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Je vais plaider la plus ridicule des causes; il n'existe rien de plus bafoué en civilisation que l'amour sentimental.
(I will plead the most ridiculous of all causes; nothing is more flouted in civilization than sentimental love.)
Charles Fourier, French utopian socialist, born on April 7, 1772; Le Nouveau Monde Amoureux

Under civilisation, poverty is born of super-abundance itself.
Charles Fourier

In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry, and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was called a 'bad' man. Then he became 'good,' abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles, and wrote bad poetry.
Bertrand Russell; William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770

Had he (Fourier) tried to govern a single village or workshop, he might have discovered the vanity of drawing out schemes of society on paper, the folly of legislating for men as though they were bricks and mortar, and the hopelessness of doing them good in any way save through the consent of their erratic, perverse, and incalculable wills.
Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)

A pile of old copies of copies [sic] of Punch I found in the back room of a fatherly second-hand bookseller introduced me to the treasure of Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne, Randolph Caldecott and Dana Gibson. The more I poured over the intricate technical quality of these artists the more difficult did drawing appear. How impossible that one could ever become an artist! But then I came on Phil May, who combined quality with apparent facility. Once having discovered Phil May I never let him go.
David Low, New Zealand-born cartoonist, born on April 7, 1891   Source

François Marie Charles Fourier

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

A Guide to the Passion

The Pagan Prosperity

Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals
Rupert Sheldrake

Spellcraft

The Encyclopedia of Saints

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Festival of Megalesia (Magna Mater) of Cybele (Apr 4 - 10), ancient Rome

Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ægypticus or dies mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.)

Feast day of St Aibert, recluse

Feast day of St Alexander Rawlins

Feast day of St Feast day of St Aphraates, anchoret
(Wood anemone, Anemone nemorosa, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Feast day of St Brenach

Feast day of St Calliopus

Feast day of St Celsus

Feast day of St Cyriaca and Companions

Feast day of St Edward Oldcorne

Feast day of St Epiphanius

Feast day of St Finan, of Ireland

Feast day of St George the Younger

Feast day of St Gibardus

Feast day of St Goran

Feast day of St Hegesippus, a primitive father

Feast day of St Henry Walpole

Feast day of St Herman Joseph, confessor

Feast day of St John Baptist de La Salle

Feast day of St Pelagius

Feast day of St Peleusius

Feast day of St Saturninus

Feast day of St Ursulina

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Katori-jingu Otauesai (Rice-planting Festival), Katori Shrine, Sawara-shi, Chiba Prefecture, Japan (Apr 7 - 8)
"Women dressed in traditional farmer's costumes sing rice-planting songs while sowing rice seedlings in paddy fields."   Source

Tsurugaoka Hachiman (Shrine) Spring Festival, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture (Apr 7 - 14)
Kamakura, seven centuries ago, was the first seat of feudal government. This is one of Japan's famous cherry blossom festivals, with many events and parades, and is popular with tourists.

Nagasaki Takoage, or Kite-Flying Event, Nagasaki, Japan (Apr 3 - 29)

Women's Day, Mozambique

National Day of Hope (Hope Day), USA
"A joint Congressional resolution declared April 7 as National Day of Hope in honor of the important work done by Childhelp USA, which is dedicated to helping prevent and treat child abuse. The day is meant to give hope to children who have suffered from child abuse and neglect."   Source

1506 Saint Francis Xavier (d. 1552; feast day December 3), co-founder of the Society of Jesus

Christianity arrived in Japan centuries before St Xavier, scholars say
"Contrary to popular lore, Christianity in Japan dates back centuries before the 1549 arrival of Jesuit missionary Saint Francis Xavier, a Christian evangelist and other researchers claim.

"American Reverend Ken Joseph told a gathering here on March 16 that Christianity first came to the Far East roughly 1,800 years ago along the "Silk Road," passing through China to Nara, central Japan.

"Evidence of this, Reverend Joseph said, was a copy of the Gospel of Saint Matthew in old Chinese script, dating back to the ninth century, found inside the Koryuji Buddhist Temple in Kyoto, near Nara.

"This temple is cited by at least one historian as having been built about 818 atop a Christian building erected in 603 that was destroyed by fire.

"'Many Buddhist temples were built on top of old, burned down Christian churches left in ruins. Diligent research today can still uncover these lost relics,' Reverend Joseph said.

"Researcher M.L. Young says that one of the most sacred objects of the Nishi Honganji Buddhist Temple, founded by Kobo Daishi in 806 after his contact with a Nestorian Christian monastery in Beijing, is 'the Lord of the Universe's Discourse on Almsgiving,' a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and other Matthean passages.

"Christianity was referred to as the 'luminous religion' in Chinese records referring to Nestorian missioners.

"Reverend Joseph presented slides of several artifacts and statues that once had Christian crosses carved into them, but which had subsequently been erased or modified by Buddhist followers, he alleged.

"Nestorian Christianity dates back to the first century of the Christian era.

"Japanese researchers say that the first bearers of Christianity to Japan were the people from the  (Nestorian) Assyrian Church of the East who came to Japan from the Silk Road cities of Mesopotamia, and Persia starting around the fifth century onwards.

"'Christianity was much more widespread than believed,' Hollingsworth said."   Source

1539 Tobias Stimmer, Swiss painter, cartoonist (Comedia) whose most famous works are the paintings on the Strasbourg astronomical clock

1652 Pope Clement XII (d. 1740)

1727 Michel Adanson (d. August 3, 1806), French naturalist of Scottish descent who developed a system of plant classification based on physical characteristics; the system was opposed by Carolus Linnaeus, and was not widely used.

In 1774, Adanson submitted to the consideration of the French Academy of Sciences an immense work, extending to all known creatures and substances. It consisted of 27 large volumes of manuscript, employed in displaying the general relations of all these matters, and their distribution; 150 volumes more, occupied with the alphabetical arrangement of 40,000 species; a vocabulary, containing 200,000 words, with their explanations; and a number of detached memoirs, 40,000 figures and 30,000 specimens of the three kingdoms of nature. 

The committee to which the inspection of this enormous mass was entrusted strongly recommended Adanson to separate and publish all that was peculiarly his own, leaving out what was merely compilation. He obstinately rejected this advice; and the huge work, at which he continued to labour, was never published. He was reduced to such a depth of poverty as to be unable to appear before the French Institute when it invited him to take his place among its members.

1770 William Wordsworth (d. 1850), English poet

More
 

1772 Charles Fourier (François Marie Charles Fourier; François Fourier; d. October 10, 1837), French philosopher, economist and utopian socialist. Fourier inspired the founding of the communist community called La Reunion near present-day Dallas, Texas as well as several other communities within the USA such as the Wisconsin Phalanx.

Fourier was the son of a linen draper, and was born at Besançon, France. After working as a haberdasher's clerk, and a merchant, he was drafted into the army in 1796, but after two years was discharged as an invalid. In 1808, he published a book about his plans for the reconstruction of society, but it sold less than a dozen copies. However, after six years, a copy of it fell into the hands of a wealthy man named Monsieur Just Muiron, who read it avidly and decided to become the author's patron.

Between the years 1816 - '21, Fourier lived in the country and produced the bulk of his writings. In 1822, he tried again to sell his books, but without success. In 1825, he went to Lyons and worked as a cashier at only 50 pounds a year. He later got another patron, Madame Clarissa Vigoureux.

His ideas were utopian, envisioning hierarchies of satisfied workers doing what they loved doing. He was a believer in the passionate good and 'attractive' labour, and he invented 'Gastrosophy', the philosophy of food. Hundreds of phalansteries sprouted in the mid-19th Century, celebrating his principles and vision.

" … Fourier's passion for numbers led him to predict that the ideal world he was helping to create would last 80,000 years, 8,000 of them in an era of Perfect Harmony in which:

androgynous plants would copulate

six moons would orbit the earth

the North Pole would be milder than the Mediterranean

the seas would lose their salt and become oceans of lemonade

the world would contain 37 million poets equal to Homer, 37 million mathematicians equal to Newton and 37 million dramatists equal to Molière, although "these are approximate estimates"

every woman would have four lovers or husbands simultaneously …

"… Fourier can also be described as a brilliant exponent of the idea of alienation, a concern which we will find fully developed in Marx, or as an early theoretician of the affluent society, a theme later developed by the American economist, John Kenneth Galbraith. His sometimes nonsensical statements aside, Fourier's ideas do make some sense when placed alongside the more advanced ideas of a Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud or Herbert Marcuse, the critic of the one-dimensional society of the 1960s. His vision that mankind's existence is somehow false or repressive, was certainly taken up again by later thinkers, of course, with quite different conclusions."    Source

"If all persons were free to enjoy sensuality, love, wealth, luxury, art, and food, he felt, social discord would cease to exist. While orthodox religion attempts to thwart the passions, Fourier was convinced that instead they should be harnessed, for the good of humanity. A stable and fulfilling economic system could be constructed by allowing each person – through following freely chosen activities, or 'Attractive Labor' – to contribute in a unique manner to the developing community.

"Fourier proposed large communes, or 'Phalanxes,' of 1,620 members in which the reformers would enjoy Association and Harmony. Members would express all twelve major Passions and happily engage in gardening, arboriculture, light industry, operas, and orgies. The New England Transcendentalists eagerly embraced Fourier's reformist zeal, and, in 1844, the Brook Farm community reshaped itself into a Fourierist organization."   Source

Charles Fourier Archive    Brook Farm    Fourierism in the USA

Early progressives in the Book of Days    The utopian impulse

Utopians and socialists    More on Fourier    More    More    And more

Left to right: Jorgen Jørgensen portrait; 
portrait of an Aboriginal Australian, by Jorgenson;
Jorgen Jørgensen self portrait

1780 Jørgen Jørgensen (Jorgen Jorgenson), the 'Convict King', and one of the most incredible but true characters of Australian colonial folklore. He was King of Iceland, even claimed the throne of Denmark, but ended up homeless on the streets of Hobart, Tasmania.

The son of a Danish clockmaker to the royal family, adventurer Jorgenson became a convict and a government-appointed hunter of Aboriginals in the new British settlement of Van Diemen's Land – Tasmania, as it is known now, Australia's island state. Yet he was one of the colonists who knew the Aboriginal population best, having lived with them, and he wrote a couple of books about them. He claimed to have been the first whaler to have harpooned a whale in the River Derwent (1804).

Jorgenson was engaged as an interpreter on an English trading expedition to Iceland in the summer of 1809, where he proclaimed himself sovereign for the next two months.

"While visiting his family in Denmark in 1807, the Napoleonic Wars caught up with him, with the British Navy bombing Copenhagen for three days to destroy the Danish Navy and prevent it falling into the hands of the French. As a consequence of Danish anger at this pre-emptive strike, Jorgenson was made the master of the Admiral Jawl, and instructed to hunt down British ships. On 2nd March 1808 the Admiral Jawl was captured and Jorgenson made a prisoner of war.

"Mysteriously, we next find Jorgenson engaged as an interpreter on an English trading expedition to Iceland in the summer of 1809, where he becomes the ruler of Iceland for the next two months. This event is seen as the beginning of the road to eventual Icelandic independence from Denmark in 1944, but back in 1809, Jorgenson was deposed by the British Navy and sent back to England.

"After these incidents, how Jorgenson managed to became a spy for England on continental Europe is a good question, but he did, and in this role observed the Battle of Waterloo, if at a distance. It was during this time that Jorgen fell prey to gambling and alcohol, which became the bane of his life.

"Later settling into a life in London, where he attempted a career as a writer, the twin demons of gambling and alcohol led to a conviction for theft, banishment from England, and when discovered to be still at large, sentenced to death. The gallows became transmuted to transportation to Wan [sic] Diemen's Land in 1826, where he became engaged as an explorer for the Van Diemen's Land Company, and then as a police constable in the Midlands. As a constable he was involved in the roving parties, and after Robinson, had more contact with the Tasmanian Aborigines in their natural surroundings than any other colonist at the time, and would later write of his experiences and observations."   Source

Jorgenson died in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land , a pauper on January 20, 1841, and was buried at St Mary's Church Graveyard.

See Hogan, James Francis (1855 - 1925), The Convict King (PDF file) , Being the Life and Adventures of Jorgen Jorgensen, Monarch of Iceland, Naval Captain, Revolutionist, British Diplomatic Agent, Author, Dramatist, Preacher, Political Prisoner, Gambler, Hospital Dispenser, Continental Traveller, Explorer, Editor, Expatriated Exile, and Colonial Constable.

More

1860 Will Keith Kellogg (usually referred to as WK Kellogg; d. October 6, 1951), American industrialist in food manufacturing. With his brother John Harvey Kellogg (1852 - 1943), he propagated eating cereals as healthy breakfast food, especially corn flakes. The two brothers later fell out over the issue of adding sugar to breakfast cereals, which WK Kellogg wanted to do. In 1906, WK founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company which later became the Kellogg Company, with the added sugar. In 1930, he established the WK Kellogg Foundation.

1884 Bronislaw Malinowski (d. May 16, 1942), Polish anthropologist resident in London (Crime and Custom in Savage Society, 1926; Sex and Repression in Savage Society, 1927). He is widely considered to be one of the most important anthropologists of the 20^th century because of his pioneering work on ethnographic fieldwork, the study of reciprocity, and his detailed contribution to the study of Melanesia. Malinowski originated the school of social anthropology known as functionalism.

1891 Sir David Low (d. September 19, 1963), New Zealand-born cartoonist whose cartoons were published in his home country when he was as young as 15.

He migrated to Sydney, Australia, in 1911 (some sources say he was 18 when he did this) at the invitation of The Bulletin on which he worked with two other great cartoonists, Livingstone Hopkins and Norman Lindsay.

In 1919, he went to London, where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his merciless satirizing of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and their policies. David Low received a knighthood in 1962.

Cartoonists of the early Sydney Bulletin    More   And more

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1891 Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish inventor of LEGO

1893 Allen Dulles, (d. 1969) director of the Central Intelligence Agency

1904 Ralph Bunche (d. 1971), diplomat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

1908 Percy Faith, American orchestra leader

1915 Billie Holiday (d. 1959), American jazz and blues singer

"Holiday was eighteen years old and a worldly former prostitute when she recorded 'Your Mother's Son-in-Law' with Benny Goodman in 1933; she died from the cumulative effects of heroin and alcohol in 1959, a ravaged forty-four."  Source

1915 Henry Kuttner (d. 1958), science fiction writer

1920 Ravi Shankar, Indian sitarist well known for his playing with The Beatles; he is the father of musicians, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar

1928 James Garner, American actor

1929 Jacques Brel (d. 1978), composer

1931 Daniel Ellsberg, Vietnam veteran and a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, Ellsberg helped to compile the Pentagon Papers while working in the United States Department of Defense. He precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, which the New York Times began publishing on June 13, 1971.

Excerpt from the Pentagon papers

1939 Francis Ford Coppola, American film director

1939 Sir David Frost, British broadcaster, television host

1939 Brett Whiteley, Australian artist, some of whose work has broken sales price records for paintings by an Australian artist. In 2007, his painting, The Olgas, sold for an Australian record of AU$3.5 million.

1944 Gerhard Schröder, German Bundeskanzler (chancellor) since 1998

1949 John Oates, musician (Hall and Oates)

1951 Janis Ian (b. Janis Eddy Fink), Grammy-winning American songwriter, singer and multi-instrumental musician. (Some sources give May 7 but I'm guessing that the fans know. The message board seems to go for April 7.)

1954 Jackie Chan, actor

2003 Astro Boy was created by Doctor Boyton when his son Toby died in a car accident. The birthday of the chubby, Pinocchio-like robot was decreed in a manga (comic book) more than 50 years ago by his creator, Osamu Tezuka (1928 - 1989) who created every Astro Boy comic story for 21 years.

Astro Boy, or Tetsuwan Atom, as he is known in his native Japan, is the Japanese cartoon character who first appeared in a 1951 comic book and was animated, roughly speaking, from the early 1960s. Tezuka set the date of his creation in the future – April 7, 2003. Astro Boy was created by Doctor Boyton when his son Toby died in a car accident. Astro is an exact match for Toby, and was originally called Toby by his 'father'. 

When Astro was first built, Doctor Boyton wanted to keep him a secret but he ended up a hero. The robot boy did not develop like a human child. Disillusioned with his creation, the Doctor Boynton sold the robot to a circus where robots were employed to fight one another as gladiators. Astro Boy was seen at the circus by a Professor Elefun, the government's Minister for Science, who saved Astro and gave him a home and a robot family.

Astro Boy is arguably the progenitor of all anime and manga, as well as anyone with huge eyes, jerky movements, really bad lip-voice synchronisation, and/or machine guns in their shorts.

On April 7, 2003, fans of the comic character, and much of the Japanese population as a whole, commemorated the long-anticipated day with parades and general celebration. A Tokyo department store displayed a 10-cm model of the atomic kid encrusted with diamonds, rubies and emeralds – worth about one billion yen (US $13.87 million).

"Osamu Tezuka, widely consider to be the father of animé and a god of manga (comics), had a career that spanned 40 years, starting with his first published comic in 1946. A trained medical doctor who preferred drawing, Tezuka introduced Tetsuwan Atomu (Mighty Atom) as a manga character in the early 1950s. The boy robot was so popular that it became the first comic to be animated for Japanese TV. That series was dubbed and became 'Astro Boy' in the United States [and Australia – PW]. Although Tezuka, who died in 1989, is credited with producing more than 150,000 pages of comics, award-winning films and an estimated 800 characters, Astro Boy is by far his most famous. His second most famous in America, 'Kimba, the White Lion,' also was a cartoon [in the USA].

"But it was Astro Boy that set the standard of what was to come, both in manga and animé. Tezuka was one of the first to use cinematic techniques such as close-ups and odd angles in his comic strips. Pictures didn't just illustrate the dialogue; they drove the action. And some unusual action it was…

"Astro Boy clearly resembles Pinocchio, but another source for Tezuka was a 1921 play about robots with emotions called 'R.U.R.' (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech author Karel Capek. 'Tezuka read that play as a child,' says Maureen Donovan, a Japanese studies associate professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. The play, she says, left a lasting mark on his imagination …"   Source

Happy birthday, robot boy (in Japanese)    Fans celebrate Astro Boy's 'birthday' in Tokyo parade

Astro Boy makes a comeback   Astro Boy to help rebuild Iraq

Astro Boy theme

There you go Astro Boy.
On your flight into space.
Rocket high, through the sky
What adventures soon you will make.

Astro Boy bombs away
On your mission today
Here's the countdown, and a blast off
Everything is GO Astro boy.

 

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April

6 Animated Cartoon 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
16 Rubber Eraser Day
16 Freak-out Day
16 Leonardo da Vinci's Birthday
17 Stress Awareness Day
17 Eggs Benedict Day
17 Birthday Of The Queen (Denmark)
18 Cheeseball Day
17 Nosy Neighbour Appreciation Day
18 Time Out Day
19 Primrose Day
19 Cow Chip Day
20 Lima Bean Respect Day
21 Kindergarten Day
21 Birthday Of Charlotte Bronte
22 Earth Day
22 April Showers Day

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1348 Charles University was founded in Prague.

 

Warbois, Huntingdon, home of the Witches of Warbois, 1593

1593 The sad tale of the Witches of Warbois

On this day, the entire Samuel family of Warbois, Huntingdon, England, was executed on charges of witchcraft. It was during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) and witch mania was rife. The most important form of evidence in many of the witch trials was attained by 'ordeal'. These efforts included torture of the most horrific nature including hot pincers, the thumbscrew, the iron maiden, and many other such methods. These torture methods varied by region and the person carrying out the ordeal.

In Warbois, an imaginative and depressive girl named Joan Throgmorton, whose head was filled with stories of ghosts and witches, happened to pass the cottage of a physically unattractive and mentally backward old woman known as Mother Samuel. The old woman was sitting at her door, with a black cap upon her head, and, looking up from her knitting, she looked intently at Joan. The impressionable girl immediately fancied that she felt sudden pains in her arms and legs, and from that day on told her family and friends that Mother Samuel had bewitched her. Her sisters took up the cry, and actually frightened themselves into fits whenever they passed within sight of the unfortunate old woman.

Mr and Mrs Throgmorton, just as ignorant as their children, believed all the absurd tales they had been told; and Lady Cromwell, who used to gossip with Mrs Throgmorton determined to denounce the 'witch'. Lady Cromwell's husband Sir Samuel soon joined in the plot. Encouraged by adult complicity, the children gave loose reins to their imaginations and soon invented a whole host of evil spirits, which, they said, were sent by Mother Samuel to torment them continually. 'First Smack', 'Second Smack', 'Third Smack', 'Blue', 'Catch', 'Hardname' and 'Pluck' were the imaginative names of the worst of the spirits which, the girls alleged, were raised from hell by wicked Mother Samuel to throw them into fits; and as the children were actually subject to fits, the adults gave the more credit to the story.

The adults marched to the old woman's home and dragged her back into the Throgmorton's yard where Lady Cromwell tore the old woman's cap off her head, and plucking out a handful of her grey hair, gave it to Mrs Throgmorton to burn, as a charm which would preserve them all from her future wicked doings. Unsurprisingly, poor old Mrs Samuel let loose an involuntary curse upon her persecutors, and her curse was never forgotten. For more than a year, the families of Cromwell and Throgmorton continued to persecute her, alleging that her evil spirits afflicted them with pains and fits, turned the milk sour in their pans, and prevented their cows and ewes from bearing. Then, when Lady Cromwell was taken ill and died, it was remembered that her death had taken place exactly a year and a quarter since she was cursed by Mother Samuel, and that on several occasions she had dreamed of the witch and a black cat ....

Read on at the Witches of Warbois article at the Scriptorium

 

1614 The death of Domenikos Theotokopoulos (b. 1541), known as 'El Greco' ('The Greek'), Crete-born Spanish Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect.

1739 Highwayman Dick Turpin was hanged at York, England.

Highwaymen, bushrangers, pirates, gangsters, etc in the Book of Days

1795 France adopted the metre as the unit of length.

1804 Martial law was proclaimed in Sydney, New South Wales (in what was later called Australia).

1805 Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Corps of Discovery broke camp among the Mandan tribe and resumed its journey West along the Missouri River.

1827 The first matches went on sale by their inventor, the chemist John Waller.

1831 Emperor Pedro I of Brazil abdicated in favour of his son, Pedro II.

1862 American Civil War: Battle of Shiloh ended – Union Army under General Ulysses S Grant defeated the Confederates near Shiloh, Tennessee.

1906 Mount Vesuvius erupted and devastated Naples.

1922 Teapot Dome scandal: United States Secretary of the Interior leased Teapot Dome oil reserves in Wyoming.

1927 The first long distance public television broadcast (Washington, DC to New York City; the image was of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover).

1930 The last wholly silent movie produced in America, The Poor Millionaire, was released by Biltmore Pictures.

1933 Prohibition ended, USA.

1939 World War II: Italy invaded Albania.

1939 Sir Earle Page became Australia's prime minister – for just 19 days.

1940 Booker T Washington became the first African-American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.

1943 Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesised by Albert Hofmann in a Swiss lab. (On April 16 he accidentally had his first trip, and on April 19 he had his first planned one.)

Pictured: Alice in Wonderland LSD blotter

"The second synthesis was completed on April 16. Accidentally, Hofmann breathed in or swallowed some of the material, and had the merit to realize, when its effect came upon him, that something of momentous significance had happened. He assumed LSD was the cause, and waited until the next working day, a Monday, to try again. The assumption proved right, and a new chapter of history opened.

"Soon, the directors of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals were trying LSD, and a research project under WA Stoll, psychiatrist and nephew of one of the Sandoz directors, took shape. Those must have been exciting days. More than 40 subjects, the majority busy, working people, participated.

"Hofmann does not remember what he was doing when the 'presentiment' came over him. He won't say if it came in a dream, or if he was in a state of unusual lucidity."   Source

Albert Hofmann Museum    More   And more

Blotter sheet signed by Allen Ginsberg    Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

 

1943 John Maynard Keynes, British economist, launched his plan for post-war reconstruction.

1945 World War II: The Japanese battleship Yamato was sunk 200 miles north of Okinawa while en route to a suicide mission.

1947 Time magazine reported: "In Woodstock, Vermont, a fire broke out in the basement of the Walker home on Sunday; the staircase caught fire on Monday; an upstairs partition blazed on Tuesday; the jittery Walkers moved out on Wednesday; the house burned down on Thursday".

1948 The World Health Organization was established by the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

WHO 60^th Anniversary: Our Health, Our Future

1949 USA: South Pacific, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's musical, premiered on Broadway.

1953 Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations Secretary General.

1954 US President Dwight D Eisenhower gave his 'domino theory' speech during a news conference.

1956 Spain relinquished its protectorate in Morocco.

1956 Humphry Osmond coined the word 'psychedelic'.

"The terminology used to describe the LSD experience in the scientific literature did not sit well with Humphrey Osmond. Words like 'hallucination' and 'psychosis' were loaded; they implied negative states of mind. The psychiatric jargon reflected a pathological orientation, whereas a truly objective science would not impose value judgments on chemicals that produced unusual or altered states of consciousness. Aldous Huxley also felt that the language of pathology was inadequate. He and Osmond agreed that a new word had to be invented to encompass the full range of effects of these drugs.

"The two men had been close friends ever since Huxley's initial mescaline experience, and they carried on a lively correspondence. At first Huxley proposed the word phanerothyme, which derived from roots relating to 'spirit' or 'soul'. A letter to Osmond included the following couplet:

    To make this trivial world sublime,
    Take half a Gramme of phanerothyme.

To which Osmond responded:

    'To fathom hell or soar angelic
    Just take a pinch of psychedelic.'"

Source

More

 

1959 David Niven won an Oscar for his role in Separate Tables.

1963 Yugoslavia was proclaimed to be a Socialist republic and Josip Broz Tito was named President for life.

1964 IBM announced the System/360.

1967 Six-Day War: Israeli fighters shot down seven Syrian MIG-21s.

1969 The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.

1970 John Wayne received an Academy Award for his role in True Grit.

1971 President Richard Nixon promised to withdraw 100,000 troops from Vietnam by Christmas.

1980 The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran and imposed economic sanctions following the taking of American hostages on November 4, 1979.

1983 During STS-6, American astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson performed the first Space Shuttle spacewalk (duration: 4 hours, 10 minutes).

1989 Soviet submarine Komsomolets sank in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway after a fire; 42 sailors died.

1990 Iran Contra Affair: Admiral John Poindexter was found guilty of five charges for his part in the scandal but the convictions were later reversed after an appeal.

1990 More than 150 passengers and crew were killed on the Danish Ferry Scandinavian Star after a fire broke out, possibly the work of an arsonist.

1994 Massacres of Tutsis begin in Kigali, Rwanda.

1998 Citicorp and Travelers Group announced plans to merge creating the largest financial-services conglomerate in the world, Citigroup.

1999 Kosovo War: Kosovo's main border crossings were closed by Serbian forces to prevent ethnic Albanians from leaving.

2000 Mars Odyssey was launched.

2001 An M-17 helicopter crashed into a mountain in south of Hanoi, Vietnam, killing 16. The flight was carrying United States armed forces personnel searching for MIAs from the Vietnam War.

2003 "More than 3 million people have died during Congo's civil war, the vast majority from malnutrition and disease, a relief organization said Tuesday.

"The International Rescue Committee said in a report that at least 85 percent of the 3.3 million deaths were from easily treatable diseases and malnutrition.

"'This is a humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and shocking proportions,' George Rapp, president of the New York-based organization said."
'Congo Civil War Kills 3.3 Million', Associated Press, April 7, 2003

Congo Civil War deaths: Dramatic visual representation, in the Scriptorium

2003 USA troops captured Baghdad; Saddam Hussein's regime fell two days later.

2003 British Army Major Charles Ingram, his wife Diana, 39, and a college professor, Tecwen Whittock, 53, were found guilty of deception in trying to win a TV contest, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.

Prosecutors said Whittock, from his seat in the audience, used a system involving coded coughs to guide Ingram to the correct multiple-choice response to the $1.55 million question: "A number 1 followed by 100 zeros is known by what name?". Ingram maintained that strategy, military training and good luck had helped him answer correctly, "a 'googol'".

The TV show was created in Britain in 1998 and versions of it have since be made in dozens of countries, including the USA.  

2005 USA: The State of Connecticut allowed same-sex civil unions.

Tomorrow: Buddha's birthday (Mahayanan)

 

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