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

Five years later, a Sturmvogel owned by Howard Hughes outperformed the current US lead fighter.

March 31st
 

1621 ~ Birthday of Andrew Marvell, English poet.

1732 ~ Birthday of Joseph Haydn, Composer.

1837 ~ Death of John Constable, Painter.

1918 ~ Daylight Savings Time went into effect in the United States for the first time.

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.

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.

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.

1966 ~ Death of C.S. Forester, Author.

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

1875 ~ 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.

1875 ~ Birthday of Kimber James, transsexual Porn Actor.

There's a niche market for almost everybody. 137 year old trannies even.

April 4th
 

1884 ~ Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, naval commander.

1885 ~ Birthday of Arthur Murray, dancer.

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.

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.

April 5th
 

1614 ~ In Virginia, Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe.

1792 ~ President Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.

1908 ~ Birthday of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor.

1930 ~ In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt.

1942 ~ The Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Colombo, Sri Lanka, and sank the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire southwest of the island.

1951 ~ Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.

1976 ~ Death of Howard Hughes, aviation pioneer.

1982 ~ Birthday of Lacey Duvalle, American pornographic actress.

2005 ~ Death of Saul Bellow, Canadian born writer, Nobel laureate.

2008 ~ Death of Charlton Heston, Actor & activist.

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.

1983 ~ Birthday of Bobbi Starr, Porn Actress.

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.

1862 ~ Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

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

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.

1889 ~ Birthday of Sir Adrien Boult, English Conductor.

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.

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.

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.

2005 ~ Charles, Prince of Wales married Camilla Parker Bowles.

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, anad 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.

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

It was a harsh way to discover the max allowable depth for the hull type.

The sub loss was confirmed by the Trieste, the bathyscaphe Piccard and Walsh took to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

The reactor was never recovered, a ticking ecological disaster.

As the lead ship of her class, all further subs of her pattern should have been "Thresher Class", but rather than name them for a sunken ship (unlucky), the class was named for the second hull, USS Permit.

It is amazing what has been dumped there.