April 28^th is

Blueberry Pie Day

Great Poetry Reading Day

Teach Children to Save Day

Workers’ Memorial Day

National Hairball Awareness Day
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MORE! Nichiren, Harper Lee and Arlen Specter, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Afghanistan – Victory Day

Barbados – National Heroes’ Day

Gibraltar – Workers’ Memorial Day

India – Maharshi Parasuram Jayanti

Philippines – Manila: ASEAN Summit

Wallis and Futuna – Saint Pierre-Chanel Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

1192 – Hashshashin kill Conrad of Montferrat, aka Conrad I, King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his election; Hashshashin, a splinter group of Nizaris Ismails, a Persian sect which split from a branch of Shia Islam in the 11^th century; English word is assassin

1253 – Nichiren, Japanese Buddhist monk, declares Nam u Myōhō Renge Kyō to be the essence of Buddhism; it becomes the foundation of Nichiren Buddhism

1758 – James Monroe born, 5th president of the United States

1764 – Marie-Joseph Chenier born, French poet, dramatist, politician and revolutionary

1788 – Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution

1789 – Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island

1838 – Tobias Asser born, Dutch jurist; 1911 Nobel Prize for Peace, for his role in The Hague treaties

1886 – Erich Salomon born, German photographer; a founder of photojournalism

1902 – Johan Borgen born, Norwegian author, dramatist, and essayist

1906 – Bart Jan Bok born in Holland, American astronomer; expert on the Milky Way

1906 – Kurt Godel born in Austria, American mathematician and logician

1910 – Frenchman Louis Paulhan wins the 1910 London-to-Manchester Air Race, the first long-distance aeroplane race in England

1916 – Ferruccio Lamborghini born, Italian car manufacturer

1920 – Azerbaijan becomes part of the Soviet Union

1926 – Harper Lee born, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom

1932 – Brownie Ledbetter born, became politically active in 1957, during Little Rock Integration Crisis, joined Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), then Little Rock Panel of American Women, which organized discussion groups and developed programs to help students and train teachers. National Women’s Political Caucus (Political Action Chair 1973), worked for E.R.A., co-founder with Bella Abzug of Women’s Environment and Development Organization

1940 – Glenn Miller and his orchestra record “Pennsylvania 6-5000”

1945 – Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are captured and executed by Italian partisans when they attempt to flee to Switzerland

1947 – A six-man expedition ser sail from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia

1967 – Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the Army, citing religious reasons – he is a convert to the Islamic faith – “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” – he is stripped of his title, banned from boxing for 3 years, convicted of draft evasion, fined and sentenced to 5 years in prison, but appeals and his sentence is later overturned by the U.S Supreme Court

1980 – Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned over his opposition to the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran

1990 – The musical “A Chorus Line” closes after 6,137 performances on Broadway

1993 – First Take Our Daughters to Work Day, sponsored by the Ms. Foundation; it became Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day * in 2003

1994 – Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleads guilty to espionage and tax evasion and is sentenced to life in prison without parole

1996 – President Bill Clinton gives over 4 hours of videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners

2001 – A Russian rocket lifted off from Central Asia bearing the first space tourist, California businessman Dennis Tito

2004 – The first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal were shown on CBS’ 60 Minutes II

2009 – U.S. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party

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