April 5

And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long. 

Psalm 35:28

 April is:

• Keep America Beautiful Month - Do your part to keep our country, beautiful-don't litter blossom; Keep America Beautiful,
  
  
• Knuckles Down Month - This month celebrates the spring-time game of marbles. For a book and information packet, send $10.00 to the ne Marble Lady. Sponsor: The Marble Lady, Cathy Runyan, 78 12 NW Hampton Road, Kansas City, MO 64152; 816-587-8687.
  
  
• Listening Awareness Month - Develop your listening skills during this month. Sponsor: Effective Listeners Association

Today is:

• First woman at the North Pole (1971) - Mrs. Fran Phipps, wife of Canadian pilot Weldy Phipps, was the first woman to set foot at the North Pole.
  
  
• Plan Your Epitaph Day - On the same day as the Ching Ming Festival (Chinese festival of the dead), take time to think of the words you'd like to have on your tombstone. Plan your own epitaph, and make it great! Sponsor: Dead or Alive
  
  
• Presidential Veto Day - President Washington cast the first presidential veto in 1792.
  
  
  
• Saint Noah Feast Day - Noah survived the great food by building his ark; he is patron saint of boat builders and sailors.
  
  
  
• Saint Vincent Ferrer Feast Day - Patron saint of reconciliation (because of work he did in reconciling differences among various segments of the church); also a patron saint of builders.

Born on this Day

• 1588: English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes
  

• 1649: Founder of Yale University, philanthropist, Elihu Yale. Although born is America, Yale was taken to England by his family at the age of three, and he never returned.
  

• 1725: Italian adventurer Giovanni Casanova
  

• 1726: Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence
  

• 1856: Educator Booker T. Washington. He was the first president and principal developer of Tuskegee Institute.
  

• 1900: actor Spencer Tracy was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Tracy received two consecutive Academy Awards for best actor.
  

• 1908: Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan
  

• 1908: Actress Bette Davis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. She was is best known for her brilliant and intense characterizations of strong women.
  

• 1916: Actor Gregory Peck
  

• 1920: Novelist Arthur Hailey
  

• 1922: Actress Gale Storm
  

• 1926: Director Roger Corman
  

• 1928: Singer (The Platters) Tony Williams
  

• 1929: Actor Nigel Hawthorne
  

• 1931: Country music producer Cowboy Jack Clement
  

• 1932: Singer Billy Bland
  

• 1934: Impressionist Frank Gorshin
  

• 1937: The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin L. Powell
  

• 1939: Country singer Tommy Cash
  

• 1941: Actor Michael Moriarty (Law & Order)
  

• 1942: Singer Allan Clarke (The Hollies)
  

• 1943: Actor Max Gail
  

• 1946: Actress Jane Asher
  

• 1949: Dr. Judith Resnik was born. Dr. Resnik was the second American woman in space. The 36-year-old mission specialist, died on board the space shuttle Challenger January 28, 1986.
  

• 1950: Singer Agnetha Faltskog (ABBA)
  

• 1966: Musician (Pearl Jam) Mike McCready 
  

• 1967: Country singer Troy Gentry
  

• 1968: Singer Paula Cole           
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 0823: Lothair I crowned Holy Roman Emperor
  

• 1208: Death of Quetzalcoatl
  

• 1270: Rebbenu Moses b. Nahman (Nahmanides), talmudist, dies
  

• 1328: Death of Sir Othon de Grandson
  

• 1355: Charles IV crowned Holy Roman Emperor
  

• 1419: Death of St. Vincent Ferrer
  

• 1494: The Santa Maria del Fiore church in Florence is struck by lightning
  

• 1534: Death of Jan Mathys
  

• 1603: James VI and I, King of England and Scotland, leaves Edinburgh for London
  

• 1605: Death of John Stowe
  

• 1605: Stephen Bosckay is elected Prince of Transylvania
  

• 1614: American Indian princess Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.
  

• 1621: The "Mayflower" sailed from Plymouth, Massachusetts, on a return trip to England.
  

• 1649: John Winthrop, colonizer and first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company dies.
  

• 1784: Louis Spohr, a contemporary of Beethoven who was almost as big in his day, was born in the German town of Brunswick. He became a touring violin virtuoso, and married a harpist. He never stopped conducting and was a champion of Mozart's music.
  

• 1792: George Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.
  

• 1806: Isaac Quintard of Stanfield, Connecticut, patented the cider mill.
  

• 1869: Daniel Bakeman, the last surviving soldier of the Revolutionary War, died at the age of 109.
  

• 1874: Johan Strauss's Die Fledemaus premieres in Vienna.
  

• 1887: In Tuscumbia, Alabama, teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the meaning of the word "water" as spelled out in the Manual Alphabet.
  

• 1887: British historian Lord Acton wrote, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
  

• 1892: Walter H. Coe of Providence, Rhode Island, patented gold leaf in rolls.
  

• 1895: Playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who'd accused the writer of homosexual practices.
  

• 1923: Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, began the first regular production of "balloon" tires.
  

• 1933: The first operation to remove a lung was performed at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.
  

• 1946: Charles Ives, decades after he wrote his Third Symphony, the work was finally performed, and won him a Pulitzer. Ives, ever gracious, replied, "Prizes are for boys. I'm grown up!"
  

• 1946: Samuel Barber's Cello Concerto was premiered.
  

• 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in New York for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union
  

• 1955: Richard J. Daley was elected mayor of Chicago, Illinois, starting one of the most colorful political careers in history.
  

• 1964: Army General Douglas MacArthur died in Washington, D.C. He was 84.
  

• 1965: "My Fair Lady" won the Academy Award for best picture, and one of its stars, Rex Harrison, was named best actor; Julie Andrews won best actress for "Mary Poppins."
  

• 1968: Violence erupted in several American cities in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
  

• 1975: Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek died at age 87.
  

• 1976: Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died of kidney failure during a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to Houston. He was 72.
  

• 1983: France expelled about 50 Soviet diplomats and officials, accusing them of trying to steal military secrets. The Soviet embassy called the expulsions an unjustified political act.
  

• 1984: Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the LA Lakers became the highest-scoring player in NBA history. He reached 31,419 career points in a game vs. the Utah Jazz. The record was previously held by Wilt Chamberlain.
  

• 1985: Japan notified the United States it would end all commercial whaling by 1988.
  

• 1985: Radio stations around the world interrupted their programming for a simultaneous Good Friday broadcast of "We Are The World." It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie and recorded by 46 artists for the Africa Relief Fund.
  

• 1986: An American soldier and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of the La Bell discotheque in West Berlin., The incident prompted the U.S. air raid on Libya a week later.
  

• 1987: President Reagan arrived in Canada for a summit with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
  

• 1987: Fox Broadcasting Company made its prime-time TV debut by airing the premiere episodes of "Married ... With Children" and "The Tracey Ullman Show" three times each.
  

• 1988: Governor Michael S. Dukakis won a solid victory in Wisconsin's Democratic presidential primary, while on the Republican side, Vice President George Bush overwhelmed his opposition.
  

• 1988: A 15-day hijacking ordeal began as gunmen forced a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet to land in Iran.
  

• 1988: A 15-day hijacking ordeal began as gunmen forced a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet to land in Iran.
  

• 1989: Joseph Hazelwood, former captain of the Exxon Valdez supertanker that leaked nearly 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, surrendered to authorities in New York.
  

• 1989: The government of Poland signed an agreement restoring the independent labor movement Solidarity after a seven-year ban.
  

• 1990: The United States and the Soviet Union announced that President Bush and Soviet President Gorbachev would hold their first full-scale summit in the United States in late May-early June.
  

• 1991: Former Texas Sen. John Tower, his daughter and 21 other people were killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia.
  

• 1991: The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission that included the deploying of the second of NASA's Great Observatories.
  

• 1991: The government reported the nation's jobless rate surged to 6.8 percent in March.
  

• 1991: President Bush orders the US Air Force transport planes to drop supplies to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq. 
  

• 1991:  Former Texas Senator John Tower, his daughter and 21 other people were killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia
  

• 1992: A medical student (Suada Dilberovic) became the first fatality of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina as Serb nationalists began forcibly opposing the republic's secession from Yugoslavia.
  

• 1992: In Washington DC, a crowd estimated by authorities at half a million marched in support of abortion rights.
  

• 1992: Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton died in Little Rock, Arkansas, at age 74.
  

• 1992: Peru's President Alberto Fujimori suspended his country's constitution and dissolved Congress.
  

• 1993: The European Community called for more and tighter sanctions on Serbia to try to force Belgrade's allies in Bosnia to accept a peace plan.
  

• 1993: North Carolina defeated Michigan 77-to-71 to win its first NCAA basketball championship in eleven years.
  

• 1994: President Clinton presided over a 90-minute town hall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, in which he called himself the victim of "false charge" in connection with the Whitewater controversy.
  

• 1994: The Commerce Department reported that the Index of Leading Economic Indicators dropped one-tenth of one percentage point in February.
  

• 1995: The House of Representatives passed, 246-188, a tax-cut bill, the final major item in the Republican's "Contract With America."
  

• 1996: Accompanied by six children who survived the Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton bowed his head in silent prayer at the site where 168 people were killed almost a year earlier.
  

• 1997: Allen Ginsberg, the counterculture guru who shattered conventions as poet laureate of the Beat Generation, died in New York City at age 70. 
  

• 1998: In Leeds, England, environment chiefs from the world's top eight industrialized nations announced plans to curb the smuggling of hazardous waste, endangered species and substances that damage the ozone layer.
  

• 1999: In Laramie, Wyoming, Russell Henderson pleaded guilty to kidnapping and felony murder in the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student.
  

• 1999: NATO missiles and aircraft blasted Serbian targets inside Yugoslavia for a 13th straight day.
  

• 1999: The United Nations suspended sanctions against Libya after Moammar Gadhafi surrendered two suspected Libyan intelligence agents for trial in the 1988 Pan Am bombing.
  

•  2000: Ending a two-year investigation, an independent counsel cleared Labor Secretary Alexis Herman of allegations that she'd solicited $250,000 in illegal campaign contributions. 
  

• 2000: Yoshiro Mori took over as Japan's new prime minister, succeeding Keizo Obuchi, who'd been felled by a stroke. 
  

• 2001: A Dutch driver is convicted of manslaugher and sentenced to 14 years in prison for the deaths of 58 Chinese immigrants who suffocated in his truck in Dover, England.
  
  
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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