Tidbits of History

April 18 is:

National Animal Crackers Day
International Jugglers Day
Newspaper Columnists Day

On April 18, 1506, the cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica was laid by Pope Julius II.

In 1775, at the start of the American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside in Massachusetts of the troop movements. Immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

April 18, 1783, Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day since it began.

1861 – Colonel Robert E. Lee turned down an offer to command the Union armies during the U.S. Civil War.

April 18, 1906 – San Francisco earthquake: San Francisco, California, was hit by an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale. Up to 3,000 people died. Over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed.

On April 18, 1923, Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built”, opened. The Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1. John Phillip Sousa’s band played the National Anthem. The original Yankee Stadium was demolished in 2010.

The first “Washateria” (laundromat) opened in Fort Worth, Texas in 1934.

1956 – Actress Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco were married. The religious ceremony took place April 19.

2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller Report was released to the United States Congress and the public.

April 17 is Blah, Blah, Blah Day – Blah Blah Blah Day is the opportunity to stop procrastinating and get to grips with all those stalled projects and broken promises right now!

National Cheeseball Day

On April 17, 1397, Geoffrey Chaucer told the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) as the start of the book’s pilgrimage to Canterbury.

April 17, 1492 – Spain and Christopher Columbus signed the Capitulations of Santa Fe for his voyage to Asia to acquire spices.

Trial of Martin Luther over his teachings began during the assembly of the Diet of Worms on April 17, 1521. Initially intimidated, he asks for time to reflect before answering and was given a stay of one day.

1534 – Sir Thomas More was confined in London Tower. More accepted Parliament’s right to declare Anne Boleyn the legitimate Queen of England, but he steadfastly refused to take the oath of supremacy of the Crown in the relationship between the kingdom and the church in England. He was charged with high treason and executed the following year.

1824 – Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54° 40’N.

Virginia was 8th state to secede from the Union on April 17, 1861.

Mary Surratt was arrested on April 17, 1865 as a conspirator in Lincoln’s assassination. Sentenced to death, she was hanged on July 7, 1865, becoming the first woman executed by the United States federal government.

The Supreme Court of the United States decided on April 17, 1905, Lochner v. New York, which holds that the “right to free contract” is implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution; judges decide maximum work day is unconstitutional.

Cartoon characters Daffy Duck, Elmer J Fudd & Petunia Pig, debut in 1937.

1949 – At midnight 26 Irish counties officially left the British Commonwealth. A 21-gun salute on O’Connell Bridge, Dublin, ushered in the Republic of Ireland.

April 17, 1961, the Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.

Ford Mustang was introduced to the North American market in 1964.

On April 17, 1982, Queen Elizabeth proclaimed Canada’s new constitution. The passing of the UK’s Canada Act 1982 in March 1982 confirmed the Patriation of the Constitution and transferred to Canada the power of amending its own Constitution. This process was necessary because, after the Statute of Westminster, 1931, Canada decided to allow the British Parliament to temporarily retain the power to amend Canada’s constitution, on request from the Parliament of Canada. In 1981, the Parliament of Canada requested that the Parliament of the United Kingdom remove that authority from the UK. On April 17, 1982, Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, as well as the Minister of Justice, Jean Chrétien, and André Ouellet, the Registrar General, signed the Proclamation which brought the Constitution Act, 1982 into force. The proclamation confirmed that Canada had formally assumed authority over its constitution, the final step to full sovereignty.

Nolan Ryan strikes out his 3,500th batter in 1983. He ranks first all-time in strikeouts at 5,714. He struck out 15 or more players in a game 26 times, second only to Randy Johnson who had 28.

Nolan Ryan pitched for Alvin High School in Alvin, Texas. His team was playing Deer Park for the district championship. According to Ryan, he was becoming well-known for his fastball but he was wild. He says:

“It worked to my advantage that day. I hit the first kid up squarely in the helmet and split it. I hit the next guy in the arm and broke it. The third kid went and begged his coach not to make him hit….I had them after that….they were up there at the edge of the batter’s box on their toes, ready to bail out…They’d forgotten about trying to win the district. They just wanted to go home…”

from Miracle Man, Nolan Ryan, the Autobiography with Jerry Jenkins.

IBM produced 1st megabit-chip in 1986.

April 16 is National Eggs Benedict Day – From days of the year.com
History of Eggs Benedict Day
The actual origin of Eggs Benedict is one shrouded in myth and mystery. There are those that profess that it was the favorite breakfast of the notorious betrayer Benedict Arnold, and became a favorite of the British after his defection from the American Revolutionary forces. Others say that its origins are far more recent, being the result of a hangover remedy ordered by one Lemuel Bendict, a Stock Broker who celebrated a bit too hard the night before. While the original order in this case is rumored to be “buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and a hooker of Hollandaise”, and the maître d’hotel was so impressed with it that he made a couple modifications and added it to the menu.
Another, purportedly older origin story speaks of Pope Benedict XIII and a bit of an obsession with a particular egg dish. Every day he would order this specific meal when the opportunity presented itself, and so it was that it became deeply associated with him. It also was rumored that there was something going on with his health that made eggs be something of a craving as it helped to assuage the effects.

National Librarian Day
National Stress Awareness Day

1818 – The United States Senate ratified the Rush-Bagot Treaty, establishing the border with Canada.

April 16, 1862 – Emancipation Day (Washington, DC) celebrates the signing of the Compensated Emancipation Act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia. The Act freed about 3,100 enslaved persons in the District of Columbia nine months before President Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation. The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act represents the only example of compensation by the federal government to former owners of emancipated slaves. The act, which set aside $1 million, immediately emancipated slaves in Washington, D.C., giving Union slaveholders up to $300 per freed slave. An additional $100,000 allocated by the law was used to pay each newly freed slave $100 if he or she chose to leave the United States and colonize in places such as Haiti or Liberia.

Birthday of Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867), American pioneer aviator who, with his brother Orville (born August, 1871), invented the first powered airplane, Flyer, capable of sustained, controlled flight (17 Dec 1903). Orville made the first flight, airborn for 12-sec. Wilbur took the second flight, covering 853-ft (260-m) in 59 seconds. Wilbur died of typhoid in 1912.

1900 – The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.

In 1908 the Natural Bridges National Monument was established in Utah.

Bernard Baruch, an American financier, stock investor, philanthropist, statesman, and political consultant, coined the term “Cold War” in 1947 to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

1968 – Major league baseball’s longest night game was played when the Houston Astros defeated the New York Mets 1-0. The 24 innings took six hours, six minutes to play.

Cambodian Khmer Rouge occupy Phnom Penh in 1975.

2003 – The Treaty of Accession was signed in Athens admitting 10 new member states to the European Union – Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia.

April 13 is National Peach Cobbler Day

Scrabble Day April 13 is the day Scrabble inventor Alfred Mosher Butts was born in 1899.

On April 13, 1742 George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Messiah, made its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland.

Birthday of Thomas Jefferson (1743), third president of the U.S.

From: Library of Congress: Description of a visit to Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in 1782,
from Travels in North-America, in the Years 1780-81-82 by the Marquis de Chastellux.

Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall, and with a mild and pleasing countenance…. An American, who without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman…. Sometimes natural philosophy, at others politics or the arts, were the topics of our conversation, for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson; and it seemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he has done his house, on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe.

1775 – Lord North extended the New England Restraining Act to South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The act prohibited trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland.

The first elephant ever seen in the United States arrived from India on this day in 1796.

On April 13, 1829, the English Emancipation Act granted freedom of religion to Catholics.

1861 – American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate forces.

Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in 1943

On April 13, 1970, an oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 exploded, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.

April 10 is the 101st day of the year.

National Cinnamon Crescent Day

Golfer’s Day

National Siblings Day

1606 – The Virginia Company of London was established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America. The territory granted to the London Company included the eastern coast of America from the 34th parallel (Cape Fear) north to the 41st parallel (in Long Island Sound)… The company was permitted by its charter to establish a 100-square-mile (260 km2) settlement within this area. The portion of the company’s territory north of the 38th parallel was shared with the Plymouth Company, with the stipulation that neither company found a colony within 100 miles (161 km) of each other.

By 1609, the Plymouth Company had dissolved. As a result, the charter for the London Company was adjusted with a new grant that extended from “sea to sea” of the previously-shared area between the 38th and 40th parallel.

April 10, 1790 – Robert Gray, merchant sea-captain, was the first American to circumnavigate the Earth. He explored and named the Columbia River in 1792.

April 10, 1815 – The Mount Tambora volcano began a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately killed 71,000 people and affected Earth’s climate for the next two years. Mount Tambora is on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. Tambora’s 1815 eruption was the largest in recorded human history.

Birthday of Joseph Pulitzer 1847, American journalist and publisher who founded Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of American (Hungarian-born) Joseph Pulitzer who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher, and is administered by Columbia University in New York City.

1849 – Safety pin patented by Walter Hunt of NYC; He sold the rights for $100.

Humane Day, anniversary of the incorporation of the ASPCA in 1866.

1872 – The first Arbor Day is celebrated in Nebraska.

1912 – RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England on her maiden and only voyage.

1925 “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published.

1947 Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals, paving the way for Robinson to become the first black to play in the major leagues.

April 9 is:

National Chinese Almond Cookie Day

Name Yourself Day To celebrate, you are allowed to give yourself a new name for one day. If you have ever wondered what it would be like to have a different name, this would be the day to find out.

On April 9, 1413, Henry V was crowned King of England. Henry V, also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England from 1413 until his death in 1422.

From 2201 Fascinating Facts by David Louis, published by Greenwich House, New York, 1983:

Death of French writer Francois Rabelais (Apr 9, 1553), His last will and testament reads: “I have nothing. I owe much. The rest I leave to the poor”. His dying words were “I am going to a great perhaps”.

The expedition organized by Sir Walter Raleigh departed England for Roanoke Island (now in North Carolina) to establish the Roanoke Colony on this day in 1585.

April 9, 1682 – Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River, claimed it for France and named it Louisiana.

Winston Churchill Day – on April 9, 1963, Winston Churchill became an honorary American Citizen. Others who have received this honor include William Penn (1984), Mother Teresa (1996), Marquis de LaFayette (2002), and Casimir Pulaski (2009) (called The Father of the American Cavalry). LaFayette was made an honorary citizen of the state of Maryland in 1783.

April 9, 1865 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

1939 Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The incident placed Anderson in the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the Lincoln Memorial steps in the capital. Anderson was accompanied, as usual, by Finnish pianist Vehanen. They began the performance with a dignified and stirring rendition of “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” The event was featured in a documentary film. She sang before an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.

1965 1st baseball game at Houston Astrodome, Astros beat NY Yankees 2-1 in exhibition as Mickey Mantle hits MLB’s 1st indoor homerun; US President Lyndon Johnson and wife Lady Bird attend.

April 9, 1989 In Tbilisi, Georgia, a peaceful demonstration for independence was broken up by the Soviet Army, killing 20 people. The country gained independence on this date exactly two years later.