March 29th
 

1867 ~ Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the British North America Act which established the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1899 ~ Birthday of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1912 ~ Death of Robert Falcon Scott, Explorer.

1973 ~ The last U.S. troops left South Vietnam, ending America's direct military involvement in the Vietnam War.

1981 ~ First running of the London Marathon.

1982 ~ Queen Elizabeth gave Royal Assent to the Canada Act 1982, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982.

1984 ~ The Baltimore Colts of the NFL moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.

1985 ~ Death of Jeanine Deckers, better known as "The Singing Nun" due to her 1963 hit song "Dominique".

2004 ~ Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

2004 ~ Death of Alistair Cook, Journalist.

March 30th
 

1746 ~ Birthday of Francisco Goya, Spanish painter and engraver.

1842 ~ Anesthesia (ether) was used for the first time in an operation.

1853 ~ Birthday of Vincent van Gogh, Painter.

1945 ~ A defecting German pilot delivered a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to the Allies.

1951 ~ Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage.

1951 ~ Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC I computer to the U.S. Census Bureau.

1977 ~ Death of Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer.

1981 ~ President Reagan was shot and seriously injured.

1998 ~ German automaker BMW bought Rolls-Royce for $570 million.

2004 ~ Death of Alistair Cooke, English-born journalist.

March 31st
 

1621 ~ Birthday of Andrew Marvell, English poet.

1732 ~ Birthday of Joseph Haydn, Composer.

1837 ~ Death of John Constable, Painter.

1959 ~ The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed the border into India and was granted political asylum.

1968 ~ President Johnson announced he would not run for re-election.

1970 ~ After 12 years in orbit, Explorer 1 burnt up when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.

1976 ~ Birthday of Ashton Moore, Porn actress.

1991 ~ The end of the Warsaw Pact.

1992 ~ The last active United States Navy battleship, the USS Missouri, was decommissioned .

1995 ~ Latina superstar Selena was killed by the president of her fan club.

April 1st
 

1815 ~ Birthday of Otto von Bismarck, Politician.

1884 ~ Birthday of Florence Blanchfield, the first woman to receive a regular commission in the U.S. Army.

1873 ~ Birthday of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Composer, Pianist & Conductor.

1917 ~ Death of Scott Joplin, Musician & Composer.

1918 ~ The Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.

1945 ~ World War II: U.S. forces invaded Okinawa.

1970 ~ President Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and TV.

1976 ~ Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

2001 ~ Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and taken to prison.

2001 ~ A U.S. intelligence gathering plane collided with a PRC Army fighter jet. The Navy crew made an emergency landing in Hainan, PRC and was detained.

Feastdays & Holidays

April Fools Day

April 2nd
 

1725 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Casanova, adventurer and writer.

1805 ~ Birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer.

1875 ~ Birthday of Walter Chrysler, automobile pioneer.

1917 ~ President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany.

1917 ~ The first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin, took her seat as a representative from Montana.

1978 ~ Dallas premiered on CBS, beginning a 13-year run.

1982 ~ Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, starting the war.

1986 ~ A grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter were sucked out of a TWA jet when it was bombed by a group calling itself the Ezzedine Kassam Unit of the Arab Revolutionary Cells

1988 ~ Birthday of Kimber James, transsexual Porn Actor.

2005 ~ Death of Pope John Paul II.

April 3rd
 

1882 ~ Death of Jesse James (shot in the back and killed for the reward).

1895 ~ The libel trial started by Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensbury began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

1897 ~ Death of Johannes Brahms, Composer.

1901 ~ Death of Richard D'Oyly Carte, Impresario.

1934 ~ Birthday of Jane Goodall, Zoologist.

1946 ~ Masaharu Homma, the Japanese general responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines.

1948 ~ President Truman signed the Marshall Plan.

1991 ~ Death of Graham Greene, English writer.

1996 ~ Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested at his Montana cabin.

2000 ~ Microsoft was ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws.

April 4th
 

1884 ~ Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, naval commander.

1902 ~ British financier Cecil Rhodes left £6 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University in England.

1949 ~ Twelve nations signed The North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

1961 ~ Birthday of Tom Byron, Porn Actor.

1964 ~ The Beatles occupied all of the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.

1968 ~ Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

1975 ~ Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

1979 ~ Death of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan Prime Minister (hanged).

1984 ~ Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, began writing in his secret diary.

1994 ~ Netscape Communications Corporation was founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark.

It is Tomb Sweeping Day today in China

April 6th
 

1528 ~ Death of Albrecht Dürer, Artist.

1866 ~ Birthday of Butch Cassidy, Outlaw.

1909 ~ Robert Peary and Matthew Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole.

1917 ~ The United States declared war on Germany.

1928 ~ Birthday of James D. Watson, Geneticist, co-discoverer of structure of DNA, awarded 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

1933 ~ Hostess Twinkies were invented.

… and they will return!

1971 ~ Death of Igor Stravinsky, Composer.

1992 ~ Death of Isaac Asimov, Science-fiction author.

1994 ~ The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed in a plane crash near Rwanda's capital.

2001 ~ Algerian national Ahmed Ressam, accused of bringing explosives into the U.S. days before the millennium celebrations, was convicted twice in the same day - first in France for belonging to a group supporting Islamic militants, then in Los Angeles on terror charges.

April 7th
 

1614 ~ Death of El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos), artist.

1795 ~ France adopted the meter as the unit of length.

1891 ~ Death of P. T. Barnum, Circus Impresario.

1945 ~ The Yamato, a 72,000-ton Japanese battleship was sunk off Okinawa due in large part to SIGINT tipoffs.

1953 ~ Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations Secretary General.

1964 ~ IBM announced the System/360.

1967 ~ Birthday of Runa Akasaka (赤坂ルナ), Japanese Porn actress.

1968 ~ Death of Jim Clark, racing driver.

1969 ~ The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of First Request for Comment (RFC).

1978 ~ Development of the neutron bomb was canceled by President Carter.

April 8th
 

1820 ~ The Venus de Milo was discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

1945 ~ Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed at the POW camp at Flossenbürg.

1953 ~ Jomo Kenyatta was convicted of being a member of the Mau Mau.

1973 ~ Death of Pablo Picasso, artist.

1974 ~ Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record.

1975 ~ Frank Robinson managed his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.

1982 ~ Birthday of Judy Star, Canadian porn actress.

1983 ~ Death of Omar Bradley, general.

1991 ~ Birthday of Melanie Ríos, Colombian Porn Actress.

2005 ~ The funeral of Pope John Paul II.

April 9th
 

1865 ~ Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

1906 ~ Birthday of Antal Dorati, Hungarian conductor.

1940 ~ Operation Weserübung: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

1942 ~ HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy Destroyer HMAS Vampire were sunk off Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka) east coast by Japanese naval aircraft.

1926 ~ Birthday of Hugh Hefner, Editor & Publisher.

1928 ~ Birthday of Tom Lehrer, Musician & Satirist.

1959 ~ Death of Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect.

1974 ~ Birthday of Jenna Jameson, Porn actress.

1991 ~ Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

2003 ~ Iraqis celebrated the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, beheading a toppled statue of the dictator in downtown Baghdad.

April 10th
 

1847 ~ Birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, Journalist & Publisher.

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic left port in Southampton, England.

1919 ~ Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata was ambushed and killed by government forces.

1932 ~ Birthday of Omar Sharif, Egyptian actor (Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, Funny Girl, and many others).

1947 ~ Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in MLB.

1954 ~ Death of Auguste Lumière, Cinema Pioneer.

1963 ~ The American submarine USS Thresher and its crew was lost off Cape Cod, Mass.

1966 ~ Death of Evelyn Waugh, Writer.

1970 ~ Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles had broken up.

1998 ~ The Belfast Agreement was signed.

April 11th
 

1814 ~ Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba.

1893 ~ Birthday of Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State.

1932 ~ Birthday of Joel Grey, American singer and actor.

1945 ~ U.S. forces liberated Buchenwald concentration camp.

1951 ~ President Truman replaced General MacArthur with Lieutenant-General Ridgway.

1961 ~ Bob Dylan made his singing début in New York City.

1961 ~ Start of war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann.

1979 ~ Idi Amin deposed as president of Uganda.

1986 ~ Birthday of Roman Heart, Porn Actor.

2007 ~ Death of Kurt Vonnegut, Author.

April 12th
 

65 ~ Death of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Philosopher, Dramatist & Statesman.

1861 ~ The American Civil War began when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

1895 ~ Birthday of Lily Pons, Opera Soprano.

1937 ~ Frank Whittle ground-tested the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft.

1940 ~ Birthday of Herbie Hancock, Musician.

1945 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt died.

1961 ~ Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space aboard Vostok 1.

1984 ~ Arthur Scargill, the man who led the destruction of the National Union of Mineworkers ruled out a national ballot of miners on whether to continue their strike.

1999 ~ President Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.

2009 ~ Death of Marilyn Chambers, Porn actress, best known for her performance in "Behind the Green Door".

April 13th
 

1598 ~ Henry IV of France granted freedom of religion to Hguenots.

1742 ~ George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah premiered in Dublin, Ireland.

1743 ~ Birthday of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. President.

1829 ~ The British Parliament granted freedom of religion to Roman Catholics.

1892 ~ Birthday of Arthur Harris, commander of RAF's Bomber Command in World War II.

1964 ~ Sidney Poitier broke the color barrier when he was awarded the “Best Actor” Oscar.

1970 ~ Apollo 13 was almost lost when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.

1980 ~ Birthday of Jana Cova, Czech Porn Actress.

1990 ~ The Soviet Union admitted committing the Katyn Massacre.

2008 ~ Death of John Wheeler, American physicist, inventor of the terms "black hole", "quantum foam" and "wormhole".

April 14th
 

1629 ~ Birthday of Christiaan Huygens, Mathematician.

1759 ~ Death of Georg Friedrich Handel, Composer.

1865 ~ President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

1904 ~ Birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Actor.

1935 ~ Death of Emmy Noether, Mathematician.

1939 ~ ''The Grapes of Wrath'' by John Steinbeck was published.

1964 ~ Death of Rachel Carson, Writer & Ecologist.

1988 ~ The USSR pledged to leave Afghanistan.

1999 ~ A hailstorm in Sydney, Australia caused at least A$1.7 billion damages.

2003 ~ The Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced.

April 15th
 

1452 ~ Birthday of Leonardo da Vinci.

1802 ~ William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy come across a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring him to write "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud".

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic sank.

1912 ~ Birthday of Kim Il-sung, "Great Leader" & President of North Korea .

1924 ~ Birthday of Sir Neville Marriner, Conductor.

1945 ~ British & Canadian troops liberate Bergen-Belsen

1947 ~ Jackie Robinson broke MLB baseball's color barrier when he started for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1985 ~ Birthday of Amy Reid, Porn actress.

1994 ~ Representatives of 124 countries signed the Marrakesh Agreements which replaced the GATT with the WTO.

1998 ~ Death of Pol Pot, Cambodian Dictator.

April 16th
 

1867 ~ Birthday of Wilbur Wright, Pioneer Pilot.

1889 ~ Birthday of Charlie Chaplin, Actor, Writer & Film Producer.

1912 ~ Harriett Quimby became the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.

1921 ~ Birthday of Peter Ustinov, Writer, Actor & Film Director.

1927 ~ Birthday of Joseph Ratzinger, German Shepard.

1943 ~ Dr. Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD.

1947 ~ The explosive nature of ammonium nitrate fertilizer first tested in the wild.

1947 ~ Bernard Baruch coined the term Cold War to describe the relationship between the U.S. and the USSR.

1980 ~ Birthday of Adriana Sage, Mexican-American Porn Actress.

1993 ~ The UN voted to make Srebrenica a 'safe haven'.

April 17th
 

1521 ~ Martin Luther appeared before the Holy Roman Emperor at Worms, Germany, and was cross-examined about his thoughts on religious reform.

1741 ~ Birthday of Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1790 ~ Death of Benjamin Franklin, Politician, Inventor, Diplomat, & Printer.

1837 ~ Birthday of J.P. Morgan, Financier, Art Collector, & Philanthropist.

1861 ~ The Virginia State Convention voted to secede from the Union.

1894 ~ Birthday of Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician & Premier 1958-1964.

1903 ~ Birthday of Gregor Piatigorsky, Russian cellist.

1961 ~ Cuba was invaded at the “Bay of Pigs” by a U.S. supported invasion force of 1,500 Cuban exiles, who were defeated by Fidel Castro's forces.

1984 ~ Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by gunfire coming from the Libyan People's Bureau in central London.

2003 ~ Death of Dr. Robert Atkins, noted for the Atkin's Diet.

April 18th
 

1775 ~ Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode to warn of impending arrests of Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seizure of weapons.

1819 ~ Birthday of Franz von Suppé, Croatian /Austrian composer.

1955 ~ Death of Albert Einstein, Physicist.

1958 ~ A federal court ruled that poet Ezra Pound should be released from an insane asylum.

1980 ~ Independence Day in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia).

1978 ~ The U.S. Senate narrowly backed President Carter's controversial Panama Canal treaty.

1983 ~ A suicide bomber destroyed the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

1986 ~ Birthday of Denice K., Danish porn actress, producer, and radio host.

1999 ~ Wayne Gretzky played his last National Hockey League game, at Madison Square Garden in New York.

2002 ~ Death of Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer.

April 19th
 

1775 ~ American Revolutionary War began with the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

1881 ~ Death of Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minister of the U.K.

1882 ~ Death of Charles Darwin, Biologist & Author.

1912 ~ Birthday of Glenn Seaborg, Chemist and Nobel Prize winner.

1956 ~ Actress Grace Kelly married Rainier III of Monaco.

1989 ~ Death of Daphne du Maurier, Author.

1993 ~ A siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended when fire destroyed the structure after federal agents smashed their way in.

1995 ~ Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was bombed, killing 168.

2005 ~ Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope; he took the name Benedict XVI.

2011 ~ Fidel Castro resigned after 45 years of running Cuba.

Interesting that the fertiliser plant blew up 20 years after after Waco.

Yes. It is. The FBI’s investigative resources are a tad stretched at the moment though, and not because of the sequestration.

April 20th
 

1657 ~ The Jews of New York City (then New Amsterdam) were granted freedom of religion.

1862 ~ The first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur.

1889 ~ Birthday of Adolf Hitler, German dictator, "Der Führer".

1912 ~ Death of Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula).

1918 ~ Manfred von Richthofen shot down his 79th and 80th victims - his final victories.

1937 ~ Birthday of George Takei, American actor.

1968 ~ Pierre Trudeau first became Prime Minister of Canada.

1968 ~ English politician Enoch Powell made his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.

1971 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

1999 ~ Columbine High School Massacre

April 21st
 

1649 ~ The Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly.

1836 ~ Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat Mexican troops under General Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto.

1838 ~ Birthday of John Muir, Environmentalist.

1910 ~ Death of Mark Twain, author.

1912 ~ The New York Giants and New York Yankees played an exhibition game to benefit survivors of the RMS Titanic.

1918 ~ Manfred von Richthofen, the German fighter ace known as "The Red Baron", was shot down and killed.

1926 ~ Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

1944 ~ Women in France were enfranchised.

1960 ~ Brazil inaugurated its new capital, Brasilia, transferring the seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro.

1992 ~ The first extrasolar planets were announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.

April 22nd
 

1724 ~ Birthday of Immanuel Kant, Philosopher.

1870 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary.

1889 ~ The Oklahoma Land Rush began.

1904 ~ Birthday of Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

1943 ~ Albert Hofmann wrote his first report about the hallucinogenic properties of LSD.

1970 ~ First Earth Day celebrated.

1984 ~ Death of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1997 ~ A four-month siege of the Japanese embassy in Peru ended when commandos stormed and captured the building, rescuing 71 hostages. Interestingly, all 14 rebels died.

2000 ~ In a pre-dawn raid, armed immigration agents seized Elian Gonzalez from his relatives' home in Miami; the 6-year-old boy was reunited with his father.

2002 ~ Death of Linda Lovelace, Porn actress.


Feastdays & Holidays

Earth Day : Canada, U.S.

April 23rd
 

1564 ~ Birthday of William Shakespeare, Playwright.

1858 ~ Birthday of Max Planck, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1918.

1891 ~ Birthday of Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet Composer.

1954 ~ Hank Aaron hit his first major league home run.

1968 ~ Birthday of Timothy McVeigh, American Terrorist.

1969 ~ Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating Sen. Robert Kennedy.

1984 ~ The American announcement of the isolation of the AIDS virus.

1985 ~ Coca-Cola changed its formula and released New Coke.

2004 ~ President Bush eased Reagan-era sanctions against Libya in return for Moammar Gadhafi's giving up weapons of mass destruction.

2007 ~ Death of Boris Yeltsin, Soviet strongman and the architect of the dismantling of the USSR.[/QUOTE]

April 24th
 

1731 ~ Death of Daniel Defoe, English Writer.

1898 ~ Spain declared war on the U.S. over Cuba.

1905 ~ Birthday of Robert Penn Warren, Writer, Pulitzer Prize winner, first American Poet Laureate.

1916 ~ The Easter uprising began when some 1,600 Irish nationalists seized several key sites in Dublin.

1942 ~ Birthday of Barbra Streisand, American Singer & Actress.

1967 ~ Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1.

1986 ~ Death of Wallis Simpson, Mistress & Wife of The Duke of Windsor.

1990 ~ The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery.

1996 ~ The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization voted to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.

1997 ~ Death of Pat Paulsen, American comedian and politician.

April 25th
 

1719 ~ "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe was published.

1792 ~ The French national anthem, “La Marseillaise” was composed.

1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Composer.

1900 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Pauli, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1945.

1906 ~ Birthday of William J. Brennan, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.

1915 ~ Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to remove the Ottoman Turkish Empire from WWI.

1917 ~ Birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz Singer.

1945 ~ The United Nations was organized in San Francisco, California, by 50 nations.

1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson published MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF NUCLEIC ACIDS: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1980 ~ Tehran hostage rescue mission failed.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia, New Zealand ~ ANZAC Day

April 26th
 

1711 ~ Birthday of David Hume, Philosopher & Historian.

1785 ~ Birthday of John Audubon, Naturalist & Illustrator.

1935 ~ Birthday of Carol Burnett, Singer, Actress & Comedienne.

1937 ~ Planes from the Condor Legion, an adjunct of the Luftwaffe, bombed the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

1945 ~ The Battle of Bautzen: The last successful German armoured offensive of WWII.

1964 ~ Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

1986 ~ The world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union.

1989 ~ Death of Lucille Ball, Actress & Comedienne.

1994 ~ South Africa held its first multiracial elections.

2005 ~ Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon ended.

April 27th
 

1521 ~ Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines.

1680 ~ John Milton's widow sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £8.

1791 ~ Birthday of Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse code.

1813 ~ U.S. troops captured York (present day Toronto), the capital of Ontario.

1822 ~ Birthday of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th U.S. President.

1891 ~ Birthdayof Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer.

1904 ~ The Australian Labor Party became the first such party to gain national government, under Chris Watson[.

1945 ~ Soviet and American armies linked up at the Elbe.

1999 ~ Death of Al Hirt, Musician.

2007 ~ Death of Mstislav Rostropovich, Russian cellist and conductor.

April 28th
 

1789 ~ Mutiny on the HMS Bounty. Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift.

1906 ~ Birthday of Kurt Gödel, mathematician.

1937 ~ Birthday of Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq.

1941 ~ Birthday of Ann-Margret, Swedish-born actress.

1945 ~ Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were killed by members of the Italian resistance movement while trying to flee Italy.

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki.

1952 ~ The U.S. occupation of Japan ended.

1969 ~ Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France.

2001 ~ Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist.

2003 ~ Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store launched.

April 29th
 

1863 ~ Birthday of William Randolph Hearst, American publisher.

1893 ~ Birthday of Harold Urey, American chemist, awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

1945 ~ Start of Operation Manna.

1945 ~ American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

1951 ~ Death of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born philosopher.

1958 ~ The Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, opened in London.

1980 ~ Death of Alfred Hitchcock, director.

1992 ~ Rioting broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

1997 ~ The Chemical Weapons Convention, a worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons, went into effect.

2008 ~ Death of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD .

April 30th
 

1777 ~ Birthday of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mathematician, Astronomer & Physicist.

1877 ~ Birthday of Alice B. Toklas, Muse and Brownie Chef.

1883 ~ Death of Édouard Manet, Impressionist Painter.

1916 ~ Birthday of Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory”.

1938 ~ Birthday of Larry Niven, Science Fiction author.

1945 ~ Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for one day.

1948 ~ The Land Rover was introduced.

1973 ~ President Nixon took responsibility for the Watergate scandal.

1975 ~ The South Vietnamese government in Saigon fell to Communist forces.

1993 ~ CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone.

May 1st
 

1840 ~ The Penny Black postage stamp put on sale in the UK.

1869 ~ The Folies Bergères opened in Paris. Edouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” recalls the lot of one of the employees.

1904 ~ Death of Antonín Dvořák, Czech Composer.

1941 ~ Orson Welles's Citizen Kane premiered in New York City.

1944 ~ Birthday of Rita Coolidge, Singer.

1960 ~ Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union.

1978 ~ Death of Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer.

1982 ~ RAF aircraft attack two airstrips near Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.

2004 ~ Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join the European Union.

2008 ~ Death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "DC Madam".

May 2nd
 

1519 ~ Death of Leonardo da Vinci, inventor, painter.

1729 ~ Birthday of Empress Catherine II of Russia.

1892 ~ Birthday of "The Red Baron", Manfred von Richthofen.

1933 ~ The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness monster was reported.

1945 ~ The Soviet Union announced the capture of Berlin.

1952 ~ The De Havilland Comet 1, the world's first jet airliner, launched the jet age.

1955 ~ Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".

1982 ~ The British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

1997 ~ Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK.

1999 ~ Death of Oliver Reed , English actor.

May 3rd
 

1469 ~ Birthday of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian Historian & Political Author.

1844 ~ Birthday of Richard D'Oyly Carte, English Impresario.

1898 ~ Birthday of Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel.

1937 ~ Gone With the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1945 ~ Indian forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.

1946 ~ The International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo against Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1971 ~ Anti-war protesters began four days of demonstrations intended to shutting down Washington, D.C.

1990 ~ The Latvian parliament met to declare independence from the USSR.

2002 ~ Death of Barbara Castle, British politician.

2006 ~ Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison.

May 4th
 

1825 ~ Birthday of Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog", English Scientist.

1852 ~ Birthday of Alice Liddell, for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland.

1929 ~ Birthday of Audrey Hepburn, Film and Stage Actress Extraordinaire.

1942 ~ The Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought entirely with carrier aircraft, began during World War II.

1953 ~ Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "The Old Man and the Sea".

1970 ~ The Ohio National Guard opened fire on Kent State University students protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

1975 ~ Death of Moe Howard, actor, comedian; member of the Three Stooges.

1979 ~ Margaret Thatcher became the UK’s first female Prime Minister.

1982 ~ The HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet missile during the Falklands War.

2009 ~ Death of Dom DeLuise, American comedian and actor.

May 5th
 

1807 ~ Death of P.D.Q. Bach, fictitious Composer.

1818 ~ Birthday of Karl Marx, Political Philosopher.

1891 ~ NYC’s Carnegie Hall had its grand opening and first public performance, with Pyotr Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

1925 ~ Biology teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution in Dayton, Tennessee.

1944 ~ Birthday of John Rhys-Davies, Welsh actor (Gimli).

1961 ~ Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space.

1973 ~ Birthday of Brooke Ashley, a former Porn actress.

1980 ~ Great Britain’s SAS stormed the Iranian embassy in London after a six day siege.

1992 ~ Wolfenstein 3D was released, the first-ever first-person shooter computer game.

1995 ~ Death of Mikhail Botvinnik, world chess champion.