April 23rd is

UN English Language Day *

Lost Dog Awareness Day *

National Movie Theater Day

Talk Like Shakespeare Day *

World Copyright Day *

Impossible Astronaut Day (Dr. Who) *

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MORE! William Shakespeare, Max Planck and Annie Easley, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity/Vatican City – Feast of Saint George

North Cyprus – Children’s Day

Spain – Community Day

Turkey –
National Sovereignty/Children’s Day

United Kingdom – World Book Night

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On This Day in HISTORY

599 – Maya king Uneh Chan of Calakmul attacks rival city-state Palenque in southern Mexico, defeating queen Yohl Ik’nal and sacking the city

1348 – The founding of the Order of the Garter by King Edward III is announced on St. George’s Day

1564 – William Shakespeare born, English playwright and poet, the ‘Bard of Avon, greatest writer in the English language, and world’s greatest dramatist

1635 – The first public school in the U.S., Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston MA

1772 – Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle writes “La Marseillaise” which becomes the French national anthem

1775 – J.M.W. Turner born, English master landscape painter

A landscape of the Jurassic coastline looking towards Lyme Regis
– by J.M.W. Turner

1789 – President-elect George Washington and his wife move into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House in New York City

1813 – Stephen A. Douglas born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Senator from Illinois (1847-1861); U.S. Congressman (1843-1847); noted for running against Abraham Lincoln in 1860

1852 – Edwin Markham born, American poet and lecturer

1867 –  Johannes Fibiger born, Danish Nobel Prize-winning pathologist

1858 –Dame Ethel Smyth born, British composer, women’s suffrage activist, composed Women’s Social and Political Union’s anthem “The March of the Women“

1858 – Max Planck born, German theoretical physicist; quantum theory; 1918 Nobel Prize for Physics

1861 – Viscount Edmund Allenby born, British officer in the Second Boer War and WWI; after his successful campaign to take Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire, he was made a Field Marshall and appointed as Special High Commissioner of Egypt

1872 – Violet Gordon-Woodhouse born, British pianist and harpsichordist, first to record and broadcast harpsichord music

1879 – Fire burns down the second main building and dome of the University of Notre Dame; it is replaced with the third, and current, Main Building with its golden dome.

1880 – Michel Fokine born, Russian ballet dancer and choreographer

1891 – Sergei Prokofiev born, Russian composer and conductor

1896 – Dame Ngaio Marsh born, New Zealand author and director; mystery novels featuring detective Roderick Alleyn, one of the “Queens of Crime”

1899 – Vladimir Nabokov born in Russia, American novelist and critic

1908 – President Theodore Roosevelt signs act creating the U.S. Army Reserve

1924 – The U.S. Senate passed the Soldiers Bonus Bill, a $4 Billion program giving “adjusted service certificates” to WWI veterans

1928 – Shirley Temple born, American child star who later served as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana (1974-1977) and Czechoslovakia (1989-1992); U.S. Chief of Protocol (1976-1977)

1933 – Annie Easley born, African-American computer scientist, mathematician, and engineer who worked for both the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics  (NACA) and NASA; a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage, and one of the first African-American computer scientists to work for NASA

1955 – Canadian Labour Congress is formed by the merger of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour

1967 – Soviet Soyuz 1, a manned spaceflight carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov, is launched into orbit

1968 – 300 Columbia students barricaded the office of the college dean, charging the university with supporting the Vietnam War and violating Harlem residents’ civil rights

 1976 – The Rolling Stones release their album Black and Blue

1993 – Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum

1995 – World Book and Copyright Day * is launched by UNESCO

2009 – Talk Like Shakespeare Day * is started by the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and proclaimed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn – Huzzah! (We already talk a lot like Shakespeare. Just watch this video!) 

2010 – UNESCO sets the traditional date of Shakespeare’s birth, as well as the day of his death, as UN English Language Day * – part of the celebration of the six official working languages of the United Nations

2011 – “The Impossible Astronaut” is the first episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast on 23 April 2011 in the UK, Canada and the U.S.

2014 – The first Lost Dog Awareness Day * is launched by Lost Dogs of America, a volunteer organization which helps reunite families with their missing dogs.

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