March 31st
 

1732 ~ Birthday of Joseph Haydn, Composer.

1837 ~ Death of John Constable, Painter.

1855 ~ Death of Charlotte Brontë, Author.

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-enters 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
 

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.

1973 ~ Birthday of Joe Francis, Girls Gone Wild Producer.

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.

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.

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

1974 ~ Death of Georges Pompidou, President of France.

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

2005 ~ Death of Pope John Paul II.

what you just said didnt make any sense buddy :bs:

April 3rd
 

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.

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.

1975 ~ GM Anatoly Karpov was awarded the title of World Champion by default when Bobby Fischer refused to play.

1981 ~ Death of Juan Trippe, Airline & Hotel (Pan Am & InterContinental) founder .

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.

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.

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

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

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
 

1588 ~ Birthday of Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher.

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.

1997 ~ Death of Allen Ginsberg, Poet.

2008 ~ Death of Charlton Heston, Actor.

April 6th
 

1528 ~ Death of Albrecht Dürer, Artist.

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.

1941 ~ Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia & Greece in WWII.

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.

...a bad day for Ahmed.

April 7th
 

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

1770 ~ Birthday of William Wordsworth, English poet.

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.

1947 ~ Death of Henry Ford, automobile manufacturer and industrialist.

1953 ~ Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations Secretary General.

1964 ~ IBM announced the System/360.

1968 ~ Death of Jim Clark, racing driver.

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

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, 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.

1945 ~ The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was formed.

1974 ~ Birthday of Jenna Jameson, Porn Actress.

1979 ~ Birthday of Katsuni, 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, 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.

April 11th
 

1814 ~ Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba.

1906 ~ Death of James Bailey, co-founder with Phineas Barnum of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

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, American 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.

1944 ~ Birthday of John Kay, of Steppenwolf.

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.

April 13th
 

1570 ~ Birthday of Guy Fawkes, Gunpowder Plot conspirator.

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.

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, Porn Actress.

1990 ~ The Soviet Union admitted committing the Katyn Massacre.

1997 ~ Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win The Masters Tournament.

2008 ~ Death of John Wheeler, Theoretical Physicist (Black & Worm Holes) & Educator (Richard Feynman, Kip Thorne, & Hugh Everett, among others).

April 14th
 

1759 ~ Death of Georg Friedrich Handel, Composer.

1865 ~ President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

1904 ~ Birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Actor.

1912 ~ RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage.

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.

1995 ~ Death of Burl Ives, Singer & Actor.

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

April 15th
 

1707 ~ Birthday of Leonhard Euler, Mathematician.

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic sank.

1924 ~ Birthday of Sir Neville Marriner, Conductor.

1945 ~ British & Canadian troops liberate Bergen-Belsen

1947 ~ Jackie Robinson broke MLB's racial segregation by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1955 ~ The first McDonald's restaurant opened in Des Plaines, Illinois.

1971 ~ Birthday of Sarah Jane Hamilton, Porn Actress.

1985 ~ Birthday of Amy Reid, German 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.

1963 ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" while locked up for protesting against segregation.

1991 ~ Death of David Lean, British film director (Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter, A Passage to India).

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.

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.

1977 ~ Birthday of Phil Jamieson, Australian singer.

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
 

1480 ~ Birthday of Lucrezia Borgia, Renaissance ruler and daughter of Pope Alexander VI.

1772 ~ Birthday of David Ricardo, Economist.

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.

1992 ~ General Dostum rebelled against President Najibullah of Afghanistan & allied with Ahmed Massoud of the Northern Alliance to capture Kabul.

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

April 19th
 

1861 ~ The first bloodshed of the American Civil War. A pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland attacked Federal Army troops marching through the city.

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.

1975 ~ Aryabhata was launched - India's first satellite.

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.

April 20th
 

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

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.

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.

1972 ~ Apollo 16 landed on the Moon.

1979 ~ U.S. President Carter was attacked by a Swamp Rabbit.

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.

1816 ~ Birthday of Charlotte Brontë, Author.

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 ~ "The Red Baron", Manfred von Richthofen, was shot down and killed over France.

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
 

1870 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary.

1889 ~ The Oklahoma Land Rush began.

1937 ~ Birthday of Jack Nicholson, Actor.

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

1952 ~ Birthday of Marilyn Chambers, Porn actress.

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.

2008 ~ The last F-117 Nighthawk aircraft were retired.


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.

1985 ~ The Coca-Cola Co. introduced New Coke.

1998 ~ Death of James Earl Ray, Assassin.

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, architect of the dismantling of the USSR.

April 24th
 

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.

1974 ~ Death of Bud Abbott, Actor & Comedian (Abbott and Costello).

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.

2004 ~ Death of Estée Lauder, Cosmetics pioneer.

April 25th
 

1719 ~ Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.

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

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.

1974 ~ Birthday of Dean Phoenix, Porn Actor.

1980 ~ Tehran hostage rescue mission failed.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia, New Zealand ~ ANZAC Day

April 26th
 

1785 ~ Birthday of John Audubon, Naturalist & Illustrator.

1865 ~ Death of John Wilkes Booth, Actor & Assassin. Buried in Green Mount Cemetery.

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.

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

1988 ~ Birthday of Kimber James, transsexual Porn actress.

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.

I was taught that it was an attempt to secure a winter supply line to Russia.

Time and perspectives.

April 27th
 

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

1667 ~ John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.

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

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 link up at the Elbe.

1981 ~ Xerox PARC introduced the first commercially available computer mouse.

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.

1994 ~ C.I.A. official Aldrich Ames pleaded guilty to selling U.S. secrets to the USSR.

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

2003 ~ Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store launched.

April 29th
 

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.

1936 ~ Death of John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist.

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

April 30th
 

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.

1985 ~ Birthday of Ashley Alexandra Dupré, Singer & Call Girl.

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.

1939 ~ Birthday of Judy Collins, American folk singer.

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 joined the European Union.

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.

1972 ~ Death of J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI.

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

1997 ~ The Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK.

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.

1972 ~ Birthday of Suzi Suzuki, Japanese Porn Actress.

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

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 & Stage Actress Extraordinaire.

1942 ~ The Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought 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.

1980 ~ Death of Josip Tito, President of Yugoslavia.

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

May 5th
 

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

1818 ~ Birthday of Karl Marx, Political Philosopher.

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).

1948 ~ Birthday of Bill Ward, British Musician (Black Sabbath).

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

1967 ~ First all-British satellite 'Ariel 3' launched into orbit.

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.

May 6th
 

1856 ~ Birthday of Sigmund Freud, psychiatrist, founder of Psychoanalysis.

1915 ~ Birthday of T.H. White, Writer.

1915 ~ Birthday of Orson Welles, Director.

1931 ~ Birthday of Willie Mays, baseball player.

1937 ~ The German zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

1940 ~ John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

1953 ~ Birthday of Tony Blair, ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1954 ~ Roger Bannister became the first man to run the mile in under four minutes.

1994 ~ Queen Elizabeth and French President François Mitterrand opened the Chunnel.

1994 ~ Paula Jones filed suit against President Clinton, alleging he'd sexually harassed her in 1991.

May 7th
 

1825 ~ Death of Antonio Salieri, Composer.

1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer.

1915 ~ World War I: A German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people.

1919 ~ Birthday of Eva Peron, wife of Argentine President Juan Peron.

1933 ~ Birthday of Johnny Unitas, American football star.

1945 ~ General Alfred Jodl signed unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in World War II.

1954 ~ The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in a French defeat (the battle began on March 13).

1975 ~ Birthday of Nicole Sheridan, Porn Actress.

1999 ~ Kosovo War: Three Chinese embassy workers were killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft “mistakenly” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. President Clinton called the attack a “tragic mistake”.

2007 ~ The tomb of Herod the Great was discovered.