April 19

Let my mouth be filled with thy praise and with thy honor all the day. 

Psalm 71:8

 April is:

• Fair Housing Month - By presidential proclamation.
  
  
• Fresh Florida Tomato Month - They are versatile, nutritious, and delicious. Celebrate Florida tomatoes. Sponsor: Florida Tomato Committee
  
  
• Holy Humor Month - Lighthearted Christians can give parties and playshops to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

Today is:

• First automobile built in U.S. - Brothers Charles and Frank Duryea built the first automobile in 1892. They drove it around Springfield, Massachusetts.
  
  
• Gunslinger Day - Celebrate the birthday of actor Hugh O'Brian who played Wyatt Earp on the TV show The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. O'Brian was born Hugh Krampe in 1930 in Rochester, New York. Sponsor: The Life of the Party
  
  
• Paper Money Day - The U.S. went off the gold standard in 1933.
  
  
• International Special Librarians Day - Celebrated on the Thursday of National Library Week. Sponsor; Special Libraries Association.

Born on this Day

• 1127: St. Felix of Valois
  

• 1721: Statesman Roger Sherman, a signer of the U.S. Constitution1836: Music patron Augustus Juilliard
  

• 1877: Ole Evinrude, invented the outboard marine engine.
  

• 1903: FBI agent Eliot Ness. Ness was the head of a nine-man team of law officers called the "Untouchables."
  

• 1933: Actress Jayne Mansfield
  

• 1933: Actor Dick Sargent
  

• 1926: Actor Don Adams
  

• 1925: Actor Hugh O'Brian (Krampke)- (some sources 1930)
  

• 1926: Actor-comedian
  

• 1927: Singer Don Barbour (The Four Freshmen)
  

• 1935: Actor-comedian Dudley Moore
  

• 1937: Actress Elinor Donahue
  

• 1942: Musician-singer Alan Price (The Animals)
  

• 1942: Singer-musician Larry Ramos Jr. (Hilario)
  

• 1943: Singer Eve Graham (The New Seekers)
  

• 1943: Jazz musician Czeslaw Bartowski
  

• 1946: Actor Tim Curry
  

• 1947: Pop singer Mark "Flo" Volman (The Turtles; Flo and Eddie)
  

• 1949: Designer Paloma Picasso
  

• 1956: Tennis player Sue Barker
  

• 1968: Pop singer Bekka Bramlett
  

• 1968: Actress Ashley Judd
  

• 1969: Actress Shannon Lee
  

• 1987: Actor Courtland Mead ("Kirk")     
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 1012: Death of St. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury
  

• 1054: Death of St. Leo IX, Pope
  

• 1390: Death of Robert II, King of Scotland
  

• 1529: A Protestation against a decree of the Diet of the German Empire was published, from which event came the term "Protestants"
  

• 1560: Death of Philip Melanchthon
  

• 1587: English admiral Sir Francis Drake entered Cadiz harbor and sank the Spanish fleet, an action he referred to as "singeing the king of Spain's beard."
  

• 1588: Death of Paolo Caliari, known as "Veronese," painter
  

• 1621: Agnes Ratcleife hanged at Tyburn for witchcraft
  

• 1713: Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction, giving women the rights of succession to Hapsburg possessions.
  

• 1768: Carl Philip Emanuel Bach became the cantor of the city of Hamburg. Johann Sebastian Bach's most successful son succeeded his own godfather in the position, Telemann. CPE Bach thus became, firstly, a leading musical figure in Germany.
  

• 1775: The American Revolutionary War began at the Battle of Lexington, Mass. Eight Minutemen were killed and 10 wounded in an exchange of musket fire with British Redcoats. The shot 'heard round the world.'
  

• 1782: The Netherlands recognized American independence.
  

• 1824: English poet Lord Byron died of a fever while aiding Greek rebels fighting the Turks.
  

• 1850: The Clayton-Bulwer agreement was signed by which Britain and the U.S. agreed not to obtain exclusive control of a proposed Panama canal.
  

• 1874: Barracks on Alcatraz Island destroyed in fire.
  

• 1892: The prototype of the first commercially successful American automobile was completed in Springfield, Massachusetts, by Charles E. Duryea and his brother Frank. It was powered by a single-cylinder 4-horsepower engine.
  

• 1893: The Oscar Wilde play "A Woman of No Importance" opened at the Haymarket Theater in London.
  

• 1897: The first American Marathon Race (now known as the Boston Marathon) was run from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, to Boston. The 26-mile, 385-yard race was won by John McDermott in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.
  

• 1906: Pierre Curie, French chemist and physicist, was run over and killed in Paris.
  

• 1910: After weeks of being viewed through telescopes, Halley's Comet was reported visible to the naked eye in Curacao.
  

• 1933: The United States went off the gold standard.
  

• 1939: Connecticut finally approves the Bill of Rights (only 148 years late)
  

• 1943: During World War Two, tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but futile battle against Nazi forces.
  

• 1945: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Carousel," featuring the song, "You'll Never Walk Alone," opened on Broadway with Jan Clayton as Julie Jordan and John Raitt as Billy Bigelow.
  

• 1951: General Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his command by President Truman, bid farewell to Congress, quoting a line from a ballad: "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
  

• 1951: Shigeki Tanaka, who survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II, won the Boston Marathon.
  

• 1953: The longest recorded major league home run was hit by Mickey Mantle. It traveled 565 feet.
  

• 1957: The first British ship paid an Egyptian toll to cross the Suez Canal.
  

• 1958: The San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers met for the first time as major-league baseball came to the West Coast.
  

• 1971: The Soviet Union launched its first Salyut space station.
  

• 1972: The U.S. Apollo 16 spacecraft began orbiting the moon two days before astronauts landed on its surface.
  

• 1975: India announced it had launched its first satellite, from the Soviet Union atop a Soviet rocket.
  

• 1979: The Los Angeles Lakers won the coin toss in the first round of the college basketball draft. They chose Michigan State guard Ervin "Magic" Johnson.
  

• 1982: Astronauts Sally K. Ride and Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first woman and first African-American to be tapped for U.S. space missions.
  

• 1983: President Reagan embraced a plan to build 100 M-X missiles and put them in existing launch silos, promising it would mean "a safer, more secure America.""
  

• 1984: A federal judge in Chicago held Standard Oil of Indiana and two subsidiaries liable for damages caused by the massive 1978 oil spill from the tanker Amoco Cadiz off the French coast.
  

• 1985: The space shuttle Discovery landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after a mission that was marred by a deployed satellite that failed to operate properly.
  

• 1986: Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched and burned American flags in Britain, West Germany, Italy and Sweden to protest the U.S. air raid on Libya.
  

• 1987: Argentinian President Raul Alfonsin obtained the surrender of dozens of armed rebel soldiers who had been holed up at a military base for three days.
  

• 1988: Republican George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis won the New York presidential primaries.
  

• 1988: After the Baltimore Orioles lost their 11th straight game, WIIY/Baltimore D.J. Bob Rivers vowed to stay on the air until they won. Eight games and 216 hours later, the O's won and Rivers finally got to sleep.
  

• 1989: Pro-Democracy demonstrations began in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
  

• 1989: Forty-seven sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS "Iowa." It was one of the worst naval disasters since the war in Vietnam.
  

• 1990: Nicaragua's 9-year-old civil war neared its end as Contra guerrillas, the Sandinistas and the incoming government agreed to a truce and a deadline for the rebels to disarm.
  

• 1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrived in South Korea for talks with President Roh Tae-woo.
  

• 1991: Evander Holyfield won a unanimous decision over George Foreman to retain boxing's heavyweight title in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
  

• 1992: After six days, engineers plugged the tunnel leak under the Chicago River that caused an underground flood that had virtually shut down business in the heart of the city.
  

• 1993: The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; dozens of people, including David Koresh, were killed.
  

• 1993: The Pittsburgh Symphony visited Chicago. Loren Maazel led the ensemble in the Adagio from Penderecki's Fourth Symphony, followed by the Brahms First.
  

• 1993: The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; dozens of people, including David Koresh, were killed.
  

• 1993: South Dakota Governor George S. Mickelson died in an Iowa plane crash; he was 52.
  

• 1994: Bosnian Serbs seized anti-aircraft guns from U.N. guards near Sarajevo and shelled a hospital and U.N. buildings in Gorazde.
  

• 1994: A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.
  

• 1994: The Supreme Court outlawed the practice of excluding people from juries because of their gender.
  

• 1995: A truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and injuring 500. Two suspects, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were arrested in the case. (Timothy McVeigh was later convicted on federal murder charges and sentenced to death; Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter.)
  

• 1996: On the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, hundreds of mourners paused for 168 seconds of silence at the site where the federal building once stood. 
  

• 1996: President Clinton, visiting Russia, paid tribute to the hundreds of thousands of Russians who died in the Nazi siege of Leningrad -- and to the victims of the Oklahoma bombing as well.
  

• 1997: More than 50,000 residents abandoned Grand Forks, North Dakota, as the rising Red River overran sandbags.
  

• 1998: Mexican poet-philosopher Octavio Paz died at age 84.
  

• 1998: Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, arrived in the United States after being freed by China.
  

• 1998: It was announced that Linda McCartney, the wife of Paul McCartney, had died two days earlier at age 56.
  

• 1999: The Supreme Court ruled that a federal law aimed at limiting e-mail smut does not violate free-speech rights.
  

• 1999: The German parliament inaugurated its new home in the restored Reichstag in Berlin, its prewar capital.
  

• 1999: Joseph Chebet of Kenya won the Boston Marathon, in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 52 seconds; Fatuma Roba of Ethiopia won the women's race in 2:23:25.
  

• 2000: The worst air crash in Philippine history killed 131 people aboard an Air Philippines Boeing 737-200. 
  

• 2000: President Clinton knelt among 168 empty chairs memorializing each victim of the Oklahoma City bombing and declared the site "sacred ground" in the soul of America during a fifth-anniversary dedication ceremony. 
  
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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