April 18
It’s Look-Alike Day and International Juggler’s Day and National Animal Crackers Day and Newspaper Columnists Day and Pet Owners Independence Day
ON THIS DAY…
1506 The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica is laid
1775 American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode though the towns of Massachusetts giving the warning that “the British are coming”
1791 National Guardsmen prevented Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris
1846 The telegraph ticker was patented by R.E. House
1853 The first train in Asia began running from Bombay to Tanna
1861 Colonel Robert E. Lee turned down an offer to command the Union armies during the Civil War
1881 Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, NM
1895 New York State passed an act that established free public baths
1906 The great San Francisco Earthquake, estimated at 7.9-8.3 on the Richter Scale, destroys much of the city; Van Ness Avenue marks the line where the fire that resulted from the earthquake was stopped
1909 Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome
1910 Walter R. Brookins made the first airplane flight at night
1921 Buster Keaton’s short film The High Sign is released in the US
1922 Silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is banned from filmmaking by Will Hays who was the President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association
1923 Yankee Stadium opened in the Bronx, NY where the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1; John Phillip Sousa’s band played the National Anthem
1924 Simon and Schuster, Inc. published the first “Crossword Puzzle Book”
1934 The first laundromat in the US opens in Fort Worth, TX
1936 Gene Autry records “Back in the Saddle Again”
1942 Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France
1946 The League of Nations dissolves itself, clearing the way for all of its assets to be handed over to the United Nations
1949 The Republic of Eire (Southern Ireland) is formally proclaimed in Dublin with the passing of the Republic of Ireland Act
1950 The first transatlantic jet passenger trip was completed
1958 A US federal court rules that poet Ezra Pound be released from an insane asylum
1960 The Mutual Broadcasting System was sold to the 3M Company of Minnesota for $1.25 million
1962 Cape Fear starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck is released in the US
1964 The Beatles appearance on ATV’s Morecambe And Wise Show
1968 London Bridge is sold to American Robert McCullough for one million pounds; it was later re-erected in Arizona
1978 The US Senate approved the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999
1979 The TV show Real People premiered
1980 Rhodesia became in independent nation of Zimbabwe
1982 The name of the Zimbabwean capital is changed from Salisbury to Harare
1983 The Disney Channel begins broadcasting
1983 The US Embassy in Beirut was blown up by a suicide car-bomber; 63 people were killed including 17 Americans
1985 Ridley Scott’s Legend starring Tom Cruise, Tim Curry and Mia Sara is released in the US
1994 Disney’s first stage show, Beauty and the Beast: A New Musical, officially opens on Broadway at the Palace Theater
1998 Toon Disney begins broadcasting
BORN:
1480 Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Renaissance Valencian who later became Pope Alexander VI; her family later came to epitomize the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexual corruption alleged to be characteristic of the Renaissance Papacy
1857 Clarence Darrow, lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks and defending John T. Scopes in the so-called “Monkey” Trial, in which he opposed the statesman William Jennings Bryan
1922 Barbara Hale, Emmy Award-winning actress (Perry Mason, The Boy with Green Hair, Lorna Doone, Airport)
1922 Nigel Kneale, influential screenwriter (Quatermass, The Stone Tape, The Entertainer)
1929 Peter Jeffrey, actor (Doctor Who: “The Androids of Tara”, If…, Elizabeth R, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, O Lucky Man!, The Odessa File)
1930 Clive Revill, actor (Bunny Lake Is Missing, Modesty Blaise, The Legend of Hell House, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back)
1934 James Drury, actor (Forbidden Planet, Love Me Tender, Pollyanna, The Virginian, Alias Smith and Jones)
1937 Robert Hooks, actor (Airport ’77, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, The Flash, Posse)
1946 Hayley Mills, actress (Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, The Flame Trees of Thika, Deadly Strangers)
1947 James Woods, Emmy Award-winning actor (My Name Is Bill W., Promise, Shark, Vampires, Salvador, Ghosts of Mississippi)
1947 Cindy Pickett, actress (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Amerika, Hot to Trot, Son-in-Law)
1950 Kenny Ortega, Emmy Award-winning director and choreographer (High School Musical, XIX Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony, Newsies)
1954 Rick Moranis, Emmy Award-winning writer, actor (SCTV Network 90, Parenthood, Spaceballs, Little Shop of Horrors, Strange Brew, Ghost Busters, Streets of Fire)
1956 Melody Thomas Scott, actress (The Car, The Fury, Piranha, The Young and the Restless)
1956 Eric Roberts, actor (The Dark Knight, Doctor Who, Heroes, Star 80)
1961 Jane Leeves, actress (Frasier, James and the Giant Peach, To Live and Die in L.A.)
1963 Conan O’Brien, Emmy Award-winning writer (Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien)
1963 Eric McCormack, Emmy Award-winning actor (Will & Grace, Free Enterprise, Lonesome Dove, The Lost World)
1969 Keith R.A. DeCandido, science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Star Trek fiction, he has written tie-ins for other popular sci-fi and fantasy series as well, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Andromeda and Farscape
1971 David Tennant, actor (Doctor Who, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Quatermass Experiment, Casanova, Blackpool)
1972 Eli Roth, writer-director (Hostel, Cabin Fever)
1974 Edgar Wright, writer-director (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz)
1976 Melissa Joan Hart, actress (Clarissa Explains It All, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Sabrina the Animated Series, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker)
1984 America Ferrera, Emmy Award-winning actress (Ugly Betty, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants)
2006 Suri Cruise, daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes
DIED:
1674 John Graunt, statistician, generally considered to be the founder of the science of demography, the statistical study of human populations, dies at 54
1802 Erasmus Darwin, prominent physician, poet, philosopher, botanist, naturalist and the grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin; he was one of the leading intellectuals of 18th century England and as a naturalist, he formulated one of the first formal theories on evolution in Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life, dies at 70
1873 Justus Liebig, chemist who made many important contributions to the early systematization of organic chemistry, to the application of chemistry to biology (biochemistry), to chemical education, and to the basic principles of agricultural chemistry, dies at 69
1882 Sir Henry Cole, industrial designer, museum director and writer who produced the first commercial Christmas card; he played a pivotal role in the introduction of the Penny Post, the English postal system, influenced the expansion of railways, helped establish the Victoria and Albert Museum, contributed greatly to the success of Londons Great Exhibition of 1851, and promoted art and science education, dies at 73
1945 Sir John Ambrose Fleming, engineer who made numerous contributions to electronics, photometry, electric measurements, and wireless telegraphy, dies at 95
1945 Ernie Pyle, one of the most famous war correspondents of World War II, is killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of Ii Shima in the Pacific; he was 44
1955 Albert Einstein, physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect; he was recognized in his own time as one of the most creative intellects in human history, in the first 15 years of the 20th century Einstein advanced a series of theories that proposed entirely new ways of thinking about space, time, and gravitation, dies at 76
2002 Thor Heyerdahl, ethnologist and adventurer who organized and led the famous Kon-Tiki (1947) and Ra (1969-70) transoceanic scientific expeditions, dies at 87
2003 Edgar Frank Codd, computer scientist and mathematician who laid the theoretical foundation for relational databases, for storing and retrieving information in computer records, dies at 79