear word “f*ck.”

1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. People were traditionally baptized three days after birth; this is how we know his birthday was April 23.

1721 (Earthquake) Tabriz, Iran

1882 – John Sutliff patented A perpetual motion machine (#257,103). I’m pretty sure it didn’t really work.

1921 – The first US weather broadcast was made from St. Louis, Missouri, over station WEW. Or so legend has it. There were few rules in the earliest days of radio so that another station may have made a weather announcement. It was about 55 degrees.

1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, was established.

1954 – Polio vaccine trials began.

1977 – Studio 54 opened at 254 West 54th Street in New York City.

1986 – Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster, in Ukraine, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. It was announced two days later.

1989 (Tornado) Daulatpur-Salturia Tornado, Bangladesh, killed 1300 people and injured 12,000.

1978 – Ringo Starr’s Ringo, a musical version of The Prince and the Pauper, aired on NBC, with George Harrison narrating.

2010 – Jennifer McCreight envisioned a Boobquake. An estimated 200,000 people participated worldwide, and the epicenter was considered the Purdue Bell Tower in West Lafayette, Indiana.

2011 – The Voice premiered on NBC

April 27 History
4977 BC – The Universe was created, according to Johannes Kepler.

1667 – Blind writer John Milton sold his copyright to Paradise Lost for 10 pounds. He needed the money because he was penniless at the time.

1822 – US President Ulysses S. Grant, born April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, died on July 23, 1885 in Wilton, New York.

1865 – SS Sultana explosion, Mississippi River, near Memphis, Tennessee, killing 1800 people.

1871 -The American Museum of Natural History opened in New York City.

1887 – George Thomas Morton performed the first US operation to remove an appendix, called an appendectomy.

1936 – The United Auto Workers (UAW) gained autonomy from the American Federation of Labor.

1956 – Rocky Marciano retired as world heavyweight boxing champion.

1967 – Expo 67 officially opened in Montreal, Canada

1970 – The discovery of Hahnium (Ha), element 105, or Dubnium (Db) was announced at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington, DC. Albert Ghiorso did the work at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, California.

1989 – Chinese student demonstrations started the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

1992 – Betty Boothroyd became the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history.

2002 – The last successful telemetry from the NASA space probe Pioneer 10, was launched in 1972.

2014 – Popes John XXIII and John Paul II were declared saints by the Catholic Church.

April 28 History
1758 – US President James Monroe, born April 28, 1758 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, died on July 4, 1831 in New York, New York.

1788 – Maryland joined the United States.

1789 – The HMS Bounty was taken over in a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the first mate. Captain William Bligh and 18 of his loyal supporters were set adrift in a small boat.

1919 – The first jump with the Army manually operated (jump first, then pull the chute) army parachute was made by Leslie LeRoy Irvin in Dayton, Ohio.

1953 – The US Patent (#2,636,176) was issued for an ‘overcoat for two people’ to Howard C. Rossin.

1965 – My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand’s first TV special, aired on CBS.

1967 – World boxing champion Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) refused to be inducted into the US Army and was immediately stripped of his heavyweight title.

1975 – Tom Snyder interviewed ex-Beatle John Lennon on The Tomorrow Show.

1988 – Over Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle “C.B.” Lansing was blown out of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737, and fell to her death when part of the plane’s fuselage ripped open in mid-flight.

1994- The Simpsons aired its 100th episode

2001 – Millionaire Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist.

April 29 History
1429 – 17-year-old Joan of Arc arrived to relieve the Siege of Orléans.

1864 – Theta Xi fraternity was founded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,

1962 – ABC’s Wide World of Sports premiered.

1945 – The US Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

1945 – Adolf Hitler married his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker.

1953 – In the first 3D television broadcast, an episode of Space Patrol was shown on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KECA-TV.

1968 – The musical Hair opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway,

1991 (Cyclone) Bangladesh Cyclone, in Bangladesh killed 135,000 people.

1993 – A cartoon version of Barry White appeared on the fourth season finale of The Simpsons.

1992 – Rodney King trial verdict announced. Four police officers who had been charged with using excessive force in arresting black motorist Rodney King a year earlier were acquitted. Rioting ensued – over the next three days, 53 people were killed, and hundreds of buildings were destroyed.

1996 – TV Land network made its debut.

2011 – The Wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Kate (Catherine) Middleton.

2015 A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero (0) fans attended the game because the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.

April 30 History
1789 – In New York City, George Washington was inaugurated as the United States’ first president.

1803 – The Louisiana Purchase from France, for 15 million dollars, also included much (if not all) of Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

1812 – The Territory of Orleans became the 18th US state under the name Louisiana.

1894 – Antarctic iceberg fragment was sighted at a latitude 26.50 degrees south, approximately parallel to Rio de Janeiro, the nearest to the equator that an Antarctic iceberg has been seen.

1900 – Casey Jones died in a train wreck in Vaughan, Mississippi, while trying to make up time on the Cannonball Express.

1900 – Hawaii became a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as governor.

1927 – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, in Hollywood.

1938 – The cartoon short Porky’s Hare Hunt debuted in movie theaters, introducing ‘Happy Rabbit’ (a prototype of Bugs Bunny).

1939 – The New York World’s Fair opened at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens.

1948 – The Land Rover, a British-made all-terrain vehicle, debuted at an auto show in Amsterdam.

1966 – The Church of Satan was established at the Black House in San Francisco.

1989 – CNBC, the first NBC cable and financial cable channels began transmitting.

1992 – The finale for The Cosby Show aired on NBC

1992- The Nickelodeon time capsule was buried at Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, FL.

1993 – Gunter Parchein stabbed tennis star Monica Seles in Hamburg, Germany.

1997 – During the ‘Puppy’ episode of Ellen, it was revealed that the main/title character (Ellen DeGeneres) was gay.

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