April 19^th is

Bicycle Day *

Rice Ball Day

John Parker Day *

Hanging Out Day *

National Garlic Day

Oklahoma City Bombing Commemoration Day *

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MORE! Eliot Ness, Rawya Ateya and Mel Brooks, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Brazil – Dia do Indio
(Indigenous peoples day)

Iceland – Sumardagurinn fyrsti
(First day of Summer)

Israel – Independence Day
(Celebrated)

Swaziland – King’s Birthday

Uruguay – Landing of the 33 Patriots
(return from exile to launch independence war)

Venezuela – 1810 Declaration Day
 (begins independence movement)

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On This Day in HISTORY

AD 65 – Roman freedman Milichus betrays Piso’s plot to kill the Emperor Nero and all the conspirators are arrested

Emperor Nero

1539 – After the Second Diet of Speyer bans Lutheranism, a group of German rulers, (Fürst) and independent cities protest the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms

1666 – Sarah Kemble Knight born, colonial American teacher and businesswoman, noted for her diary of her journey from Boston to New York City in 1704-05

1770 – James Cook sights the west coast of Australia

1775 – Captain John Parker of the Lexington MA militia gathers his band of farmers and townsfolk on the Lexington Common to confront British regulars under Colonel Francis Smith, who are marching to Concord, about six-and-a-half miles further up the road, to search for weapons and supplies rumored to be hidden there. No one knows who fired the first shot, but eight of Parker’s militiamen are killed, and ten wounded. No British soldiers are hit by militia shots. Later that day, Parker leads his men in ambushing the British as they return from Concord, and they were also engaged during the British Siege of Boston. Five months after “the shot heard round the world,” John Parker dies of consumption. Commemorated as John Parker Day *

1782 – John Adams secures the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government; the house which he had purchased in The Hague, becomes the first American embassy

1806 – Sarah Bagley born, American pioneering labor organizer; advocate for a 10-hour workday for mill workers in Lowell Massachusetts, and expanded her efforts to women’s rights, especially after she discovered when hired as a telegrapher that she was paid one-third less than the man she replaced; also campaigned for the abolition of slavery, prison reform, and health care for the poor

1832 – Jose Echegaray y Eizaguirre born, Spanish mathematician, statesman, and dramatist, co-winner of 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature

1831 – Mary Louise Booth born, American author, translator, and editor of Harper’s Bazaar

1877 – Ole Evinrude born in Norway, American inventor

1891 – Françoise Rosay born, French actress and opera singer, pioneer in French cinema who appeared in over 100 films

https://youtu.be/usOHSAE3Lc0

1892 – Germaine Tailleferre, French composer, only woman member of a group of composers known as Les Six

1903 – Eliot Ness born, American crime fighter; headed the “Untouchables” in Chicago

1905 – Sir Thomas Hopkinson born, English pioneering photojournalist

1921 – Anna Lee Aldred born, first American woman to receive a jockey’s license, in 1939 at age 18, after officials at the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Mexico couldn’t find any rules that barred women jockeys; she won many races at state and county fairs, but after six years, she had grown too tall for a jockey, so she switched to trick riding in rodeos; inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1983

1926 – Rawya Ateya born, Egyptian politician, educator and journalist; first female parliamentarian in the Arab world when she is elected to the National Assembly of Egypt in 1957

Rawya Ateya (left) campaigning in 1957

1927 – Actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail on obscenity charges for her play Sex

1933 – The U.S goes off the gold standard

1943 – Bicycle Day * – Three days after Dr. Albert Hoffman accidently touches his hand to his mouth while synthesizing LSD and discovers its psychedelic effects, he takes a larger dose deliberately, then experiences the first “acid trip” riding his bicycle home

1945 – The musical Carousel opens on Broadway

1951 – Douglas MacArthur quotes an old ballad in his farewell to U.S. Congress:  “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away”

1956 – Dame Anne Glover born, Scottish molecular biologist and academic; Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission (2012- 2014), the first ever appointed to the position from Scotland, she expanded the position’s role, becoming an influential voice for the importance of science policy based on evidence

1961 – The Federal Communications Commission authorizes regular FM stereo broadcasting, effective June 1, 1961

1978 – Patti Smith releases her single “Because the Night”

1993 – The  51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ends when fire destroys the structure after federal agents smashed their way in; 76 Davidians, including sect leader David Koresh, are killed, and eleven others arrested; during the siege, four ATF agents are killed, and 16 wounded

1994 – A Los Angeles jury awards $3.8 million to Rodney King, victim of a beating by LAPD caught on video

1995 – Oklahoma City Bombing: the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, on the Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City OK by three conspirators using a truck bomb: 168 people die, over 680 others are injured; windows shatter and over 324 other buildings are damaged or destroyed within a 16- block radius, with damage estimates of $652 million; the terrorists claim their acts are retaliation for sieges by federal agents at Ruby Ridge and Waco; Timothy McVeigh is executed, Terry Nichols is imprisoned for life without parole, and Michael Fortier, arrested as an accessory, testifies in exchange for a reduced sentence and immunity for his wife (who helped make the fake ID used to rent the truck) and sentenced to 12 years in prison for failure to warn authorities before the attack, is released in 2006 into the Witness Protection Program – since 1996, Oklahoma City Bombing Commemoration Day *

1995 – The first Hanging Out Day * is sponsored by Project Laundry List to encourage people to give their clothes dryer a rest, and hang their laundry up outside

2001 – The musical version of Mel Brooks’ film, The Producers, opens on Broadway

https://youtu.be/Fsql523bSj4

2011 –Fidel Castro resigns as leader of the central committee of the Cuban Communist Party after 45 years of holding the title

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