A lot of balls in the air

(For the next week or so, I've got a huge amount of things happening - postings may be spotty and uneven. Apologies ahead of the time.)


Today is Velociraptor Awareness Day. Velociraptors are small vicious dinosaurs that usually ruin everyone's day at your local millionaire's amusement park.

Remember large windows and doorways are Velociraptor points of entries. Mark them accordingly and avoid at all cost. Once you've finished locating possible velociraptor entry points within your building, you can mark those areas so that your loved ones are also aware of the building's vulnerabilities.

Velociraptor attacks are a very serious matter. Educate yourself, and make sure you always have at least four possible escape routes, since three of those will be occupied by velociraptors in the event of an attack.

Remember you don't have to outrun a raptor, you just have to outrun one of your friends.


April 18, 1971 -
The first solo television special of Diana Ross, Diana!, premiered on ABC TV on this date.



The special also featured appearances by Danny Thomas and Bill Cosby, plus performances by The Jackson 5, and also included Jackson 5 lead singer Michael Jackson's solo debut.


April 18, 1975 -
John Lennon released Stand by Me on this date.



Lennon's cover was his last hit prior to his five-year retirement from the music industry.



April 18, 1979 -
For some reason, never clearly explained by TV professionals, the George Schlatter produced weekly series profiling human interest stories, Real People, premiered on NBC TV on this date.



Forms of reality television had been done in the past but Real People blended profiles of everyday citizens, comedic studio commentary and viewer interaction. And for some reason, the series was a huge hit.


April 18, 1986 -
Universal Studios releases the fantasy film Legend, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, Tim Curry, David Bennent, Alice Playten, and Billy Barty, premiered in the US on this date.



Tim Curry had to wear a large, bull-like structure atop his head with three-foot fiberglass horns supported by a harness underneath the make-up. The horns strained the back of Curry's neck because they extended forward and not straight up. Rob Bottin and his crew finally came up with horns that were hollow and lightweight. At the end of each filming day, Curry spent an hour in a bath in order to liquefy the soluble spirit gum that served as the adhesive for his make-up. At one point, he got too impatient and claustrophobic that he pulled the make-up off too quickly, tearing off his own skin in the process. Director Ridley Scott felt both horrified and sorry for Curry, and immediately tried to find an easier way to make up his character. Since he didn't want Curry to put more make-up on his torn skin, he shot around him for a week. Scott also realized that it added a dramatic build-up for the character, so he re-shot some of his opening scenes this way. The footage of Curry in the opening to the U.S. Theatrical release was filmed before any of this took place.


April 18, 1987 -
Aretha Franklin and George Michael duet I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me) hit no. #1 on the Billboard charts on this date.



The Queen of Soul had fallen out of favor and her fortunes were revived by her 1985 album Who's Zoomin' Who, which contained two US Top 10 hits: the title track and Freeway of Love. It took this duet with George Michael, however, to return her to the top of the chart, where she had not been for 20 years (with Respect).


April 18, 2003 -
Walt Disney Studios' adaptation of the children's novel, Holes, starring, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, Tim Blake Nelson and Shia LaBeouf, went into general release in the U.S. on this date.



A screenplay was initially written by Richard Kelly, who greatly departed from the source material by writing a dark, violent adaptation of the story set in a post-apocalyptic world. The studio reportedly found the script far too disturbing for a children's movie, rejecting it in favor of the final script written by the novel's author, Louis Sachar.


April 18, 2004 -
Eamon hits no. 1 on the Billboard Charts with F*ck It (I Don't Want You Back), on this date. The song holds the record for the most expletives ever in a #1 song. 

(Kids, ask your folks if you can listen to this song.)



There are 33 profane words in the lyrics, which is one reason why most radio stations didn't play the song when it first came out. The following year an edited version arrived which had all the swears silenced. The DJs referred to the song as simply I Don't Want You Back.


April 18, 2008 -
Universal's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, starring Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, and Bill Hader, premiered in the US on this date.



The film is based on script-writer Jason Segel's experience breaking up with Linda Cardellini, as well as three other breakups with unspecified women. Segel has said that the 'naked breakup' did not involve Cardellini, and that she was a great girlfriend.


Another ACME Safety Film


Today in History:
It was a tense April in Boston in 1775. The colonists were simmering with resentment toward the motherland, on account of King George III having strewn the colonies with excessive tacks, painful to step on and bothersome to the horses. Furthermore, British cabbies had refused to unionize, and the colonists were adamantly opposed to taxis without representation.



King George III tried to assuage the riled colonists by sending them boatloads of tea. (King George III was insane.) The colonists dressed up like Indians and poured all the king's tea into Boston harbor, proving they could be perfectly insane without any help from the king.

Meanwhile, a network of colonists had been secretly meeting for some time. They reasoned that since they preferred coffee to tea, liked salad before rather than after the entree, and couldn't make any sense whatever of cricket, they were obviously no longer British. Perhaps they had become French, or Portuguese. Finally they took a vote, which proved they were American.

The king's colonial representatives overheard some of these discussions, and decided to arrest as many of these patriots as possible, unless they could kill them first.

On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere, (William Dawes and Samuel Prescott) got wind of the British officers' plan to arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams in Lexington that very night - arrests that would have been calamitous to the colony's fledgling insurance and beer industries.



Anticipating colonial unrest, British officers had deployed Regulars on all the key roads between Boston and Lexington. (The Regulars had previously proved effective even where the Irregulars and Extra Longs had failed.)

Revere told some friends to hang two lanterns in Boston's Old North Church, in order to signal his wife that he'd be late for dinner, and immediately set out for Charlestown. Once there, he mounted a horse and began the ride to Lexington.



He found himself almost immediately pursued by Regulars, whom he eluded by means of wily Boston riding tactics: he took a series of lefts from the right lane and a series of rights from the left, utterly confounding his pursuers, who were anyway accustomed to riding on the other side of the street and still weren't sure what to do at a blinking red light. One of the Regulars rode straight into a fruit stand and ended up covered in produce. Another rode through a big plate glass window that two workmen were carrying across the road. It was pretty funny.

Just before midnight, Revere finally arrived at Jonas Clarke's Lexington home, where he breathlessly informed Adams and Hancock that the British were coming. This confounded Adams and Hancock, who, like Revere, were themselves British.



Once the confusion was cleared up, Adams and Hancock fled for safety while Revere and two others rushed on to Concord. Many memorable and important historical events ensued, such as the American Revolution, but by then it was April 19th, and therefore no longer appropriate to this date's entry.



Although Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem immortalized Paul Revere alone. Revere was the least heroic, he was captured by British patrols and held for awhile before he was released without his horse.



Please indulge your local tea party members today, Sara Palin has already hinted that she wouldn't mind running again as someone's VP.


April 18, 1882 –
A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.







Leopold Stokowski, conductor, and long-time music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra was born on this date.

But, what the hell do you care?


April 18, 1906 -
A devastating earthquake struck San Francisco at 5:13 a.m., followed by a major aftershock three hours later. More than 3,000 people were killed from either collapsing structures or any of the 59 separate fires which burned over the next three days.



In the downtown area, the U.S. Army was forced to dynamite whole city blocks in order to contain the flames, due to the lack of water pressure.


April 18th, 1923 -
On the first day of the new baseball season, the gates of Yankee Stadium were opened and 74,200 people flooded through turnstiles, while another 25,000 were turned away – an amazing number, given that previous attendance record for a single game was 42,000 for the 1916 World Series in Boston. In an ironic twist, the first game was fittingly played against the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth’s former team. Even more fitting was that Ruth hit the first homerun in the stadium on the opening day of the new ballpark – a three-run homerun, giving the Yankees the 4-1 win.



Before Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, the Yankees rented from their cross-town rivals, the New York Giants and shared the space at the Polo Grounds. Threatened with eviction, the Yankees were forced to build their own stadium in the Bronx. The ballpark became the first to have three tiers of seating, consisting of 58,000 seats. It was also the first ballpark to be called a stadium due to its enormous size.


April 18, 1930 -
As impossible as this may seem, at 8:45 pm on this date, a BBC news announcer told the British public 'there is no news', and played piano music for the rest of the 15-minute interval.



The wireless service then returned to broadcasting from the Queen's Hall in Langham Place, London, where the Wagner opera Parsifal was being performed.


April 18, 1942 -
The Doolittle raids took place over Tokyo (the first U.S. air raid to strike the Japanese home islands during WWII,) and were led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, who received a congressional medal of honor for his actions.



Though the raid did not do much material damage to Japan, it demonstrated how vulnerable the Japanese home islands were to air attack just four months after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.


April 18, 1955 -
Nobel Prize recipient Albert Einstein died in his hospital bed from a ruptured aortic aneurysm on this date.



Seven hours later, Dr. Thomas Harvey, chief pathologist at Princeton Hospital, performed Albert Einstein's autopsy. He removed the brain and took it home. Thus began a 40 year journey of "They Stole Einstein's Brain".


April 18, 1963 -
Harvard's most successful 'failure' Conan O'Brien was born on this date



Don't worry, some day Coco will find himself.


April 18, 1968 -
Robert P. McCulloch, American entrepreneur and chairman of McCulloch Oil Company, bought London Bridge on this date, from the Corporation of London for $2,460,000 plus shipping costs of around $240,000.



He bought the structure as a tourist attraction to entice people to vacation and potentially retire in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, a planned community he established a few years earlier. Rebuilding London Bridge took three years and several million dollars more, which strained McCulloch's finances.


April 18, 1983 -
62 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a suicide bombing against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on this date. The attacker used a van packed with one ton of high explosives. Included among the dead was the CIA's entire Middle East bureau.



The group Islamic Jihad claims responsibility, although the intelligence community believes it was actually the work of Hezbollah.


April 18, 1988 -
American auto worker John Demjanjuk was convicted of crimes against humanity by an Israeli court on this date. They determined that he was Treblinka's notorious Ivan the Terrible. The court sentences him to hang one week later, but the conviction is later overturned when it appears to have been a case of mistaken identity.

In 2002, a U.S. federal court later strips Demjanjuk of his citizenship after it rules that he did in fact work as a Nazi prison guard, although at Sobibor, Majdanek, and Flossenburg. On May 11 2009, Demjanjuk left his Cleveland home by ambulance, and was taken to the airport, where he was deported by plane to Germany. Starting in late 2009, his trial began in Munich on charges he helped kill 29,000 Jews as a Nazi prison guard at the Sobibor death camp in 1943. On May 12, 2011, Ivan Mykolaiovych Demianiuk was convicted as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews and sentenced to five years in prison.



Mr. Demjanjuk died on March 17, 2012, still attempting to appeal his case. Since his appeal was not heard at the time of his death, his conviction was invalidated and he died without a criminal record.

I'm not sure how that helped him when he approached the gates of hell.



And so it goes.

It's no Yadda, Yadda, Yadda Day but, ...

Today is National Blah Blah Blah day. It’s the day to do any of the following, or whatever.



Stop smoking, take out the trash, empty the cat litter, lose weight, pick up your clothes, put dirty dishes in the sink, get a job or quit your job BUT do something about climate change.


April 17, 1924 -
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios was created following a merger of the Louis B. Mayer Company, Goldwyn Pictures, and Metro Pictures, on this date.



The MGM studio was a division of Loew's, Inc., one of the largest theater chains in North America at the time.


April 17, 1937 -
Happy Birthday Daffy!



Porky's Duck Hunt, starring Porky Pig, is notable for being the first appearance of the character who would later be named Daffy Duck. It also notable that this is the first cartoon in which Mel Blanc voices both Porky and Daffy.


April 17, 1970 -
A little known solo artist Paul McCartney releases his first solo album, McCartney, on this date.



Although no singles were released from the album, Maybe I'm Amazed was regarded as an instant classic, gaining massive AM and FM radio airplay. In 1977, a live version of Maybe I'm Amazed peaked at Number 10 on the charts. Until recently, the song has nearly always opened the piano set of McCartney's concerts. (An unfortunate co-incidence for this day, Linda McCarthy died from complications of breast cancer on this date in 1998.)


April 17, 1971 -
Three Dog Night's single, Joy to the World, made it to the top of the pop music charts on this date. The song was number one for six weeks.



Hoyt Axton wrote this for an animated TV special called The Happy Song that never materialized. Axton, who was a popular Country singer/songwriter from Oklahoma, pitched it to the group while he opened for them on a tour. Three Dog Night also had a Top-10 hit with Never Been to Spain, which was also written by Axton.


April 17, 1981 -
The United Artist movie Caveman, starring Ringo Starr, Shelley Long, Barbara Bach, Dennis Quaid, Jack Gilford, and John Matuszak premiered on this date.



The picture was nominated for Worst Picture at the Hastings Bad Cinema Society's 4th Stinkers Bad Movie Awards in 1981. There it was a Worst Picture nominee for 'Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy' but did win a Stinker Award there for 'Least 'Special' Special Effects'.


April 17, 1987 -
The final episode of Remington Steele, Steeled With a Kiss, starring Stephanie Zimbalist, Pierce Brosnan, Doris Roberts, James Read, Janet DeMay, and Jack Scalia, aired on this date.



The series was cancelled at the end of season four, on May 15, 1986, with a 60-day option left on the show. That same day, Brosnan agreed to play the role of James Bond in multiple movies for many millions of dollars. That generated so much publicity that ratings for Steele soared during the summer months and NBC decided to bring the series back for an abbreviated fifth season of three two-hour movies. With a seven year contract, Brosnan was obligated to do it.


April 17, 2006 -
A big-budget Coke commercial with a new song by Jack White called Love Is The Truth aired once on this date and was pulled.



The video was directed by Japanese director Nagi Noda. Although I can find no reason why the commercial was pulled, Jack White has said that he “saw this as an opportunity to record an inspirational song that could reach a worldwide audience in a big way.”

The world may never know.


April 17, 2011-
The hugely successful series Game of Thrones debuted on HBO, on this date.



Writer George R.R. Martin was approached several times with plans to adapt his (still unfinished) book series A Song of Ice and Fire into a movie, but he rejected them all, as he thought his books were much too expansive to be made into a movie. He had purposely written them to be virtually unfilmable, and he also declined offers to adapt only certain storylines from the book. When David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told him that they wanted to make a series out of it, he asked them who they thought Jon Snow's mother could be. Satisfied with the answer, he agreed to sell the rights to the book.


Another job positin from The ACME Employment Agency


Today in History:
April 17, 1397 –
Stand-up comedy begins today - Geoffrey Chaucer starts to recite the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II on this date.



scholars believe this is the start day of the book’s pilgrimage in 1387.


April 17, 1524 -
Giovanni da Verrazzano, another in a long line of European knuckleheads trying to find a shortcut to India, reaches the Narrows, the strait between Staten Island and Long Island on this date. He made the rookie mistake of not having enough change to go through and is turned around by local native authorities.



For some reason, we (the U.S.) named two bridges after him. Little know fact - he tried that trick again of not having exact change for the tolls while exploring the island of Guadeloupe and was eaten by native toll takers.


April 17, 1960 -
Eddie Cochran, the man behind Summertime Blues and C’mon Everybody, was killed, and Gene Vincent was injured, when the taxi carrying them from a show in Bristol, England, crashed en route to the airport in London, where he was to catch a flight back home to the US.



The taxi driver lost control on a bend in the road and spun backwards into a concrete lamp post. Cochran, who was seated in the center of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée Sharon Sheeley, to shield her, and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open.


April 17, 1961 -
In an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro, 1,500 Cuban exiles make a series of amphibious landings at the Bay of Pigs. After it becomes painfully obvious in just a matter of hours that the forces were trained, equipped, and armed by the United States, the speed freak and known sex hound President John F. Kennedy withholds necessary air cover to protect them.



In three days of fighting, Cuba captures 1,197 of the rebels and killed approximately 200.


April 17, 1964 -
On March 19th, 1964, Geraldine 'Jerrie' Mock, a 38-year-old mother of three, jumped in the family Cessna 180 and departed Port Columbus (OH) Airport. Just over 23,000 miles later, after nearly a month dealing with unfamiliar cultures, mechanical problems and dangerous weather, she arrived back in Columbus to become the first woman to fly solo around the world on this date.



Mock's journey took about a month; aside from being the first woman to fly around the world by herself, she also set several speed records and was also the first woman to fly both the Atlantic and the Pacific.


April 17, 1964 -
Henry Ford II unveiled the Ford Mustang, championed by Ford Division general manager Lee Iacocca, at the New York World's Fair on this date.



the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers. Ford sold more than 400,000 Mustangs within its first year of production, far exceeding sales expectations. The first models carried a starting price tag of around $2,300.


April 17, 1964
The New York Mets played their first game at Shea Stadium on this date, when they lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The five tiered stadium seated 55,601 fans. For previous two years, the Mets had played their home games at the Polo Grounds, previously the home of the New York Giants.



It was the first stadium of its size to have an extensive escalator system, being able to convert from a football gridiron to a baseball diamond by two motor operated stands, not having light towers and in which every seat was directed at the center of the field.


April 17, 1967 -
The spacecraft Surveyor 3 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on this date. It will become the second U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, where it will study the lunar surface and send more than 6,300 pictures back to Earth.



Based on the spacecraft's surface sampling tests, scientists concluded the lunar surface was solid enough to hold the weight of an Apollo lunar module.


April 17, 1969 -
A Los Angeles jury convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy on this date. Sirhan received a death sentence, but it is later reduced to life in prison.



Poor Mr. Sirhan, one of the only people who might have spoken in his defense, Robert F. Kennedy, was dead.


April 17, 1975 -
Cambodia fell on this date, when communist insurgents known as the Khmer Rouge enter the capital city of Phnom Penh.



Not much else to say after except that hopefully we won't see a repeat of this in Kyiv.


April 17, 1986 -
The long forgotten 335 Year War (as it is now known) was a bloodless conflict between the Netherlands and the tiny Isles of Scilly, (situated off the western coast of mainland Cornwall,) which began as far back as 1651 during the English Civil War, officially ended on this date.



In 1985, a local Scilly historian, Roy Duncan, wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London to see if there was any evidence to support the seemingly absurd claim of a 335 year war between the two nations. To everyone’s surprise, the embassy uncovered a series of documents which suggested that the Netherlands and the Islands were, indeed, still at war! Duncan hastily wrote to the Dutch ambassador Rein Huydecoper inviting him to visit the islands and to sign a peace treaty. Huydecoper agreed, and on this date, a peace treaty was signed between the Isles of Scilly and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

For the first time in 335 years the Scillonians could sleep safety in their beds, for as the Ambassador remarked; “It must have been awful to know we could have attacked at any moment.”


April 17, 2014 -
Exoplanet science took a big leap when NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope confirmed the discovery of a rocky Earth-like planet orbiting the habitable zone of its star for the first time ever.



Kepler-186f is about 580 light years from humanity, and is around 11% greater in radius with respect to Earth. 186f is just one in a five planet system orbiting around the Red Dwarf star of the same designation.

So now you know.



And so it goes.

An important date in ACME History

A mid-1950s construction worker involved in the demolition of the J. C. Wilber Building finds a box inside a cornerstone. He opens it to reveal a singing, dancing frog (that came to be called Michigan J. Frog,) complete with top hat and cane.



According to the cartoon, One Froggy Night (1955), the box also contains a commemorative document dated April 16, 1892.


April 16, 1932 -
The Music Box, moment by moment one of the funniest Laurel and Hardy sound movies, premiered on this date.



The crate that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy wrestle with was empty, but the one shown sliding down the staircase really did have an upright piano in it. As it careens down the steps muffled, discordant tones can be heard.


April 16, 1956 -
The I Love Lucy Episode, Lucy's Italian Movie (the grape stomping episode) first aired on CBS TV on this date. This is considered on of the funniest episodes of the series.



The grape stompers were actual Italian women who didn't speak English. In a 1974 interview with Dick Cavett, Lucille Ball went in-depth on the making of the infamous scene in which she got in a fight in the grape vat, revealing that the fight was scripted but the other woman didn't understand that it was supposed to be phony, and as a result she wound up actually beating the hell out of Lucy. The audience and crew were oblivious to what was really happening and the fight stretched on so long that it had to be severely edited in the final cut of the show. Despite the hardships she endured during the making, Ball cited this as her favorite episode of the series.


April 16, 1962 -
This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite



Walter Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards as anchorman of The CBS Evening News on this date.


April 11, 1964 -
Needing one more song for his album, Dean Martin recorded Everybody Loves Somebody, which his friend Frank Sinatra recorded in 1947 and several other singers tried in the '50s, on this date.



Dean Martin hadn't had a substantial pop hit since his version of Volare went to #12 in 1958. In 1962, he signed with the Reprise record label, which was founded by Frank Sinatra. Reprise was able to put some promotional might behind Martin and give him a more contemporary sound. He kept his distance from rock and roll, but there was still an audience for his sound. Everybody Loves Somebody became the first chart-topper on Reprise; Martin was a reliable seller on the label throughout the '60s, with most of his singles landing on the Hot 100.


April 16, 1964 -
The Rolling Stones released their first, eponymously named album in the UK on this date.



When London Records released the Stones’ debut album in the US, it came with a slightly different album cover. The photo was the same, but the band’s name featured prominently on the front, along with a subtitle: England’s Newest Hit Makers.


April 16, 1973 -
In order to fulfill a contractual obligation with Lew Grade, Paul McCartney appeared in his first TV special (since the disastrous Magical Mystery Tour,) James Paul McCartney, on this date.



Although it was very highly anticipated – McCartney received a cover story on TV Guide – the reviews were dreadful. The New York Times dismissed it as “a series of disconnected routines strung together with commercials for Chevrolet.” The Washington Post was nastier, taking Linda to task as not being her husband’s artistic equal. “Mrs. McCartney’s previous careers … do not qualify her to perform in public,” according to the Post’s critic.


April 16, 1977 -
David Soul one half of TV cop show Starsky & Hutch, went to No.1 on the US singles chart (as well as the UK charts,) with Don't Give Up On Us, his only US hit, on this date.



This was written by Tony Macaulay, who co-wrote four other UK #1s: Baby Now That I've Found You for the Foundations, Let The Heartaches Begin for Long John Baldry, Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes) for Edison Lighthouse and Silver Lady for David Soul.


April 16, 1978 -
Directed by Marvin Chomsky and written by Gerald Green, the television mini-series, Holocaust, starring Fritz Weaver, Joseph Bottoms, Michael Moriarty, David Warner, Tovah Feldshuh, Rosemary Harris, Ian Holm, George Rose, Meryl Streep, James Woods, Blanche Baker, and Sam Wanamaker, recounts the Nazi genocide of European Jewry through two fictional families in Berlin: the Weisses, who are Jewish, and the Dorfs, who are Christian, premiered on NBC on this date.



The term "Holocaust" didn't exist in the German language until the 1980s. Due to the great success of this mini-series, it became common knowledge, and was chosen as "word of the year 1979" by the "Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache" (Society for German Language).


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
April 16, 1178 BC -
... The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world. - Theoclymenus



A solar eclipse may have marked the return of Odysseus, legendary King of Ithaca and one of the most recurrent characters in Western literature, to his kingdom after the Trojan War on this date.


April 16, 1865 -
President Abraham Lincoln lay in state on this date. Two days previously, he receives a cranial gunshot wound from a member of the nation's most famous acting families, John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln died the following day, primarily from ill-advised attempts to extract the bullet lodged in his brain.

At approximately the same time, a co-conspirator of Booth's, Lewis Powell broke into the Secretary of State William Seward's home and attacks his family.



Incredibly, Mr. Seward survives a stabbing to the face and neck. The president's death came only six days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.

So once again, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?


April 16, 1866 -
Dmitry Karakozov, a minor nobleman from Kostroma attempted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia at the gates of the Summer Garden in St. Petersburg on this date.

As the Tsar was leaving, Dmitry rushed forward to fire. The attempt was thwarted by Osip Komissarov, a peasant-born hatter's apprentice, who jostled Karakozov's elbow right before the shot was fired


April 16, 1889 -
Charles Spencer Chaplin, Jr, actor, writer, songwriter, composer, film producer and director was born on this date.



When Chaplin arrived in the United States with the Fred Karno troupe on October 2, 1912, in his second trip to America, according to Ellis Island immigration records, he had $45 in his pocket. He listed his half-brother Syd Chaplin, as his next of kin. Though his mother was still alive, she was in a mental hospital. Sailing with him was fellow Karno troupe member Arthur Stanley Jefferson - later to be known as Stan Laurel.


April 16, 1912 -
In 1911, Harriet Quimby earned the first US pilot's license issued to a woman. Less than a year later, Quimby, in a Bleriot monoplane, became the first woman to fly solo over the English Channel on this date.



Her achievement was overshadowed in the press however, by reports of the sinking of the Titanic.


April 16 1912 -
The remains of the R.M.S. Titanic came to rest at the bottom of the sea on this date. The unsinkable ship sank after being torn by iceberg. Of a total of 2,208 people, only 712 survived; 1,496 perished.



If the lifeboats had been filled to capacity, 1,178 people could have been saved. Of the first-class, 201 were saved (60%) and 123 died. Of the second-class, 118 (44%) were saved and 167 were lost. Of the third-class, 181 were saved (25%) and 527 perished. Of the crew, 212 were saved (24%) and 679 perished. The majority of deaths were caused by victims succumbing to hypothermia in the 28 °F (-2 °C) water. Of particular note, the entire complement of the 35-member Engineering Staff (25 engineers, 6 electricians, two boilermakers, one plumber, and one writer/engineer's clerk) were lost.



The entire ship's orchestra was also lost. Led by violinist Wallace Hartley, they played music on the boat deck of the Titanic that night to calm the passengers. It will probably forever remain unknown what this orchestra selected as their last piece. Based on evidence from various sources some argue it was Nearer my God to Thee while others say it was Autumn.


April 16, 1917 -
Following the February Revolution (which occurred in March,) Nicholas II chose to abdicate in March 1917 (which was actually March at the time.) Vladimir Lenin was in exile in Switzerland at the time, (we believe Lenin really was in Switzerland.)



A passer-by informed him about the Russian Tsar's abdication, so Lenin and a group of his followers returned to Russia in a train provided by the Germans to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. They were greeted at St Petersburg (which was known as Petrograd at the time,) station on this date in 1917 by a great reception.


April 16, 1939 -
Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, one of the leading pop singer and entertainer of the 1960s was born on this date.



The uniqueness of Dusty Springfield's voice was described by Burt Bacharach as: "You could hear just three notes and you knew it was Dusty."


April 16, 1943 -
LSD was first synthesized on April 7, 1938 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, as part of a large research program searching for medically useful ergot alkaloid derivatives. Its psychedelic properties were unknown until five years later, when Hofmann, acting on what he has called a "peculiar presentiment," returned to work on the chemical. He attributed the discovery of the compound's psychoactive effects to the accidental absorption of a tiny amount through his skin on this date.

https://realitysandwich.com/wp-content/uploads/albert-hofmann-lsd-my-problem-child.jpg Here is the first instance of the defense I did not inhale - I accidentally dropped acid.



Here is an excerpt from Dr. Hofmann's diary concerning this day -

... Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away....



Oh wow, the colors, the lights, man.


April 16, 1947 -
The French freighter Grandcamp, loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded at a port in Texas City, Texas on this date. The blast caused other explosions at a nearby chemical plant, spreading fires across oil refineries along the port.



An estimated 600 people were killed by the blast and the ensuing fires which swept the port and the surrounding town. The accident is considered the worst industrial accident in US history because of the high number of fatalities.


April 16, 1963 -
Martin Luther King wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, on this date. He composed it over the course of day, writing on a legal pad provided by his lawyers, margins of a newspaper, and, after running out of both of the above, toilet paper.



King’s response to the wrong-time, wrong-place accusation was succinct. “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here” he said. “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”


On a personal note, I want to wish Michael and Stephanie a very Happy Anniversary.

And so it goes.