April 14

That thy trust may be in the LORD, I have made known to thee this day, even to thee. 

Proverbs 22:19

April is:

• Child Abuse Prevention Month - Educates people about how to prevent child abuse. Sponsor: National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse.
  
  
• Confederate Heritage Month - Activities take place each week in April in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
  
  
• Dog Appreciation Month - April was declared Dog Appreciation Month in a 1994 Outlast comic strip.
  
  
• Fair Housing Month - By presidential proclamation.

Today is:

• Abraham Lincoln assassinated (1865) - President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes 
  
  
• Grapes of Wrath published - John Steinbeck's novel was published in 1939.
  
  
• Pan American Day - This is the anniversary of the founding of the Pan American Union in 1912, celebrated since 1940.

Born on this Day

• 1578: Philip III, King of Spain
  

• 1608: Illiam Dhone, Manx patriot
  

• 1629: Dutch physicist Christian Huygens, founder of the wave theory of light
  

• 1866: Helen Keller's teacher Anne Sullivan was born on this day. Sullivan, who was nearly blind herself, succeeded in teaching the blind and deaf Keller to read, write and speak.
  

• 1889: English historian Arnold Toynbee
  

• 19??: Solomon Olds (The Brothers)
  

• 19??: Mark Stuart (Audio Adrenaline)
  

• 1904: Actor Sir John Gielgud
  

• 1907: Haitian dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier
  

• 1935: Country singer Loretta Lynn
  

• 1925: Actor Rod Steiger
  

• 1930: Actor Bradford Dillman
  

• 1930: Actor Jay Robinson ("The Robe")
  

• 1932: Actor Anthony Perkins
  

• 1933: Morton Subotnik was born in Los Angeles. Subotnik was an early experimenter with the use of tape recorders in making music.
  

• 1933: Singer-songwriter Buddy Knox
  

• 1935: Country singer Loretta Lynn
  

• 1940: Actress Julie Christie
  

• 1941: Baseball's all-time hit leader, Former Cincinnati Reds player-manager, Pete Rose
  

• 1945: Musician Richie Blackmore(Deep Purple)
  

• 1949: Actor John Shea
  

• 1949: Rock musician Dennis Bryon (Amen Corner)
  

• 1952: Rock singer Jerry Knight (Raydio)
  

• 1959: Actress Emma Thompson
  

• 1960: Actor Brian Forester
  

• 1960: Actor Brad Garrett
  

• 1963: Rock singer-musician John Bell (Widespread Panic)
  

• 1966: Baseball player Greg Maddux
  

• 1966: Baseball player David Justice
  

• 1967: Rock musician Barrett Martin
  

• 1968: Actor Anthony Michael Hall
  

• 1969: Rock musician Martyn Le Nobile (Porno for Pyros)
  

• 1970: Baseball's Steve Avery
  

• 1974: Rapper DaBrat
  

• 1977: Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") 
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 0972: Marriage of Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, to Theophano, Princess of the Eastern Roman Empire
  

• 1028: Coronation of Henry III, "the Black," as King of Germany
  

• 1291: A body of Templars make a night raid on the Moslem camp at the Siege of Acre. They are all killed.
  

• 1386: St. Mary's College, Oxford, England, opens
  

• 1471: Queen Margaret of England lands at Weymouth, too late to save Warwick and her Kingdom
  

• 1498: Vasco da Gama arrives at Malindi, East Africa
  

• 1543: Bartoleme Ferrelo returns to Spain after discovering the San Francisco Bay area
  

• 1582: Founding of the University of Edinburgh
  

• 1611" "Telescope" named at a banquet given by Federico Cesi, Duke of Acquasparta
  

• 1621: The Protestant Union is dissolved
  

• 1629: Birth of Christian Huyghens
  

• 1660: King Charles II of England issues a General Amnesty to all save those whom Parliament would exempt
  

• 1759: George Frederick Handel died in London. Handel had led a performance of "Messiah" just eight days earlier, collapsing afterwards. Today Handel is a favorite son in the pantheon of British composers, but since he was a German emigre he is also honored that way in Germany.
  

• 1775: The first American society for the abolition of slavery was organized by Benjamin Franklin

• 1775: The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, was founded in Philadelphia. The first American abolition society was organized by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
  

• 1828: The first edition of Noah Webster's "American Dictionary of the English Language" was published.
  

• 1843: Josef Lanner, as much a pioneer of the Viennese waltz as Johann Strauss was, died, he was 42.
  

• 1861: The flag of the Confederacy was raised over Fort Sumter, S.C., as Union troops there surrendered in the early days of the Civil War.
  

• 1865: President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth while attending the comedy "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington.
  

• 1894: A motion picture "peep show" device - the kinetoscope - invented by Thomas Edison went on display in New York City. It held 50 feet of film, about 13 seconds worth, and showed images of Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill.
  

• 1900: Veteran's Hospital at Fort Miley established.
  

• 1900: French President Emile Loubet opened the Paris International Exhibition; it covered 547 acres and was the biggest of its kind in European history.
  

• 1902: J.C. Penney opened his first store, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
  

• 1910: President William Howard Taft set a precedent by throwing out the first baseball at the opening of the baseball season. Washington's Walter Johnson held the A's to one hit, winning 3-0.
  

• 1912: The British liner "Titanic" collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and began sinking. Rescue ships picked up 706 survivors while 1,517 went down with the ship at 2:20 a.m. the following morning.
  

• 1931: King Alfonso the 13th of Spain went into exile, and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.
  

• 1935: Babe Ruth played his first game at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. He was playing for the old Boston Braves, who were later renamed the Red Sox. Ruth was in his last year in the major leagues.
  

• 1939: The John Steinbeck novel "The Grapes of Wrath" was first published.
  

• 1939: The motion picture "Wuthering Heights," starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, premiered in New York.
  

• 1940: Actress Hattie McDonald became the first African-American to win an Oscar. She won for supporting actress in "Gone with the Wind." McDonald made 14 films before her death in 1952.
  

• 1945: American planes firebombed Tokyo and damaged the Japanese Imperial Palace.
  

• 1956: Ampex Corp. of Redwood City, California, demonstrated its first commercial videotape recorder. The machine had a price tag of $75,000. The early machines were too large to fit in a small room.
  

• 1960: The musical "Bye Bye Birdie" opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York City. Chita Rivera and Dick Van Dyke starred in the Broadway show which ran for 607 performances.
  

• 1968: The Matt Crowley play "The Boys in the Band" opened in New York.
  

• 1976: Stevie Wonder announced he signed a $13 million contract with Motown -- the most lucrative in music history at the time.
  

• 1981: The first test flight of America's first operational space shuttle, the "Columbia," ended successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
  

• 1984: In his weekly radio address, President Reagan announced he had ordered $32 million in emergency arms shipments for El Salvador.
  

• 1985: Jack C. Burcham became the fifth person to receive the "Jarvik 7" permanent artificial heart. (However, he died 10 days later at Humana Hospital Audubon in Louisville, Kentucky.)
  

• 1985: Bernhard Langer of West Germany won the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.
  

• 1985: Geraldo Rivera and a camera crew went to the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, and a record audience watched as the long-sealed vault of racketeer Al Capone was opened. The vault contained nothing of value.
  

• 1986: Americans got first word of the US air raid on Libya (because of the time difference, it was the early morning of April 15th where the attack occurred.) U.S. warplanes struck Libya in the biggest U.S. air strike since the Vietnam War. Libya claimed 40 of its people were killed.
  

• 1986: French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris at age 78.
  

• 1987: Secretary of State George P. Shultz met at the Kremlin with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who proposed the elimination of short-range nuclear missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia as part of an arms control agreement with the US.
  

• 1988: Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and the Soviet Union signed agreements providing for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan and creation of a non-aligned Afghan state.
  

• 1989: Testimony concluded in the Iran-Contra trial of former National Security Council staff member Oliver L. North.
  

• 1989: Former winery worker Ramon Salcido went on a rampage in Sonoma County, California, killing seven people, including his wife and four daughters; he was later sentenced to death.
  

• 1990: Lithuanian officials, facing a Kremlin deadline to back away from their declaration of independence, acknowledged that an economic blockade threatened by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev could result in huge layoffs.
  

• 1991: The final withdrawal of American combat troops from southern Iraq began, 88 days after the United States launched its massive offensive to drive Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait.
  

• 1992: Libya cut itself off from the world for 24 hours to mark the sixth anniversary of the US air raid, the same day the World Court rejected Libya's appeal to prevent sanctions against it for refusing to turn over suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
  

• 1993: Millions of black workers in South Africa went on strike to protest the slaying of activist Chris Hani.
  

• 1993: A government-funded study said that of 3,321 men surveyed, only 1.1 percent identified themselves as exclusively homosexual, a finding disputed by gay activists.
  

• 1993: Don Calhoun, an office supply salesman from Bloomington, IL, made a 79-foot basket at a Chicago Bulls-Miami Heat game and collected $1 million. He got his free ticket to the game from a friend and was chosen at random.
  

• 1993: British archaeologists unearthed a 7,000-year old seafarer's village on Dalma island in the United Arab Emirates. They said it was the first major settlement of the Ubaid period in that area.
  

• 1994: Two American F-15 warplanes inadvertently shot down two US helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 26 people
  

• 1994: The chiefs of the nation's seven largest tobacco companies spent more than six hours being grilled by the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee about the effects of smoking.
  

• 1995: The United Nations Security Council gave permission to Iraq, still under sanctions for its invasion of Kuwait, to sell $2 billion dollars worth of oil to buy food, medicine and other supplies. (Iraq rejected the offer.)
  

• 1995: Actor-singer Burl Ives died in Anacortes, Washington, at age 85.
  

• 1996: Israel's four-day-old military campaign against Hezbollah guerrillas continued, with aircraft bombarding guerrilla strongholds in Beirut and southern Lebanon, provoking guerrilla vows to turn northern Israel into a "fiery hell."
  

• 1996: Six people died and more than 30 were wounded in Pakistan when a powerful bomb went off at a cancer hospital built by former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan.
  

• 1997: Attorney General Janet Reno rejected Republican calls to seek an independent counsel to investigate campaign fund-raising.
  

• 1997: James McDougal, who'd agreed to cooperate with Whitewater prosecutors investigating President and Mrs. Clinton, drew a three-year prison sentence for 18 felony fraud and conspiracy counts.
  

• 1998: Despite international pleas for leniency, the state of Virginia executed Angel Francisco Breard, a Paraguayan convicted of murder.
  

• 1998: President Clinton moderated a town meeting on race with an all-star panel of sports figures.
  

• 1998: The Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for public service; author Philip Roth received the Pulitzer fiction award, his first, for "American Pastoral."
  

• 1999: Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr told Congress the Watergate-era law that gave him the power to probe actions of executive branch officials was flawed and should be abolished.
  

• 1999: NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees; Yugoslav officials said 75 people were killed.
  

• 1999: British entertainer Anthony Newley died in Jensen Beach, Florida, at age 67.
  

• 2000: On Wall Street, stocks plummeted in heavy trading, with the Dow industrials down 617 points and the Nasdaq composite index falling 355 points, capping one of the worst weeks ever for US stocks. This was just the beginning of conditions created by nearly 8 years of government mismanagement of the economy.
  

• 2000: In Washington, protesters dumped manure on Pennsylvania Avenue, seeking to disrupt meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. 
  

• 2001: After almost two weeks of intense searching, China ends the hunt for a pilot elevated to the status of national hero when his fighter jet crashed after a collision with a U.S. spy plane.
  
  
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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