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I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.
Emile Zola; My Hates, 1866

Damn me if I do!
England's Admiral Horatio Nelson at Copenhagen, April 2, 1801, ordered by his commander-in-chief to withdraw

I saw that everything in the world that is famous and beautiful, if we rely on the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it up close.
Giacomo Casanova, Italian soldier, librarian and author, born on April 2, 1725; History of My Life

Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy.
Giacomo Casanova

The law is a ass, a idiot.
Charles Dickens, who began his unhappy marriage on April 2, 1836; Oliver Twist

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.
Charles Dickens

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.
Charles Dickens; Bleak House ch. 6

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens; A Tale of Two Cities, ch. 15

The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope.
Max Ernst, German Dada painter, born on April 2, 1891 

The splendour of the stars is not reserved for those who have tickets.
Max Ernst; Dream of a Little Girl Who Wanted to become a Carmelite

Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin], your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.
Kropotkin

Highly recommended:
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The Encyclopedia of Saints

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Mahavir Jayanti (late March or early April)

On the dating of items in the Almanac

From Wikipedia: In Jainism, Mahavir Jayanti is the most important religious holiday. It celebrates the birth of Mahavira, the last Tirthankara. He was born on the 13^th day of the rising moon of Chaitra, in either 599 BCE or 615 BCE (depending on religious tradition).

The holiday occurs in late March or early April on the Gregorian calendar.

On Mahavir Jayanthi, Jain temples are decorated with flags. In the morning the idol of Mahavira is given a ceremonial bath called the 'abhishek'. It is then placed in a cradle and carried in a procession around the neighbourhood. The devotees will make offerings of milk, rice, fruit, incense, lamps and water to the Tirthankar. Some sections of the community even participate in a grand procession. Lectures are held to preach the path of virtue. People meditate and offer prayers. Donations are collected to save the cows from slaughter. Pilgrims from all parts of the country visit the ancient Jain Temples at Girnar and Palitana in Gujarat on this day.

A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac

The Friday before Palm Sunday known as 'painful Friday'. Palm branches are blessed. Pussy willows are bound around a large branch – as many as can be fitted on, because after the service, the housewife will give children as many eggs for the egg-tapping game as there are strands of pussy willow.
Venetia Newall, An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1971, p. 345

Feast of Acan, the Mayan God of Wine

Mule Day, Columbia, Tennessee, USA

Feast day of St Abundius

Feast day of St Agnofleda

Feast day of St Amphianus

Feast day of St Apian (Appian), of Lycia, martyr

Feast day of St Bronacha (Bronach), abbess, of Ireland

Feast day of B. Constantine, King of Scotland

Feast day of St Ebba, or Abba, abbess, martyr

Feast day of St Francis of Paola (Francis of Paula), founder of the Order of Minims
(White violet, Viola alba, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

This St Francis (c. 1418 - 1507 or '08) was a Calabrian Italian who at 15 years of age shut himself up in a cave. He was a mendicant friar and the founder of the Roman Catholic Order of the Minims (the 'least' of the friars). No meat, milk or eggs were to be eaten in this monastery.

A legend says that, in the year 1464, he was refused passage by a boatman while trying to cross the Strait of Messina to Sicily. He reportedly laid his cloak on the water, tied one end to his staff as a sail, and sailed across the strait with his companions.In Sicily, St Francis wrought miracles and built monasteries. "He prophesied, held burning coals in his hand without being burnt, restored his nephew to life, cured people of the plague," according to one hagiographer. He also walked on fire, entered a burning oven without harm, and made a sea voyage on his cloak, with a companion. He was so troubled by Satan once that he stripped and beat himself with a hard cord, saying "thus brother ass thou must be beaten". He ran into the snow and made seven snowballs, which he swore to swallow if the devil had not left him.

St Francis was a bird lover. According to legend, at Venice with his companions, he commanded the loudly singing birds to be quiet so the canonical hours could be sung, and he was obeyed.

When one of his friars committed a fault it was St Francis's custom to take the friar's hood and put it in fire, and then restore it to him unburnt. Or, so it is said. It is also believed by some that he foretold the capture of Otranto by the Ottoman Turks in 1480, and its subsequent recovery by the King of Naples.

St Francis, a patron saint of boatmen, mariners and naval officers, died on Good Friday, April 2, 1507 (some sources say 1508) in Plessis, France, aged 91. Some believe that in 1562, a group of Huguenots in France broke open his tomb and found his body incorrupt. They dragged it forth, burnt his bones with the wood of a crucifix. The bone remnants were gathered by Catholics and distributed as relics enshrined in various churches of his order.

St Francis of Paola, due to his great humility, is the known as the adversary of the demon, Belial.

The Incorruptibles. an examination of extraordinary claims, by Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com

More    More    And more

Feast day of St Musa

Feast day of St Nicetius, Archbishop of Lyons

Feast day of St Pedro Calungsod

Feast day of St Polycarp of Alexandria

Feast day of St Theodosia, of Caeasrea, martyr

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Kanamara Matsuri, Kanamara Shrine, Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
The human penis forms the central theme of this spring fertility event: in illustrations, candy, carved vegetables, decoration, a parade of mikoshis, and so on.

"Kanamara Matsuri. More than two centuries ago, the city's prostitutes supposedly prayed for protection from syphilis and successful business. The Festival of the Steel Phallus responds to the second wish: celebrants parade images of huge penises and eat penis-shaped lollipops. Today, this Shinto fertility festival raises money for AIDS research."   Source

See also Jibeta Matsuri (Metal Phallus Festival) & Honen Matsuri

Kanamara Matsuri videos    Photo    Photos on Flickr    Phallic processions

International Children's Book Day
Commemorated since 1925 on or around Hans Christian Andersen's birthday.

Malvinas Day, Argentina

World Autism Awareness Day (United Nations)

747 Charlemagne (Charles the Great; d. January 28, 814), King of the Franks from 771 to 814, nominally King of the Lombards, and Roman Emperor; the elder son of Pippin the Short (reigned 751 - 768).

He was anointed with his father and his brother Carloman by Pope Stephen II in 754 and crowned first Holy Roman Emperor, sovereign of Christendom in the West, by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, 800. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIV (cultus confirmed) and his feast day is January 28.

Charlemagne has many descendents. It is possible that George Washington is one.

Up until the mid-20^th Century, Charlemagne's birthday was believed to be April 2, 742, but several factors led to reconsideration of this traditional date.

1527 Abraham Ortelius (Abraham Ortel; d. June 28, 1598), cartographer and geographer, generally recognised as the creator of the first modern atlas

1725 Giacomo Casanova (d. 1798), Italian soldier, spy, diplomat, writer, adventurer, chiefly remembered from his autobiography, which has established his reputation as the most famous erotic hero. In 1760 he fled from his creditors and travelled across Europe. Between 1774 and 1782 he worked as a spy for the Venetian inquisitors of state, ending his last years as a librarian.

1798 August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (d. 1874), lyricist, writer of 'Das Lied der Deutschen'

1805 Hans Christian Andersen (d. 1875), son of a cobbler, Danish writer who combined folk legends with the fruits of his own active imagination to produce fairy tales popular in many nations. Most English (and German and French) sources use the name 'Hans Christian Andersen', but in Denmark and Scandinavia his name is 'HC Andersen'.

1809 Heinrich Hoffman (1809-1894), German physician, director of the state mental hospital in Frankfurt am Main and writer best known for Slovenly Peter, the story of a boy with bad manners.  

1827 William Holman Hunt, English Pre-Raphaelite painter

1834 Frédéric Bartholdi (d. 1904), French sculptor (Statue of Liberty)

1840 Émile Zola (Emile Zola; d. September 29, 1902), French realist novelist and activist. He was the author of J'Accuse, published on January 13, 1898, which accused the French government of anti-Semitism and of falsely imprisoning Captain Alfred Dreyfus.

This famous open letter was published by Zola's friend Georges Clemenceau in the Paris daily, L'Aurore. Zola published an open letter to the Président de la République Félix Faure, entitled J'Accuse (I Accuse), attacking the French Army over its treatment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer. Dreyfus was accused of treason, but in fact he had never given information to the Germans as it was said – he was a victim of anti-Semitism.

In 1902 Zola died under mysterious circumstances, overcome by carbon monoxide fumes in his sleep.

"The fact that national security was repeatedly asserted as the reason for the secrecy of the Dreyfus trial should make us cautious about that claim. But for the gradual emergence of the truth, the army and many other powerful interests in France, would have closed the Dreyfus case. Gradually, most people would have forgotten him. He would have rotted away on Devil's Island. Politicians of all persuasions, and the demonstrators on the streets, would have continued to denounce Dreyfus as a traitor. It was only a band of supporters, and the gradual emergence of the truth, that saved this innocent man from that fate. That was not the outcome of the closed and secret trial which officialdom wanted ...

"What changed the outcome of the Dreyfus case was the gradual adherence of intellectuals and civil libertarians to the Dreyfus side."
The Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG   Source: The Dreyfus Case a century on: Ten lessons for Australia (PDF)

"Many Australians, particularly women, also sent telegrams and letters to Dreyfus' wife expressing their support.

"The churches joined the chorus of outrage against the case, calling it one of the 'foulest crimes' and 'bitterest outrages' of the 19th century and 'the most appalling prostitution of justice that the modern world had ever known' (The Argus, September 18, 1899)."   Source

1860 Fred Broomfield (d. May 22, 1941), English-born Australian writer, friend of author Henry Lawson (1867 - 1922) and co-member with him of the Dawn and Dusk Club

"A flamboyant dresser, Broomfield sported 'a peaked beard and upbrushed moustache, a Cavalier hat with a swirling brim', and a cane with which he made rapier thrusts at friends upon meeting. His conversation, like his correspondence, was ornamented by picturesque phrasing and medieval oaths but he had a 'high falsetto voice, and a wobbling, gobbling utterance, as if he had a plum in his mouth' ... But behind the melodramatic Bohemian stood the kindly, practical friend who helped 'Price Warung' fight drug-addiction, assisted Victor Daley's widow, and defended Lawson in Henry Lawson and his Critics (1930)."   Source

'Henry Lawson and His Critics', an address by Fred Broomfield, 1930

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1867 Eugen Sandow (d. 1925), German-born circus performer

1875 Walter Chrysler (d. 1940), automobile pioneer

1884 Florence Blanchfield (d. May 12, 1971), American nurse; the first woman to become a fully ranked officer of the US Army

1891 Max Ernst (d. 1976), German Surrealist painter, a founder of the German Dada movement, "a one- man early-warning system who over and over again suggested that Europe was in a bad way and likely to get worse" (NY Times obituary). This is how he described the event of his birth, in his mythic autobiography:

The 2nd of April (1891) at 9:45 a.m Max Ernst had his first contact with the sensible world, when he came out of the egg which his mother had laid in the eagle's nest and which the bird had brooded for seven years.

"Dada in Cologne was a matter of intense exasperation both to the British army of occupation and to the German police. Ernst was delighted when the police closed the Cologne Dada exhibition, and even more delighted when they came to him a few days later and said: 'Would you mind opening up again? Having to shut it down has given the police such a bad name.'"
NY Times obituary

1908 Buddy Ebsen (d. July 6, 2003), American dancer/actor who is remembered fondly for his portrayal of Jed Clampett in The Beverley Hillbillies. He danced with Shirley Temple in the 1936 film Captain January. In the 1930s, Disney animators would film Buddy Ebsen dancing in front of a grid to 'choreograph' Mickey Mouse's dance steps in the Silly Symphony cartoons.

"Originally cast as the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz, The (1939), Buddy was hospitalized as a result of inhaling aluminium powder used as part of his make-up. Because of the prolonged hospitalization, he was replaced by Jack Haley (whose make-up used pre-mixed aluminium dust), and his scenes were re-shot using Haley. Footage of Ebsen as the Tin Man still exists, and was included as an extra with the U.S. 50^th anniversary video release of Wizard of Oz, The (1939). Ebsen's voice can still be heard in the song 'Off to see the Wizard'.

"After seeing Ebsen in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' the creator of 'The Beverly Hillbillies' wanted him to play family patriarch Jed Clampett. At the time, Ebsen was thinking of retiring, but the producers sent Ebsen a copy of the script, and he changed his mind."  Source

1914 Sir Alec Guinness (d. 2000), British Oscar-winning actor

1920 Jack Webb (died dum-da-dum-dum 1982), American actor, director, producer; Joe Friday in the popular early American TV series, Dragnet

"Jack Webb did not believe in masturbation. Consequently he was plagued for years by infections resulting from his enormous accumulation of unspent semen. Fearing permanent prostate damage, he finally started visiting a doctor who drained him on a monthly basis. He was careful never to miss one of these appointments. Often he would leave the Dragnet set in the middle of a shoot, looking at his watch and matter of factly announcing that it was time to go get drained."   Source: The Daily Bleed

1923 George Spencer Brown, mathematician

1925 Hans Rosenthal (d. 1987), showmaster

1925 George MacDonald Fraser, author

1927 Kenneth Tynan (d. July 26, 1980), British theatre critic, and writer of the controversial 1969 review, Oh! Calcutta

1928 Serge Gainsbourg (d. 1991), singer

1934 Paul Joseph Cohen, mathematician.

1939 Marvin Gaye (d. 1984), American singer

1940 Penelope Keith, English actress

1942 Leon Russell, American singer, songwriter, pianist, and guitarist; played with Jerry Lee Lewis, Joe Cocker, Phil Spector and The Rolling Stones. His first songwriting hit was Cocker's 1970 cover of "Delta Lady", and Russell went on to organise Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1945 Linda Hunt, actress

1947 Camille Paglia, feminist writer

1947 Emmylou Harris, American country and pop singer

1962 Mark Shulman, children's author

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

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Zodiac birthday Free astrology e-cards Laugh Week [ Apr 1 - 7 ] Birthdays Good Friday [ Varies ] Mahavir Jayanti [ Varies ]

Varies Full Moon Day
Varies Friday the 13^th
Varies Holi
Varies Purim
Varies Mothers' Day (UK)
Varies Ugadi
Varies Gudi Padwa
Varies Daylight Saving Time Begins / Ends
Varies Ram Navami
Varies Palm Sunday
Varies Mawlid al-Nabi
Varies Easter
Varies Baisakhi
Varies Mahavir Jayanti
Varies Hanuman Jayanti
Varies Good Friday
Varies Tamil New Year
Varies Bengali New Year
Varies Malayalam New Year

April

1 April Fools' Day
1 Firefighters Day
1 World Catfish Festival (Mississippi, USA)
1 Taro Festival (Hawaii, USA)
2 Great Lovers Day
2 Reconciliation Day
2 Peanut Butter And Jelly Day
3 Find A Rainbow Day
3 Chocolate Mousse Day
3 Circus Day
3 Workplace Napping Day
4 Tell A Lie Day
4 Vitamin C Day
4 Independence Day (Senegal)
5 Lady Luck Day
5 Thank Your School Librarian Day
5 Bell Bottoms Day
5 Tomb Sweeping Day
6 Animated Cartoon Day
6 California Poppy Day
6 Caramel Popcorn Day
6 International Fun At Work Day
6 Tartan Day
6 International Special Librarians' Day
7 Coffee Cake Day
7 Lets Someone Else Clean Day
7 Ham Radio Day
7 World Health Day
8 Buddha Day (Japan)
8 Hana Matsuri
9 Astronauts Day
10 Siblings Day
10 Salvation Army Founder's Day
11 Cheese Fondue Day
11 Civil Rights Day
12 Look Up At The Sky Day
12 Big Wind Day
13 Thomas Jefferson Day
14 Pecan Day
15 Tax Day (USA)
15 Fast Food Day

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304 BCE Alexander IV (titular King of Macedon, 323 - 309 BCE), the putative posthumous son and successor of Alexander the Great, began his reign in Babylon.

1250 At Mansourah, Muslims successfully defended themselves against the European invasion known as the Seventh Crusade. Of 290 Templar knights, only five escaped.

1335 Death of Henry, Duke of Carinthia and Carniola, Count of Tyrol.

1502 Death of Prince Arthur Tudor, elder brother of King Henry VIII of England.

1513 Juan Ponce de Leon set foot on Florida, becoming the first known European to do so.

1657 Death of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor.

1747 Death of Johann Jacob Dillenius (b. 1684), botanist.

1755 Commodore William James captured the pirate fortress of Severndroog on west coast of India.

1792 The Coinage Act was passed establishing the United States Mint. The first US silver dollar was struck, at the first US mint (Philadelphia).

 

America's first 'Trial of the (19^th) Century' 

1800 Manhattan Well Mystery: In New York City, the trial of carpenter Levi Weeks ended with an acquittal. Weeks, accused of murdering Gulielma (Juliana; Elma) Sands, was defended by a 'dream team' of former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and later Vice-President Aaron Burr, in a short trial that had the whole city talking.

Pretty Elma Sands, a 21-year-old milliner, had lived in a boarding house (pictured) on the south-west corner of Greenwich St and Franklin St in New York City, run by her uncle and aunt, Quaker couple Elias and Catherine Ring. It was said in evidence that she had just become engaged to marry Levi Weeks, who lived in the same establishment. She was described by a neighbour as "uniformly cheerful and serene, and on the day previous to the murder was remarkably so. Her expectation of becoming a bride on the morrow was the natural cause of her liveliness. Her temper was mild and tranquil; her manners artless and tender; her conversation ever chaste and innocent. She was one of those virtuous characters against whom the tongue of slander never moves." Levi, too, was a man of good repute – even the prosecutor, assistant attorney-general of New York State and future mayor of New York City, Cadwallader David Colden, referred to Levi's "amiable and engaging manners".

"Oh, Lord have mercy upon me! What shall I do? Help me!"
A female voice heard by witnesses from the well vicinity on the murder night

On the evening of Sunday, December 22, 1799, Elma left the boarding house and was never to return alive, but her body was not found until January 2. It was found in the bottom of one of New York's wells, the so-called Manhattan Well, which coincidentally had been dug by the Manhattan Co., owned by lawyer Aaron Burr. In Weeks's subsequent two-day trial, 75 witnesses testified, but the evidence was all circumstantial and, at worst, Weeks appeared to be a likeable and respected man who had been having sexual relations with Elma Sands. 

The judge advised the jury to find Weeks not guilty, which was the verdict returned after only five minutes of consideration. At this point Mrs Ring shocked all present by turning to Attorney Hamilton with the words: "If thee dies a natural death, then there is no justice in heaven". Or, so it is said. Weeks left New York and the public spotlight, apparently moving around the USA for some time then ending up in Natchez, Mississippi, where he lived as a respected architect and family man, dying in 1819 at the age of 43. Some of the houses he designed still stand (example). One of the witnesses, Richard David Croucher, on whom suspicion had fallen during the trial, was later tried for rape of a 13-year-old girl and sentenced to life imprisonment. 

As a strange footnote, Hamilton was killed in a duel by his associate Aaron Burr less than five years after the trial. Later, Burr was arrested and tried for treason and his career was shattered.

The Weeks case is the subject of the book by Estelle Fox Kleiger, The Trial of Levi Weeks, Academy Chicago Publishers, 1987. The complete trial can be found in 1 American State Trials p.1 (1914) (ii. [KF 220.L2].

More    More    And more    Yet more

 

1801 Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Copenhagen – The British under Horatio Nelson destroyed the Danish fleet.

1801 Death of Thomas Dadford, the Younger, British canal engineer.

1836 Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth married at St Luke's Church, Chelsea. Although she bore him ten children, the marriage was an unhappy one, and they separated in 1858.

1844 The Fleet Prison in London was abolished, after existing as a debtors' jail for two centuries. 

1860 The first Italian parliament met in Turin.

1863 Richmond Bread Riots: Food shortages incited hundreds of angry women to riot in Richmond, Virginia and demand the Confederate government release emergency supplies.

More

 

1865 American Civil War: Siege of Petersburg broken – Union troops captured the trenches around Petersburg, Virginia, forcing Confederate General Robert E Lee to retreat. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most of his Cabinet fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Death of General AP Hill (b. 1825), Confederate commander.

1872 Death of Samuel Morse (b. 1791), inventor of Morse code.

1873 British trains were first fitted with toilets, in sleeping cars only.  

1902 "Electric Theatre", the first movie theatre in the United States, opened in Los Angeles, California.

1902 Death of Esther Morris, suffragist and the first woman judge in USA history.

1917 World War I: To a wildly cheering house, and with anti-war activists camped outside, US President Woodrow Wilson asked the US Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. "The world," he said, "must be made safe for democracy." He also referred to "the wonderful and heartening events that have been happening in the last few weeks in Russia".

"The President delivered this speech before an audience that had been carefully sifted. All day Washington had been in the hands of belligerent pacifists, truculent in manner, and determined to break into the Capitol. They tried to take possession of the Capitol steps, up which the President must go when he entered, and met the same fate that Coxey's rioters fell in with twenty-three years ago at the hands of the police, who dispersed them.

"A handful of them fell upon Senator Lodge and assaulted him. Others entered the Vice President's room and were so aggressive that they were put out. But by nightfall the authorities had them eliminated, so far as any possibility of trouble was concerned, and they were not admitted to the Capitol at all.

"Two troops of the Second Cavalry guarded the approaches, and admitted nobody who could not be vouched for and the building swarmed with Secret Service men, Post Office Inspectors, and policemen on guard to see that no harm form the lovers of peace befell the President of the United States in his charge of a constitutional duty.
He came at 8:30, guarded by another troop of cavalry. If he had come in the afternoon, as he wished to do, he would have made his entry through thousands of pacifists camped outside the building and parading its corridors and waiting for him. But at night it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a disturber to get within pistol shot of the Capitol, and even those who could get into the building itself could not get into the galleries without special tickets."
NY Times article, reported April 3

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

1918 Australian divisions in France were formed into a single corps under the command of General Sir John Monash.

1918 USSR: In an article in Pravda, Lenin championed the American 'efficiency' system of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Before coming to power, Lenin had denounced Taylorism as "the enslavement of man by the machine".

1922 Death of Hermann Rorschach (b. 1884), psychologist.

1930 Haile Selassie was proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. Also known as Ras Tafari, he was and is, even after death, the spiritual leader of the Jamaican reggae-and-ganja religion, Rastafarianism.

1931 USA: A teenage girl struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition baseball game in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1941 USA:The radio program Life of Riley aired for the first time.

 

1953 Scientists Francis Crick and James D Watson published their paper ('A structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid', Nature, Apr 2), which established the nature of DNA. 

"On February 28, 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle Pub in Cambridge, England, and as James Watson later recalled, announced that "We have found the secret of life!". Actually, they had. That morning Watson and Crick had figured out the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. On 25 April 1953 they announced their discovery to the world."   Source

 

Original DNA model  

 

1956 General Motors board member Alfred P Sloan stepped down after 19 years as chairman with Albert Bradley as his successor.

1956 USA: As the World Turns and The Edge of Night first aired on the CBS network in the United States, as the first half-hour serial dramas.

1958 US: San Francisco Chronicle newspaper columnist Herb Caen coined the term 'beatnik' (a pun on 'sputnik'.)

1963 Demonstrations began in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, demanding civil rights and an end to segregation.

1964 The Saab board started Project Gudmund to develop a new and larger car, later released as Saab 99.

1971 "Just after 6 pm, on Friday, April 2nd, at least 14 Kempsey [New South Wales, Australia] residents observed what appeared to be a pink flare approaching the river from the south. Reaching the river, the light turned, following the course, of the Macleay River, in a north-westerly direction. It finally disappeared in the direction of Greenhill, an aboriginal settlement area. It was at Greenhill that an extraordinary drama unfolded several hours later on the same night. 

"At about 10.00 pm, an aborigine went into the kitchen of his home at Greenhill to get a drink of water. Suddenly he saw a 'small face pressed against the window pane. It had no hair and was the shape of a small saucer'. Too terrified to run away, the aborigine was drawn towards the face by some unseen force. His wife in the next room, heard glass breaking and ran into the kitchen just in time to see her husband disappearing horizontally through the top section of the bottom window. The 5 feet 3 aborigine was apparently lifted bodily a distance of four and half feet and transported horizontally without any body movement, smashing through a window pane (only 10" by 32") above a sink piled high with dishes. He landed on his back seven and a half feet below the window level, but he wasn't even winded or stunned by the fall. The man's wife rushed outside to see him jump up and run 'like hell down to the gravel near the house', where she found him crying and shaking. 'I thought he had the horrors', she said later. She accompanied her husband to hospital where one stitch was put on his finger. The man had been drinking but was sober at the time of the incident."   Source

More on Australian UFOs, Tully and Aboriginal experiences, at the Book of Days

1972 Actor Charlie Chaplin returned to the United States for the first time since being labelled a communist in the early 1950s.

1972 Vietnam War: Easter Offensive began – North Vietnamese soldiers of the 304^th Division took the northern half of Quang Tri Province.

1975 Vietnam War: Thousands of civilian refugees fled from the Quang Ngai Province in front of advancing North Vietnamese troops.

1976 A Parisian man committed suicide by a very original method: he balanced a piano against a plank, lay on his bed and caused the instrument to fall so that it crushed his head. 

1979 Prime Minister Menachem Begin became the first Israeli leader officially to visit Egypt. 

1979 Vietnam exposed the Cambodian genocide by Khmer Rouge communists.

1980 US President Jimmy Carter signed the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act in an effort to help the US economy rebound.

1982 Falklands War: Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British dependency in the South Atlantic Ocean, starting the war.

1982 USA: John Chancellor worked on the news desk at the NBC Nightly News for the final time, after eleven-and-a-half years.

1984 "We have taken that question out of the game because it is distasteful in this country." Selchow and Righter executive John Nason confirming that the question, "How many months pregnant was Nancy Davis when she walked down the aisle with Ronald Reagan?" had been removed from the American version of Trivial Pursuit. (The answer: two and a half.)

1989 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Havana, Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro in an attempt to mend strained relations.

1991 Russian coal miners went on strike.

1992 In New York, Mafia boss John Gotti was convicted of murder and racketeering and later sentenced to life in prison.

1992 Pierre Bérégovoy became Prime Minister of France

1993 Doom alpha version 0.4 was finished.

2002 Israeli forces surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem which had around 200 Palestinians inside. A siege ensued.

2004 Islamist terrorists involved in the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks attempted a thwarted bombing of the Spanish high-speed train AVE near Madrid.

2008 The first annual World Autism Awareness Day was declared by the United Nations.

 

Tomorrow: Japanese kite-flying day

 

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Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft' and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

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