April 25

This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. 

Psalm 118:24

April is:

• National Garden Month - To honor America's gardeners at the beginning of the new gardening year. Sponsor: Garden Council,
  
  
• National Humor Month - Focuses public attention on how people can develop a better sense of humor to enrich their lives. laughter is a great way to cope-and it's cheaper than vodka! Sponsor: Jester Press
  
  
• National Occupational Therapy Month - To thank occupational therapists.Sponsor: American Occupational Therapy Association

Today is:

• Cuckoo Day - In England this is the day that heralds the return of migratory birds from the south and marks the return of Summer.
  
  
• First Memorial Day in the U.S. - Held in 1866 at Columbus, Mississippi, a year after the Civil War.
  
  
• Saint Mark Feast Day - Author of one of the four Gospels. Patron saint of glaziers, notaries, and cattle breeding.

Born on this Day

• 1214: St. Louis XI, King of France
  

• 1284: Edward II, King of England and first of that ilk to be named Prince of Wales
  

• 1533: William the Silent, Prince of the Spanish Netherlands
  

• 1599: Oliver Cromwell, lord protector of England
  

• 1874: Radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy. He invented the wireless telegraph in 1895.
  

• 1906: Former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan.
  

• 1908: Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow in Pole Creek, North Carolina. In the 1950's, he was the first newsman to challenge the "witch hunting" tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
  She was born in Newport News, Virginia. Fitzgerald won 12 Grammy Awards.
  

• 1928: Jazz musician Rick Henderson
  

• 1928: Country musician Vassar Clements
  

• 1930: Movie director-writer Paul Mazursky
  

• 1932: Former Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon
  

• 1933: Songwriter Jerry Leiber
  

• 1933: Author Anthony Lukas
  

• 1940: Actor Al Pacino
  

• 1945: Rock musician Stu Cook (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
  

• 1945: Singer Bjorn Ulvaeus (ABBA)
  

• 1946: Actress Talia Shire
  

• 1947: Actor Jeffrey DeMunn
  

• 1949: Rock musician Michael Brown (Lookofsky) of "The Left Bank"
  

• 1954: Country singer-songwriter Rob Crosby
  

• 1956: Former basketball player Dave Corzine
  

• 1964: Actor Hank Azaria ("The Simpsons;" "Mad About You")
  

• 1964: Rock singer Andy Bell (Erasure)
  

• 1965: Rock musician Eric Avery (Jane's Addiction)
  

• 1969: Actress Renee Zellweger 
  

• 1975: Actress Emily Bergl              
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 0799: Kidnapping of Pope Leo III
  

• 0912 :City of Venice founded
  

• 1058: Coronation of Malcolm III as King of Scotland
  

• 1142: Death of St. William of Monte Vergine
  

• 1324: An entry in the Jornal de la Chambre of King Edward II shows pence a day paid to one "Robyn Hod" for service to the King
  

• 1342: Death of Pope Benedict XII
  

• 1357: Edward III, King of England, pardons Cecilia of Nottingham for murder
  

• 1382: Nicholas Flamel is said to have made gold thru Alchemical means
  

• 1449: The Rump of the Council of Basle recognizes Nicholas V as Pope; Felix V, the anti-Pope, abdicates
  

• 1482: Death of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI of England
  

• 1507: Martin Waldeseemueller names America in honor of Amergo Vespucci
  

• 1523 :Henry VIII, King of England, forbids private ownership of firearms by any person with an income of less than 100 pounds per year. The ban is cheerfully ignored
  

• 1566: Death of Louise Labe, the "Belle Cordiere," and poet, who served in the Royal Army of France as a cavalryman under the name "Loys"
  

• 1591: Moroccans take Timbuktu
  

• 1595: Death of Torquato Tasso, poet
  

• 1607: Dutch defeat Spanish fleet at Gibraltar Bay
  

• 1644: Suicide of the Ming Chongzhen Emperor
  

• 1684: Patent granted for the thimble
  

• 1792: Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by the guillotine.
  

• 1792: "La Marseillaise," composed the night before by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was sung for the first time, in Strasbourg, France.
  

• 1831: The New York and Harlem Railway was incorporated in New York City.
  

• 1850: Paul Julius Reuter, founder of the news agency that bears his name, used 40 pigeons to carry stock market prices between Brussels and Athens.
  

• 1859: Ground was broken for the Suez Canal. This canal links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Egyptian workers started construction under harsh working conditions described as 'slave labor.' The project was not completed until 1867.
  

• 1865: Franz Liszt took the four minor orders of the Roman Catholic Church, a preliminary step toward becoming a priest. Liszt never took it any farther. But sensing the dramatic impact of his tenuous church connection, he wore a cassock for the remaining 21 years of his life.
  

• 1898: Congress formally declared war on Spain in the battle over Cuba. As a result of the Spanish-American War, America took its first step in becoming a world power. America was given Puerto Rico and Guam as a result of the war.
  

• 1898: William S. Porter entered the Ohio Penitentiary after being convicted of embezzlement. While in prison, he began writing short stories under the pseudonym "O. Henry."
  

• 1901: New York became the first state to require automobile license plates. The fee was $1.
  

• 1906: The American composer John Knowles Paine died.
  

• 1915: During World War One, Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of the war.
  

• 1928: "Buddy," the first seeing eye dog, was presented to Morris S. Frank.
  

• 1931: The great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye once composed an opera in Belgium's Walloon language. It was called "Peter the Miner," and it premiered in Brussels. Ysaye was supposed to conduct, but he collapsed at the first rehearsal and was still sick on opening night.
  

• 1945: Delegates of 46 countries gathered in San Francisco to organize a permanent United Nations.
  

• 1945: During World War Two, US and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany's defenses.
  

• 1954: The prototype manufacture of a new solar battery was announced by the Bell Laboratories in New York City.
  

• 1959: The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to traffic, saving shippers millions of dollars. By going from the sea to the Great Lakes across upstate New York, folks no longer had to ships the long, costly way around.
  

• 1967: Colorado Governor John Love signed the first law legalizing abortions in the United States. The law was limited to therapeutic abortion when agreed to, unanimously, by a panel of three physicians.
  

• 1971: 200,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters marched on Washington, D.C.
  

• 1980: A U.S. commando mission to rescue 53 American embassy hostages in Iran was abandoned in the desert with the loss of eight American lives when a helicopter collided with a tanker aircraft.
  

• 1982: Israel turned over the final third of the occupied Sinai peninsula to Egypt under the Camp David peace agreement.
  

• 1983: Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov invited Samantha Smith to visit his country after receiving a letter in which the Manchester, Maine, schoolgirl expressed fears about nuclear war.
  

• 1983: The Pioneer Ten spacecraft crossed Pluto's orbit, speeding on its endless voyage through the Milky Way.
  

• 1984: David Anthony Kennedy, the 28-year-old son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was found dead in a hotel room in Palm Beach, Florida.
  

• 1985: 257 members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to President Reagan, urging him to cancel his planned visit to the German military cemetery at Bitburg.
  

• 1986: President Reagan left Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on the first leg of a 13-day journey to the Far east that included an international economic summit in Tokyo.
  

• 1987: Tens of thousands of people gathered in Washington for three days of protests against US foreign policy, particularly toward Central America and South Africa.
  

• 1988: To the cheers of spectators, a judge in Jerusalem sentenced John Demjanjuk to death after the retired Ohio autoworker was convicted of being "Ivan the Terrible," a Nazi death camp guard who'd killed tens of thousands of people (however, Demjanjuk's conviction was later overturned).
  

• 1989: Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita announced his resignation in order to take responsibility for his involvement in Japan's "Recruit" stock scandal.
  

• 1990: The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the space shuttle Discovery.
  

• 1990: Violetta Chamorro assumed the Nicaraguan presidency, ending more than a decade of leftist Sandinista rule.
  

• 1991: The White House threatened to "take whatever steps are necessary" should Iraq fail to meet a deadline for withdrawing its security forces from the refugee zone in northern Iraq.
  

• 1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, facing harsh criticism during a closed-door meeting of the Communist Party's Central Committee, offered to resign as party leader, an offer that was rejected.
  

• 1991: The United States announced its first financial aid to Hanoi since the 1960s: $1 million to make artificial limbs for Vietnamese disabled during the war.
  

• 1992: Islamic forces in Afghanistan took control of most of the capital of Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.
  

• 1992: An earthquake measuring seven-point-one on the Richter scale shook northern California.
  

• 1993: Hundreds of thousands of gay rights activists and their supporters marched in Washington DC, demanding equal rights and freedom from discrimination.
  

• 1993: Voters in Russia participated in a referendum, giving President Boris N. Yeltsin a sturdy vote of confidence.
  

• 1994: Terrorist bombers struck twice on the eve of South Africa's first all-race election, killing about a dozen people.
  

• 1994: Conservative Tsutomu Hata became prime minister of Japan, succeeding Morihiro Hosokawa.
  

• 1995: Show business legend Ginger Rogers died in Rancho Mirage, California, at age 83.
  

• 1995: Regular season play by major-league baseball teams got  underway and was the first official action since the longest strike in sports history began in August 1994.
  

• 1996: A day after the PLO annulled clauses calling for Israel's destruction, the governing Labor Party abandoned its long-standing opposition to a Palestinian state.
  

• 1996: Ford Motor Company announced a recall of about 8 million cars, minivans and pickups because of an ignition switch fire hazard.
  

• 1996: A court in Gdansk, Poland, dropped proceedings against Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski over the 1970 fatal shootings of 44 protesters by security forces when he was defense minister.
  

• 1997: The prosecution began calling witnesses in Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing trial.
  

• 1997: A federal judge ruled for the first time that the Food and Drug Administration can regulate tobacco as a drug – but said it couldn't restrict cigarette advertising.
  

• 1998: Christian Mortensen, who emigrated to the United States from his native Denmark in 1903, died. He was thought to have be the oldest man in the world at the age of 115.
  

• 1998: Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady  Hillary Rodham Clinton on videotape about her work as a private lawyer for the failed savings and loan at the center of the investigation.
  

• 1999: More than 70,000 mourners gathered in Littleton, Colo., to remember the victims of the Columbine High School massacre.
  

• 1999: Lord Killanin, former president of the International Olympic Committee, died in Dublin, Ireland, at age 84.
  

• 1999: On the third and final day of their Washington summit, NATO leaders promised military protection and economic aid to Yugoslavia's neighbors for standing with the West against Slobodan Milosevic.
  

• 2000: Assailants shot and killed Zika Petrovic, an ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
  

• 2000:  Broadway producer David Merrick died in London at age 88.
  
  
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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