April 4th is

Chicken Cordon Bleu Day

Vitamin C Day

World Rat Day

International Day for Mine
Awareness & Action

National Sexual Assault Awareness & Action Day
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MORE! Francis Drake, Marguerite Duras and Martin Luther King, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Angola – Peace Day

India – Ram Navami
(birth of Hindu god Rama)

North Korea – Chungmyung Day
(tomb cleaning day)

Sénégal – Independence Day

Taiwan – Children’s Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

188 – Caracalla born, Roman Emperor, has his younger brother murdered; noted for building a giant bathhouse, his obsession with Alexander the Great, and massacres of  his brother’s supporters and much of the population of Alexandria; assassinated by a disaffected soldier passed over for promotion

1147 – First known reference to Moscow, as the place where Prince Sviatoslav Olgovich met Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, who is considered the founder of Moscow

1572 – William Strachey born, English author; his eye-witness report of 1609 Sea Venture shipwreck and 10-month sojourn on Bermuda believed to be the inspiration for    the storm and shipwreck in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

1581 – Francis Drake is knighted for completing a circumnavigation of the globe

1640 – Gaspar Sanz born, Spanish guitarist, Baroque composer, and priest

1660 – The Declaration of Breda, a proclamation by Charles II promises a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War and other concessions to all those who recognize him as the lawful king; this leads to Charles being proclaimed King

1721 – Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, becomes Britain’s first Prime Minister, serving for 20 years, the longest uninterrupted run of any British PM

1768 – Philip Astley presents integrated entertainment with music, animals, acrobats and clowns, regarded as the first modern circus, at Astley’s Amphitheatre in London

1785 – Bettina von Arnim born, German author, illustrator, and composer

1796 – French zoologist Georges Cuvier delivers the first paleontological lecture

1802 –  Dorothea Dix born, American nurse, mental health and prison reformer

1812 – U.S. President James Madison enacts a 90-day embargo on trade with the UK

1814 – Napoleon abdicates for the first time, names his son Napoleon II as Emperor 

1818 – U.S. Congress adopts the flag of the United States with 13 red and white stripes and one star for each state (then 20)

1828 – Casparus van Wooden of Amsterdam patents chocolate milk powder

1841 – William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia, first U.S. President to die in office, and sets a record for the briefest administration

1850 – Los Angeles CA  is incorporated as a city

1868 – Philippa Fawcett born, English mathematician and educator;  first woman to make the top score on the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams, 13% higher than the second-place man, but she didn’t receive the title of senior wrangler, as only men were then ranked. Women are listed separately without titles, having only been allowed to take the Tripos since 1881, when Charlotte Angas Scott was unofficially ranked eighth. On the 1890 women’s list, Fawcett is described as “above the senior wrangler”

1869 – Mary Colter born, American architect, designed the Desert View Watchtower and other buildings a the South rim of the Grand Canyon AZ

1871 – Mary Florence Potts patents the ‘Mrs. Potts’ pressing iron, which has a detachable handle so several iron bodies can be heated and rotated

1872 – Mary Coffin Ware Dennett born, pacifist, advocate for women’s rights, birth control, and sex education; argues for free dissemination of information; mails her sex education pamphlets labeled obscene under the Comstock Act, which leads to her arrest and conviction in 1929, starting a storm of protest; the case made by the ACLU to the federal Court of Appeals wins reversal of her conviction in 1930

1873 – The Kennel Club is founded, first official registry of purebred dogs in the world

1887 – Argonia, Kansas elects Susanna M. Salter as the first female mayor in the U.S.

1887 – William Cumming Rose born, American biochemist, researches amino acids, determines importance of eight essential amino acids in human nutrition

1896 – Robert E. Sherwood born, American playwright and screenwriter

1902 – British financier Cecil Rhodes leaves $10 million in his will for scholarships at Oxford University

1913 – Muddy Waters born, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

1914 – Marguerite Duras born, French novelist, screenwriter, playwright and director

1922 – Elmer Bernstein, American composer and conductor

1925 – The Schutzstaffel (SS) is founded in Germany

1928 – Maya Angelou born, American memoirist and poet

1932 – C.G. King first isolates Vitamin C in a lab at University of Pennsylvania

1939 – Glenn Miller and his orchestra record “Moonlight Serenade”

1949 – Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

1956 – UN Security Council Resolution 113 calls on Israel and Palestinians to fully cooperate with the UN  Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO)

1958 – The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) peace symbol is displayed in public for the first time in London;  designed for British-based CND by Gerald Holtom

1960 – France agrees to grant independence to the Mali Federation, a union of Senegal and French Sudan

1960 – Elvis Presley records “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

1964 – The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart with “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Twist and Shout,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Please Please Me”

1967 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech in New York City’s Riverside Church

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee

1968 – NASA launches Apollo 6

1969 – Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart

1971 – Follies opens on Broadway

1973 – The World Trade Center in New York is officially dedicated.

1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Allen left Microsoft in 1982 during a serious illness, but didn’t officially resign until 2000

1981 – Henry Cisneros elected mayor of San Antonio TX, first Hispanic elected mayor of a major U.S. city

1983 – NASA Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space

1984 – President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons

1996 – Comet Hyakutake imaged by USA Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous

2000 – Pink releases her debut album Can’t Take Me Home

2006 – An Iraq tribunal charges Saddam Hussein and six others, with genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds
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Visuals

• Chicken Cordon Bleu
• Lab rat
• National Sexual Assault Awareness & Action Day
• International flags
• Bust of Caracalla
• Astley’s Amphitheatre
• Dorothea Dix, quote from speech concerning horrible conditions of mental patients
• Desert View Watchower at the Grand Canyon, designed by Mary Colter
• Banned pamphlet – ‘The Sex Side of Life’ – photo of Mary Ware Dennett
• Robert E. Sherwood, miser quote
• “Still I Rise” – poem by Maya Angelou
• Henry Cisneros, racism quote

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