April 23

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. 

Psalm 19:2

April is:

• Multicultural Communication Month - Learn more about other cultures this month. Sponsor: International Center for Multicultural Communication.
  
  
• Municipal Community Services Month - To promote valuable services provided by local communities. Sponsor: : League of California
  
  
• National Anxiety Month - Encourages people to turn worrying into problem-solving. The National Anxiety Center monitors the media for scare campaigns based on dubious scientific and environmental claims. Sponsor: National Anxiety Center .

Today is:

• Albuquerque Founder's Day - Francisco Cuervo Valdez founded this city in 1706.
  
  
• James Buchanan's Birthday - 15th U. S. President.
  
  
• Saint George Feast Day - Patron saint of boy scouts, soldiers, butchers, and saddlers. He is also solicited for protection against skin diseases.
  
  
• William Shakespeare's Day - Born April 23, 1564 and died April 23, 1616.

Born on this Day

• 1484: Italian scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger
  

• 1564: This is the generally accepted birthdate of the English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare. He died on the same date 52 years later.
  

• 1791: James Buchanan, 15th president of the United States
  

• 1813: Stephen Douglas, the "Little Giant", debated Lincoln
  

• 1882: Albert Coates
  

• 1891: Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev
  

• 1921: Actress Janet Blair
  

• 1926: Virgil I (Gus) Grissom, Mercury and Gemini astronaut
  

• 1899: Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov was  born in St. Petersburg.
  

• 1928: Child actress-turned-diplomat Shirley Temple Black
  

• 1930: Actor Alan Oppenheimer
  

• 1932: Designer Halston (Roy Frowick)
  

• 1939: Actor David Birney
  

• 1939: Singer Ray Peterson
  

• 1940: Actor Lee Majors
  

• 1942: Actress Sandra Dee (Alexandra Zuck)
  

• 1943: Actor Herve Villechaize
  

• 1947: Irish nationalist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
  

• 1948: Actress Blair Brown
  

• 1949: Actress Joyce DeWitt
  

• 1949: Writer-director Paul Brickman
  

• 1952: Musician Narada Michael Walden (Mahavishnu Orchestra)
  

• 1953: Actor James Russo
  

• 1954: Singer-musician Captain Sensible (Ray Burns) (The Damned)
  

• 1955: Actress Judy Davis
  

• 1957: Actress Jan Hooks
  

• 1960: Actor Craig Sheffer ("A River Runs Through It")
  

• 1960: Actress Valerie Bertinelli
  

• 1964: Rock musician Gen (Jesus Jones)
  

• 1965: US Olympic gold medal skier Donna Weinbrecht
  

• 1968: Country musician Tim Womack (Sons of the Desert)
  

• 1970: Actor Scott Bairstow ("Party of Five")       
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 0290: Martyrdom and Day of St. George, Patron of England and Portugal
  

• 0997: Death of St. Adalbert of Prague
  

• 1016: Death of Aethelred, "the Redeless," King of England
  

• 1154: Nur-ad-Din seizes Damascus
  

• 1348: King Edward the Third of England established the Order of the Garter (an English order of knighthood).
  

• 1374: Geoffrey Chaucer granted a pitcher of wine daily by King Edward III
  

• 1445: Marriage of Henry VI, King of England, to Margaret of Anjou
  

• 1500: Landing of Pedro Alvarez de Cabral in Brazil
  

• 1605: Boris Godunov, Tsar of Muscovy, dies and Fyodor II proclaimed Czar of Russia
  

• 1616: The Spanish poet Cervantes died in Madrid.
  

• 1616: William Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon, England.
  

• 1643: An English invasion of Cornwall is repulsed
  

• 1759: British seize Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe in the Antilies from France.
  

• 1772: Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle wrote one of the world's most familiar national anthems. "La Marseillaise" is still proudly sung by the French citizens today.
  

• 1789: President-elect Washington and his wife moved into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York.
  

• 1789: "Courier De Boston" was first published in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the first Roman Catholic magazine in the United States.
  

• 1826: Missolonghi falls to Egyptian forces.
  

• 1872: Charlotte E. Ray became the first black woman lawyer in ceremonies held in Washington, D.C.
  

• 1896: The "Vitascope" system for projecting movies onto a screen was demonstrated at a music hall in New York City.
  

• 1898: The U.S. government asked for 125,000 volunteers to fight against Spain in Cuba.
  

• 1899: Services were held at the first movable church. Rev. Charles Preston preached from a horse drawn vehicle in Coanicut Island, Rhode Island.
  

• 1900: The word, "hillbilly," was first used in print in an article in the New York Journal. It was spelled "Hill-Billie" and used in a story of a "free and untrampled white citizen of Alabama who lived in the hills."
  

• 1920: Janacek's opera "The Excursions of Mister Broucek" was premiered. This opera is about a man traveling to the Moon and back in the 1400s.
  

• 1940: About 200 people died in a dance hall fire in Natchez, Mississippi.
  

• 1941: At an "America First" rally in New York City, aviator Charles Lindbergh said "it is obvious that England is losing the war." Lindbergh opposed U.S. entry into World War II.
  

• 1948: Johnny Longden became the first race jockey to ride 3,000 career winners as he set the mark at Bay Meadows in San Mateo, California.
  

• 1951: Associated Press began use of a new service -- "teletypesetting." The AP provided a perforated, paper-tape message to a news bureau in Charlotte, North Carolina. The message was then fed into a monitor.
  

• 1954: Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit the first of his record 755 major-league home runs, in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. (The Braves won, 7-to-5.)
  

• 1963: Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds got his first hit in the major leagues. It was a triple off the Pirates' Bob Friend. "Charlie Hustle" went on to break Ty Cobb's all-time hitting record 20 years later.
  

• 1965: More than 200 U.S. planes struck North Vietnam in one of the heaviest raids of the Vietnam War.
  

• 1968: The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.
  

• 1969: Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy. (The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.)
  

• 1983: President and Mrs. Reagan solemnly welcomed home the bodies of 16 of the Americans killed in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut during ceremonies at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.
  

• 1984: British authorities deported a Libyan student, less than a week after gunfire from the Libyan Embassy in London killed a policewoman and wounded a group of anti-Gadhafi demonstrators.
  

• 1985: The former Sen. Sam Ervin died at age 88. The North Carolina Democrat directed the Senate Watergate investigation that led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
  

• 1985: The Coca-Cola Company announced it was changing the secret flavor formula for Coke (negative public reaction forced the company to resume selling the original version).
  

• 1985: Former Senator Sam Ervin died at age 88. The North Carolina Democrat directed the Senate Watergate investigation that led to President Nixon's resignation.
  

• 1985: The flamboyant Liberace first appeared on the soap opera "Another World." Later in the day Liberace appeared as a guest video jockey on MTV.
  

• 1985: The first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize in over a decade was "Sunday in the Park with George." Studs Terkel earned his first Pulitzer for "The Good War: An Oral History of World War II.""
  

• 1986: President Reagan, addressing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the recent raid on Libya showed "no one can kill Americans and brag about it."
  

• 1986: Death claimed composer Harold Arlen at age 81
  

• 1986: Movie director Otto Preminger diedat age 80.
  

• 1987: Twenty-eight construction workers were killed when an apartment complex being built in Bridgeport, Connecticut, suddenly collapsed.
  

• 1987: "Business Week" magazine announced its list of the nation's highest paid executives. Lee Iacocca of Chrysler Corporation topped the list, followed by Paul Fireman of Reebok International.
  

• 1988: A federal ban on smoking during domestic airline flights of two hours or less went into effect.
  

• 1989: Troy Aikman of UCLA became the first player chosen in the NFL draft in New York City when he was selected by the Dallas Cowboys.
  

• 1990: Freed American hostage Robert Polhill, released in Lebanon the day before, enjoyed his first full day of freedom at the U.S. Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden, West Germany.
  

• 1991: President Bush welcomed General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the just-returned Gulf War commander, at the White House.
  

• 1991: NASA scrubbed the launch of the space shuttle Discovery after a sensor on one of the main engines failed during fueling.
  

• 1992: Fighting erupted in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo just hours after the warring parties signed a truce amid sniper fire.
  

• 1992: McDonald's opened its first fast-food restaurant in the Chinese capital of Beijing.
  

• 1993: President Clinton said he was giving "serious consideration" to limited US air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions. Labor leader Cesar Chavez died in San Luis, Arizona, at age 66.
  

• 1993: Labor leader Cesar Chavez died in San Luis, Arizona, at age 66.
  

• 1993: Krystian Zimerman gave a piano recital at Carnegie Hall and most of the program was Debussy. He played the whole first book of Etudes. The program's finale, though was Schubert's late sonata in B-flat Major.
  

• 1994: Mourners from around the world left red roses, burning candles and cards at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, in memory of the 37th president of the United States, who had died the day before at age 81.
  

• 1994: Physicists at the Department of Energy's Fermin National Accelerator Laboratory discovered the subatomic particle called the top quark.
  

• 1995: The nation observed a national day of mourning for the victims of the Oklahoma City blast.
  

• 1995: Former Sen. John C. Stennis died in Jackson, Mississippi, at age 93.
  

• 1995: Lawyer turned sportscaster Howard Cosell died in New York at age 77.
  

• 1996: A Bronx civil-court jury ordered Bernhard Goetz to pay $43 million to paralyzed Darrell Cabey, one of four young men he shot on a subway car in 1984.
  

• 1996: A three-night auction of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' possessions began at Sotheby's in New York with a bidding frenzy.
  

• 1997: Doctors at University of Southern California announced that a child was born in late 1996 to a 63-year-old woman on hormone therapy.
  
  

• 1997: Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, again apologizing for racial comments about Masters winner Tiger Woods, withdrew from the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic.
  

• 1997: The military confirmed that two pieces of wreckage found on a snowy Rocky Mountain peak were from the Air Force warplane that vanished on a training mission over Arizona.
  

• 1998: James Earl Ray, the ex-convict who confessed to assassinating the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior in 1968 and then insisted he was framed, died at a Nashville hospital at age 70.
  

• 1999: On the first day of a 50th anniversary NATO summit in Washington, Western leaders pledged to intensify military strikes against Yugoslavia and vowed "no compromise" on demands that Slobodan Milosevic withdraw his troops from Kosovo.
  

• 2000: A group of 21 tourists and workers were kidnapped from a Malaysian diving resort by Abu Sayyaf rebels.
  

• 2000: Elian Gonzalez spent a secluded Easter with his father at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, a day after the six-year-old boy was removed from his Miami relatives' home in a pre-dawn raid by immigration agents. 
  
  
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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