April 20

It’s National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day and Volunteer Recognition Day and Look Alike Day

ON THIS DAY…
1534 Jacques Cartier begins his voyage, in which he will discover Canada and Labrador
1653 In England, Oliver Cromwell expelled the Rump Parliament for trying to pass the Perpetuation Bill that would have kept Parliament in the hands of only a few members
1792 France declares war on Austria, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars
1832 What is now Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas was established as a reservation by an act of Congress
1836 The territory of Wisconsin is created
1841 Edgar Allen Poe’s first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was published in Graham’s Magazine
1861 Robert E. Lee resigned from US Army
1862 The first test of pasteurization was completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard
1865 Safety matches were first advertised
1902 Marie and Pierre Curie isolated one gram of radium, the first sample of the radioactive element; they had refined it from eight tons of pitchblende ore
1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day
1924 Girl Shy starring Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston opens in US theaters
1926 Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film
1929 Big Business, a hilarious silent short starring Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, opens in the US
1934 Tarzan and His Mate starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan opens in the US
1940 The first US electron microscope was demonstrated in Philadelphia, PA
1946 Disney’s eighth animated feature Make Mine Music premieres in New York
1961 FM stereo broadcasting was approved by the FCC
1964 The first picturephone transcontinental call was made between New York City and Anaheim, CA
1972 Apollo 16 lands on the Moon
1977 Woody Allen’s Annie Hall opens in US theaters
1999 Two gunmen kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School
2007 A man with a handgun barricades himself in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself
2007 Hot Fuzz starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost opens in the US

BORN:
1745 Philippe Pinel, physician who pioneered in the humane treatment of the mentally ill; when he became the chief physician at the Paris asylum for men, Bicêtre, and made his first bold reform by unchaining patients, many of whom had been restrained for 30 to 40 years
1808 Napoleon III, the first President of the French Republic and the only emperor of the Second French Empire; he holds the unusual distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France
1889 Adolf Hitler, vegetarian Nazi shithead
1893 Harold Lloyd, film comedian, director, writer, producer, generally considered one of the top three silent film comedians (Safety Last!, Girl Shy, The Kid Brother)
1904 Bruce Cabot, actor (King Kong, Angel and the Badman, Cat Ballou, The Green Berets, Hellfighters, Diamonds are Forever)
1914 Robert Galambos, physiologist who, with Donald Griffin, confirmed that bats use echolocation to avoid obstacles while in flight
1914 Betty Lou Gerson, actress (Cinderella, The Fly, One Hundred and One Dalmatians)
1928 Gerald S. Hawkins, astronomer and mathematician who identified Stonehenge to be a prehistoric astronomical observatory
1937 George Takei, actor (Star Trek, Heroes, The Green Berets, Mulan II)
1939 Peter S. Beagle, Hugo Award-winning fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays (A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn)
1939 Joe Camp, director-scriptwriter-producer (Benji, The Double McGuffin, Hawmps!, Oh Heavenly Dog)
1941 Ryan O’Neal, actor (Peyton Place, Love Story, What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, Bones)
1945 Michael Brandon, actor (FM, Dempsey and Makepeace, Emerald Point N.A.S., Agatha Christie Marple: The Sittaford Mystery)
1949 Jessica Lange, two-time Academy Award-winning actress (Blue Sky, Tootsie, Francis, Country, Sweet Dreams, Music Box)
1949 Veronica Cartwright, actress (Alien, The Witches of Eastwick, The Birds, The Right Stuff, The Invasion)
1951 Louise Jameson, actress (Doctor Who, P.R.O.B.E., EastEnders, The Pale Horse, Bergerac)
1953 Sebastian Faulks, CBE, acclaimed novelist (Charlotte Gray, The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives, James Bond: Devil May Care)
1957 Geraint Wyn Davies, actor (Forever Knight, 24, Slings and Arrows, Dracula: The Series)
1959 Clint Howard, actor (Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Grand Theft Auto, Parenthood, The Rocketeer, Rob Zombie’s Halloween)
1961 Nicholas Lyndhurst, actor (Only Fools and Horses, Butterflies, The Piglet Files, Goodnight Sweetheart, David Copperfield)
1964 Crispin Glover, actor (Back to the Future, Willard, Charlie’s Angels, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape)
1964 Andy Serkis, actor (Lord of the Rings, The Prestige, King Kong, The Pale Horse)
1972 Carmen Electra, actress (Baywatch, Scary Movie, Tripping the Rift, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Meet the Spartans)
1976 Joey Lawrence, actor (Blossom, Oliver & Company, Urban Legends: Final Cut, American Dreams)

DIED:
1707 Johann Christoph Denner, inventor, maker of musical instruments and inventor of the clarinet, dies at 51
1821 Franz Karl Achard, chemist who invented a process for the large-scale extraction of table sugar (sucrose) from beets, and in 1801, opened the first sugar-beet factory, dies at 67
1912 Bram Stoker, writer of novels and short stories (Dracula, The Lair of the White Worm), dies at 64
1918 Ferdinand Braun, physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909 with Guglielmo Marconi for the development of wireless telegraphy; he is also known as the developer of the cathode-ray oscilloscope, dies at 67
1932 Giuseppe Peano, mathematician who founded symbolic logic, dies at 73
1933 William Henry Holmes, archaeologist, artist, and museum director who helped to establish professional archeology in the US, dies at 86
1940 Alfred Cort Haddon, one of the founders of modern British anthropology; he was virtually the sole exponent of anthropology at Cambridge for 30 years and it was largely through his work and especially his teaching that the subject assumed its place among the observational sciences, dies at 84
1991 Don Siegel, director-producer (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Hell Is for Heroes, Dirty Harry, The Shootist), dies at 78
1992 Benny Hill, actor-comedian (The Benny Hill Show, The Italian Job, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines), dies at 68
1993 Cantinflas, comedian/producer/writer/singer (Around the World in 80 Days, Pepe), dies at 81
1996 Christopher Robin Milne, the son of writer A.A. Milne (creator of Winnie the Pooh), dies at 75