April 12

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him. 

Ec 7:14

April is:

• Sports Eye Safety Month - Encourages young athletes to wear eye/face protection when participating in sports. Sponsor: Prevent
  Blindness America.
  
  
• Stress Awareness Month - Promotes public awareness of what stress is, what causes it, and what can be done to relieve it. Sponsor: The Hea1th Resources Network
  
  
• Travel and Entertainment Books Month - Read a good book abort travel, music, dance, theater, movies, TV, radio, comedy, sailing, aviation, or automobiles. Sponsor: Book Marketing Update.

Today is:

• Anniversary of the Big Wind - In 1934, the highest-velocity natural wind (231 mph) occurred at MountWashington in New Hampshire.
  
  
• Billiards Day - In 1859, the first international billiards championship match was held in Detroit, Michigan.
  
  
• Catcher's Mask Day - The catcher's mask was first used in a baseball game in 1877. The mask was patented on February 12, 1878.
  
  
• Civil War started (1861 ) - The shelling of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor started the Civil War.
  
  
• Cosmonaut Day - In 1961, Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gugarin became the first human in space. Sponsor: Space Center, P.O. Box 533, Alamogordo, NM 
  
  
• First black major league umpire (1966) - Emmett Ashford became the first black umpire to officiate a major league baseball game.
  
  
• National Tap Dance Party Day - On the birthday of Ann Miller, the 1950s actress who was famous for her tap dancing throw a tap dance party. Miller was born Lucille Ann Collier in 19:3 in Houston, Texas. Sponsor: The Iife of the Party. 
  
  
• Saimt Zeno of Verona Feast Day - Legend says that Saint Zeno was stolen at birth by the devil, he is therefore considered a patron saint of babies.
  
  
• Salk vaccine approved - The polio vaccine was developed by Or. Jonas Salk, it was approved for use on thistly in 1955.
  
  
• Stupid Pet Tricks Day - Celebrate late night talk show host David Letterman's birthday by teaching your pet a stupid trick. Letterman was born in 1947 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Sponsor: The Life of the Party

Born on this Day

• 1777: Henry Clay, the "Great Compromiser", American politician and statesman who ran unsuccessfully for president three times.
  

• 1791: Francis Preston Blair, Washington Globe newspaper editor
  

• 1838: John Shaw Billings, American librarian, army
  

• 1895: Actress and singer Lily (Alice) Pons (I Dream Too Much, That Girl from Paris)
  

• 1903: Dancer (Helen Beck) Sally Rand
  

• 1908: Bandleader Lionel Hampton (On the Sunny Side of the Street, Hey! Hot Mallets, Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, Rag Mop) A few sources list 1913
  

• 1923: Actress-dancer (Lucy Ann Collier) Ann Miller (Easter Parade, Sugar Babies, You Can't Take It with You, Hit the Deck, Kiss Me Kate, On the Town, Room Service, Lovely to Look At)
  

• 1925: Country singer Ned Miller
  

• 1926: Actress Jane Withers
  

• 1931: Musician Billy (Richard) Vaughn (Melody of Love, The Shifting, Whispering Sands, Sail along Silver Moon)
  

• 1931: Ukulele playing, falsetto singer (Herbert Khaury) Tiny Tim (Tiptoe Through The Tulips)
  

• 1933: Opera singer Montserrat Caballe
  

• 1936: Actor Charles Napier
  

• 1940: Jazz musician Herbie Hancock
  

• 1942: Actor Frank Bank ("Leave It to Beaver")
  

• 1944: Rock singer John Kay (Steppenwolf)
  

• 1946: Actor Ed O'Neill
  

• 1947: Actor Dan Lauria
  

• 1947: Talk show host David Letterman
  

• 1949: Author Scott Turow (Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof)
  

• 1950: Singer David Cassidy
  

• 1950: Chip (James Earl) Carter (son of 39th U.S. President Jimmy Carter and First Lady, Roslyn Carter)
  

• 1956: Actor Andy Garcia
  

• 1957: Country singer Vince Gill
  

• 1957: Actress Suzzanne Douglas
  

• 1958: Rock musician Will Sergeant (Echo & the Bunnymen)
  

• 1962: Rock singer Art Alexakis (Everclear)
  

• 1964: Country singer Deryl Dodd
  

• 1964: Folk-pop singer Amy Ray (Indigo Girls)
  

• 1965: Figure skater Elaine Zayak
  

• 1970: Rock singer Nicholas Hexum (311)
  

• 1971: Actress Shannen Doherty
  

• 1979: Actress Claire Danes 
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 1204: The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople.
  

• 1606: England adopts the Union Jack as its flag.
  

• 1770: Parliament repeals the Townsend Acts.
  

• 1782: The British navy wins its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica.
  

• 1799: Phineas Pratt patented the comb cutting machine.
  

• 1811: The first colonists arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington.
  

• 1833: Charles Gaylor patented the fireproof safe in New York City.
  

• 1847: Yung Wing, one of several Chinese students to arrive in America this day, went on to become the first student from China to graduate from Yale University [1854].
  

• 1861: The American Civil War began as Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter South Carolina.
  

• 1877: James Alexander Tyng, while playing a baseball game in Lynn, MA, became the first ballplayer to wear a catcher's mask.
  

• 1892: Voters in Lockport, New York, became the first in the nation to use voting machines.
  

• 1905: The Hippodrome opened in New York City with the gala musical revue, "A Yankee Circus On Mars".
  

• 1911: Pierre Prier completes the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.
  

• 1916: American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clash at Parrel, Mexico.
  

• 1927: British Cabinet comes out in favor of women voting rights.
  

• 1934: "Tender Is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published.
  

• 1939: One of the classic theme songs of the Big Band era was recorded for Decca Records: Woody Herman's Orchestra recorded "Woodchopper's Ball."
  

• 1944: The U.S. Twentieth Air Force is activated to begin the strategic bombing of Japan.
  

• 1945: President FranklDelano Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage Warm Springs, Georgia, at age 63; he was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.
  

• 1954: Bill Haley records "Rock Around the Clock."
  

• 1955: The Salk vaccine against polio was declared safe and effective.
  

• 1963: Police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.
  

• 1964: Arnold Palmer won his fourth Masters title and became the first golfer to earn career golf earnings of $506,496.00.
  

• 1964: Philadelphia singer, Chubby Checker married former Miss World, Catherina Lodders.
  

• 1966: Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American major league umpire.
  

• 1981: The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral on its first test flight.
  

• 1983: Chicagoans went to the polls to elect Harold Washington the city's first black mayor.
  

• 1984: Challenger astronauts made the first satellite repair in orbit by returning a healthy Solar Max satellite to space as an orbiting sun watcher. The satellite had been circling the Earth for three years with all circuits dead before repairs were made.
  

• 1985: Senator Jake Garn of Utah became the first senator to fly space as the shuttle Discovery lifted off.
  

• 1985: Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns as the circus said, but goats with horns which had been surgically implanted.
  

• 1989: Radical activist Abbie Hoffman was found dead at his home New Hope, Pennsylvania, at age 52
  

• 1989: Former middleweight boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson died Culver City, California, at age 67.
  

• 1989: In its first meeting, East Germany's first democratically elected parliament acknowledged responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust, and asked the forgiveness of Jews and others who had suffered.
  

• 1992: Euro Disneyland opened France.
  

• 1991: Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced plans to close 31 major US military bases, including Ford Ord in California and Fort Dix in New Jersey. 
  

• 1991: Kurdish rebels reported the Iraqi army was attacking guerrillas in northern Iraq. 
  

• 1994: Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell declined to be nominated to the Supreme Court. 1994: Playwright Edward Albee won his third Pulitzer prize for "Three Tall Women"; the Pulitzer prize for fiction went to E. Annie Proulx for "The Shipping News"; the gold-medal award for public service journalism went to the Akron Beacon-Journal of Ohio.
  

• 1995: In a move that stunned the business world, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian and former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca made an unsolicited $22.8 billion bid to buy the nation's third largest automaker; Chrysler responded that it wasn't for sale.
  

• 1996: President Clinton named US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor to succeed the late Ron Brown as commerce secretary. 
  

• 1998: Sinn Fe leader Gerry Adams appealed to IRA supporters to accept Northern Ireland's compromise peace accord.
  

• 1998: Golfer Mark O'Meara won the Masters title Augusta, Georgia. 
  

• 1999: A jury in Little Rock, Arkansas, acquitted Susan McDougal of obstructing Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's Whitewater inquiry and deadlocked on two other charges, causing a mistrial.
  

• 1999: US District Judge Susan Webber Wright cited President Clinton for contempt of court, concluding that the president had lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in a deposition in the Paula Jones case.
  

• 2000: Attorney General Janet Reno met in Miami with the US relatives of Elian Gonzalez, after which she ordered them to bring the six-year-old boy to an airport the next day so he could be taken to a reunion with his father in Washington. (Elian was seized by federal agents ten days after Reno's order to turn him over.) 
  
  

• 2001: After urging from U.S. President George W. Bush, China agrees to release 24 crew members of a U.S. spy plane held by Beijing for 11 days.
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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