April 30th is

Adopt a Shelter Pet Day

Bugs Bunny Day *

Kiss of Hope Day *

Honesty Day

National Military Brats Day

Oatmeal Cookie Day

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MORE! Charles Dickens, Monica Seles and Ellen DeGeneres. click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Paganism – Beltane (Northern Hemisphere) and Samhain (Southern Hemisphere)
Voudon – Mangé Les Morts (feeding the dead)

Bonaire – Dia di Rincon
(end of harvest- Simadan – celebration)

Finland –  Helsinki: Vappuaatto
(May Day Eve)

Germany &  Sweden –
Walpurgisnacht (witches’ night)

Jordan – Labor Day

Mexico – El Día Del Niño

Scotland – Edinburgh:
Beltane Fire Festival

Sweden – King’s Birthday

Vietnam – Reunification Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

642 – Chindasuinth is anointed by the bishops as Visigothic King of Hispania, after a pro forma election by the nobles once he overthrew his predecessor Tulga in a coup

1315 – Enguerrand de Marigny, French Chamberlain, coadjutor and minister to Philip IV the Fair, after successfully defending himself against charges by Charles of Valois of bribery and corruption, is hanged when Valois brings new charges of sorcery against him

1513 – Edmund de la Pole, son of Edward IV’s younger sister Elizabeth of York, and leading Yorkist pretender to the English throne, is executed by order of King Henry VIII, after being imprisoned by Henry VII since 1506

1517 – Evil May Day Riot, violence against foreigners living in London by about 1,000 apprentices congregate in Cheapside, then free prisoners locked up for previous attacks on foreigners, and march on the St. Martin le Grand section of London, home to many foreigners, and loot their houses; the Duke of Norfolk and possible the Early of Shrewsbury, lead a private army to quell the rioters

1557 – Mapuche leader Lautaro is killed by Spanish forces at the Battle of Mataquito in Chile

1598 – Juan de Oñate makes a formal declaration of his Conquest of New Mexico

1598 – Henry IV of France issues the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to
the Huguenots, French protestants

1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office as the first elected President of the United States

1812 – The Territory of Orleans becomes Louisiana, the 18th U.S. state

1838 – Nicaragua declares independence from the Central American Federation

1857 – Eugen Bleuler born, Swiss psychiatrist; pioneer in study of schizophrenics

1859 – A Tale of Two Cities, the novel by Charles Dickens is first published as a serial in a literary magazine

1885 – Governor of New York David B. Hill signs legislation creating the Niagara Reservation, New York’s first state park, ensuring that Niagara Falls will not be devoted solely to industrial and commercial use

1888 – John Crowe Ransom born, American poet and critic

1897 –  J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory announces his discovery of the electron as a subatomic particle, over 1,800 times smaller than a proton (in the atomic nucleus), at a lecture at the Royal Institution in London

1898 – Katherine Amelia Towle born, American Colonel, 2nd director of the U. S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, 1st Director of Women Marines  

1900 – Hawaii becomes a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as  governor, a long-time advocate of the westernization and destruction of Hawaii’s monarchy and culture. He helped write the “Bayonet Constitution” which curtailed the monarch’s powers and limited voting rights to wealthy, educated, mostly non-whites. While he declined to officially be part of the “Committee of Safety” which overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, he helped draft their declaration, and was named president of the Provisional Government

1901 – Simon Kuznets born in Russia, American economist/statistician; Nobel Laureate

1902 – Theodore Schultz born, American economist, Nobel Laureate for important studies of the human factor in the workplace

1904 – The Louisiana Purchase Exposition World’s Fair opens in St. Louis, Missouri

1907 – Honolulu, Hawaii becomes an independent city

1916 – Robert Shaw born, American choral and orchestra conductor

1925 – Automaker Dodge Brothers, Inc is sold to Dillon, Read & Co. for US$146 million plus $50 million for charity

1927 – The Federal Industrial Institute for Women opens in Alderson, West Virginia, the first U.S. women’s federal prison

1927 – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford become the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood

1937 – The Commonwealth of the Philippines holds a plebiscite on extending suffrage to Filipino women; over 90% vote in the affirmative

1938 – Bugs Bunny Day * – animated cartoon short “Porky’s Hare Hunt” debuts in movie theaters, introducing Happy Rabbit (a prototype of Bugs Bunny)

1939 – Ellen Zilch born, composer, first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music (1983) for Symphony No. 1 “Three Movements for Orchestra”; commissioned by N.Y. Philharmonic to compose large-scale orchestral works: Symbolon (1988),  Symphony no.2 “Cello Symphony” (1985), and Symphony no.3 (1992)

1939 – The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair opens

1939 – NBC debuts its regularly scheduled television service in NYC, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s N.Y. World’s Fair opening day ceremonial address

1941 – Charlie Parker records “Hootie Blues” with the Jay McShann group

1945 – Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building

1945 –  Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp near Barth, Germany is liberated by Soviet soldiers, freeing nearly 9000 American and British airmen

1947 – In Nevada, Boulder Dam is renamed Hoover Dam for the second time

1948 – In Bogotá, Colombia, the Organization of American States (OAS) is established

1957 – The UN  Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery goes into force

1957 – Elvis Presley records “Jailhouse Rock”

1958 – American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is founded in Washington, D.C.

1960 – Fats Domino records “Walking to New Orleans”

1961 – K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned

1963 – The Bristol Bus Boycott is held in Bristol, England, to protest the Bristol Omnibus Company’s refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, drawing national attention to racial discrimination in the United Kingdom

1970 – U.S. President Nixon announces the U.S. is sending troops into Cambodia

1973 – President Richard Nixon announces that White House Counsel John Dean has been fired and that H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman have resigned

1975 – Communist forces gain control of South Vietnam’s capital, Saigon;  the Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Dương Văn Minh

1993 – CERN announces World Wide Web protocols will be free

1993 —Top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles, age 19, is stabbed in the back by a degranged male Steffi Graf fan, during a match in Hamburg, Germany

1997 — ABC airs the “coming out” episode of the sitcom “Ellen,” in which the title character, played by Ellen DeGeneres, admits she is a lesbian

2003 – Mahmoud Abbas takes office as the first Palestinian prime minister

2008 – Two skeletal remains found near Yekaterinburg, in Russia, are confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei and Anastasia, two of the last Tsar’s children, whose entire family was executed in Yekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks

2009 – Chrysler files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

2009 – British forces withdraw from Iraq

2015 – The first national Kiss of Hope Day, sponsored by the Kiss of Hope Foundation, a fundraiser for its network of organizations which help families in need

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