April 10

But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 

Psalm 1:2

April is:

• National Poetry Month - Beginning in 1996, April is the new month for poetry!
  
  
• National Recycling Month -
  
  
• National School Library Month -
  
  
• National STDS Education and Awareness Month - Informs and educates about sexually transmitted diseases and their prevention. Sponsor: Pharmacists Planning Service.

Today is:

• Bataan Death March Anniversary - In 1942, the Japanese rounded up American and Filipino prisoners of war and marched them for 6 days with little more than one bowl of rice to eat. More than 5,200 Americans died on this march.
  
  
• Commodore Perry Day - Celebrates the birthday (1794) of Commodore Matthew Perry, who negotiated the first treaty between the U.S. and Japan.
  
  
• Encourage a Beginning Writer Day - On the birthday of newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer (1847), we honor all beginning writers. Formerly sponsored by Alice Lesch.
  
  
• First American to circumnavigate the Earth (1790) - Robert Gray was the first American to sail around the world. He left Boston in September 1787 and returned in April 1790.
  
  
• International Resistance Movement Day - In 1945, Buchenwald became the first Nazi concentration camp to be
  liberated by the Allies. More than 56,000 people died in Buchenwald alone. This day is also known as Buchenwald Liberation Day.
  
  
• Prevent Cruelty to Animals Day - In 1866, the ASPCA was founded by Henry Bergh. 

Born on this Day

• 1583: Hugo Grotius of Holland, father of the science of international law
  

• 1794: Matthew Calbraith Perry, American Navy Commodore, opened Japan to trade with the west
  

• 1827: Lew Wallace, Civil War general, lawyer, diplomat and author of Ben Hur
  

• 1847: American newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer born in Mako, Hungary.
  

• 1870: Nikolai Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov) (Russian premier 1917-1924)
  

• 1880: Frances Perkins, labor secretary, first woman cabinet member in an American Administration
  

• 1885: Merchant Bernard Gimbel (Gimbel's Department Stores)
  

• 1903: Clare Boothe Luce, reporter and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican
  

• 1915: Actor Harry (Bratsburg) Morgan (M*A*S*H, Dragnet, You Can't Take It with You, Pete and Gladys, HEC Ramsey, December Bride, The D.A., Aftermash)
  

• 1921: Country singer Sheb Wooley (Rawhide, High Noon, Rocky Mountain, Giant, Hoosiers)
  

• 1921: Actor Chuck Connors (The Rifleman)
  

• 1924: David Halberstam, New York Times correspondent, author, Pulitzer Prize winner in 1964
  

• 1929: Actor Max von Sydow
  

• 1929: Actress Liz Sheridan ("Seinfeld")
  

• 1929: Actor Max Von Sydow (Dune, The Exorcist, The Seventh Seal, The Emigrants, Flash Gordon, Hannah and Her Sisters, Hawaii, The Quiller Memorandum, Quo Vadis, Three Days of the Condor)
  

• 1932: Actor (Michael Shalhoub) Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, Funny Girl, Funny Lady, Peter the Great, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, Beyond Justice, Crime & Passion)
  

• 1936: Sportscaster John Madden
  

• 1936: Rhythm-and-blues singer Bobbie Smith (The Spinners)
  

• 1938: Sportscaster Don Meredith
  

• 1947: Reggae artist Bunny Wailer
  

• 1950: Baseball player Ken Griffey (Father of Ken Griffey, Jr.; the first father-son combination to play in the major leagues at the same time)
  

• 1951: Actor Steven Seagal
  

• 1953: Folk-pop singer Terre Roche (The Roches)
  

• 1954: Actor Peter MacNicol
  

• 1957: Rock musician Steven Gustafson (10,000 Maniacs)
  

• 1958: Singer-producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds
  

• 1959: Rock singer-musician Brian Setzer
  

• 1960: Rapper Afrika Bambaataa
  

• 1961: Actor Jeb Adams
  

• 1962: Olympic gold medal speedskater Cathy Turner
  

• 1965: Rock musician Tim "Herb" Alexander
  

• 1970: Singer Kenny Lattimore
  

• 1983: Actor Ryan Merriman ("The Pretender")
  

• 1984: Singer Mandy Moore
  

• 1988: Actor Haley Joel Osment 
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 1790: The U.S. patent system is established.
  

• 1809: Austria declares war on France and her forces enter Bavaria.
  

• 1849: Walter Hunt of New York City patented the safety pin on this day. He thought the safety pin to be a temporary convenience and sold the patent for a total of $400.
  

• 1862: Union forces begin the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.
  

• 1865: At Appomattox, General Robert E. Lee issues his last order.
  

• 1866: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was incorporated.
  

• 1902: South African Boers accept British terms of surrender.
  

• 1912: The luxury liner RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
  

• 1925: The novel "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published by Scribner's of New York.
  

• 1927: "Ballet Macanique" was presented for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This was the first symphonic work that called for an airplane propeller and other mechanical contraptions not normally associated with the ballet.
  

• 1930: The first synthetic rubber is produced.
  

• 1932: German president Paul Von Hindenburg was re-elected, with Adolf Hitler coming second.
  

• 1938: Germany annexes Austria.
  

• 1941: U.S. troops occupy Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.
  

• 1945: German Me 262 jet fighters shoot down ten U.S. bombers near Berlin.
  

• 1947: Jackie Robinson becomes the first black to play major league baseball as he takes the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
  

• 1948: General Dwight D. Eisenhower stood by an earlier newspaper report in which he said that a professional soldier should not seek high political office. It was only four years later that General Eisenhower would find himself as President of the United States.
  

• 1953: The three-dimensional horror movie "House of Wax," produced by Warner Brothers and starring Vincent Price, premiered New York.
  

• 1953: Eddie Fisher was discharged from the Army and arrived home to a nice paycheck of $330,000 in record royalties. Fisher sold 7 million records for RCA Victor while on furloughs.
  

• 1958: Dick Clark devoted an hour of his "American Bandstand" afternoon TV show to the memory of Chuck Willis who had died earlier in the day from peritonitis.
  

• 1959: Japan's Crown Prince Akihito married a commoner, Michiko Shoda.
  

• 1960: The U.S. Senate passes a landmark Civil Rights Bill.
  

• 1961: Gary Player of South Africa became the first foreign golfer to win the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Player, age 25, won by just one stroke over both Charles Coe, an amateur, and defending champion Arnold Palmer.
  

• 1963: The nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher failed to surface off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a disaster that claimed 129 lives.
  

• 1967: The 13-day strike by the American Federation of Radio-TV Artists (AFTRA) came to an end less than two hours before the 39th Academy Awards presentation went on the air.
  

• 1968: President Johnson replaces General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam.
  

• 1971: The American table tennis team arrives in China.
  

• 1972: The United States and the Soviet Union joined some 70 nations signing an agreement banning biological warfare.
  

• 1972: The song, "Theme from 'Shaft'" received an Academy Award for Best Original Song in a film in 1971. Isaac Hayes, the composer and artist for the recording, received a standing ovation during the presentation of his Oscar.
  

• 1974: Golda Meir announced her resignation as prime minister of Israel. And Yitzhak Rabin replaces resigning Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir.
  

• 1981: Imprisoned IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands is elected to the British Parliament.
  

• 1985: Eddie Murphy's "Beverly Hills Cop" made it to the top ten on the list of top-grossing motion pictures. The film, at number nine on the list, was the only R-rated and non-summer movie to make the list.
  

• 1989: Federal drug czar William J. Bennett unveiled details of the Bush administration's plan for fighting drug abuse and drug-related crime the nation's capital.
  

• 1990: Three European hostages – a French woman, a Belgian man and their two-year-old daughter, who was born in captivity – were released in Lebanon by the Abu Nidal Palestinian guerrilla group following an appeal by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
  

• 1991: A day after Mikhail Gorbachev appealed for a moratorium on all strikes, demonstrations and rallies, an estimated 200,000 workers in Byelorussia defied the Soviet president by staging a work stoppage in the capital, Minsk. 
  

• 1994: Two US F-16 fighters bombed Bosnian Serb targets Gorazde – NATO's first-ever attack on ground positions. (A second air strike took place the following day.)
  

• 1995: Senator Bob Dole launched his third bid for the White House in Topeka, Kansas.
  

• 1996: President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique used to end pregnancies in their late stages. 
  

• 1998: The Northern Ireland peace talks concluded as negotiators reached a landmark settlement to end 30 years of bitter rivalries and bloody attacks.
  

• 1999: Bad weather hampered NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, but the allies warned Slobodan Milosevic the lull wouldn't last. The Pentagon, meanwhile, announced that 82 U-S planes would join the force conducting airstrikes over Yugoslavia.
  

• 1999: The Miami Heat humiliated the Chicago Bulls, 82-to-49, holding the Bulls to the lowest point total since the introduction of the shot clock.
  

• 2000: The Washington Post won three Pulitzer Prizes, including the public service award for the second year in a row; The Wall Street Journal took two honors, and The Associated Press won for investigative reporting on the killing of civilians by US troops at the start of the Korean War. 
  

• 2000: South Korea and North Korea announced a June date for their first summit since the Korean peninsula was divided in 1945. 
  

• 2000: Actor Larry Linville, one of the stars of the situation comedy "M*A*S*H," set during the Korean War, died in New York at age 60. 
  

• 2001: South Africa becomes the first country in the world to approve a solution that can be used in place of blood in transfusions.
  
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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