April 14

It’s National Pecan Day and Ex Spouse Day and International Moment of Laughter Day and Look up at the Sky Day and Reach as High as You Can Day

ON THIS DAY…
43BC Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar’s assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in Mutina, defeats the forces of the consul Pansa, who is killed
1471 In England, the Yorkists under Edward IV defeat the Lancastrians under Warwick at the battle of Barnet; the Earl of Warwick was killed and Edward IV resumed the throne
1543 Bartoleme Ferrelo returned to Spain after discovering San Francisco Bay in the New World
1611 The word “telescope” was first used in public by Prince Federico Cesi at a banquet held by the pioneer scientific society, the Academy of Linceans
1775 The first abolition society in the North America is established; The “Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage” is organized in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush
1828 Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary
1846 The Donner Party of pioneers departs Springfield, IL for California
1860 The first Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, MO
1863 The first US patent for a continuous-roll printing press was issued to William Bullock
1865 President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth
1865 Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in his home by Lewis Powell
1894 Thomas Edison demonstrates the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence, in NYC
1900 French President Emile Loubet opens the Paris International Exhibition, covering 547 acres and is the biggest of its kind in European history
1902 James Cash (J.C.) Penney opened his first retail store in Kemmerer, WY; it was called the Golden Rule Store
1910 President William Howard Taft threw out the first ball for the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics
1912 The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,503 lives
1914 The first US patent for a non-skid tire pattern was issued to Stacy G. Carkhuff of the Firestone Rubber Co. of Akron, OH
1918 The US First Aero Squadron engaged in America’s first aerial dogfight with enemy aircraft over Toul, France
1927 The first Volvo car premieres, in Gothenburg, Sweden
1927 Frozen fish fingers were patented in the UK by Clarence Birdseye
1928 Laugh, Clown, Laugh starring Lon Chaney and Loretta Young opens in US movie theaters
1931 Spain is declared a republic after King Alfonso abdicates and flees the country
1932 The atom was split by a proton beam on a lithium target by two physicists, Englishman Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Irishman Errnest Walton who had developed the first nuclear particle accelerator (the Cockcroft-Walton generator) for which they shared 1951 Nobel Prize for Physics
1934 Disney’s Silly Symphony cartoon The Big Bad Wolf is released
1955 Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” was released
1956 The first practical commercial black-and-white video recorder was demonstrated at a broadcast convention in Chicago and simultaneously in Redwood City, CA; the VT-100 by Ampex Corporation of Redwood City was the size of a deep-freezer with an additional five 6-foot racks of circuitry
1958 The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days
1960 Bye Bye Birdie premiered on Broadway
1964 A Delta rocket’s third-stage motor prematurely ignites in an assembly room at Cape Canaveral, killing 3
1965 Beach Blanket Bingo starring Frankie and Annette opens in US theaters
1967 The final episode of Where the Action Is aired on ABC-TV
1967 It’s a Bikini World starring Tommy Kirk and Deborah Walley opens in US theaters
1969 The 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV special aired on NBC
1980 Gary Numan released “The Touring Principle,” a 45-minute concert video; it was the first commercially available home rock music videocassette
1981 America’s first operational space shuttle, Columbia, returned to Earth after a three-day test flight; the shuttle orbited the Earth 36 times during the mission
1984 The Texas Board of Education began requiring that the state’s public school textbooks describe the evolution of human beings as “theory rather than fact”
1993 British archaeologists unearth a 7,000-year-old seafarers’ village on Dalma Island in the United Arab Emirates; it was the first major settlement of the Ubaid period in that area
1999 Tammy Wynette’s body was exhumed and an autopsy performed in Nashville at the request of her husband, George Richey
2000 American Psycho starring Christian Bale and his chainsaw opens in US theaters
2002 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by his country’s military
2003 Human Genome Project successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy
2005 Oregon Supreme Court nullifies nearly 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year earlier by Multnomah County

BORN:
1629 Christian Huygens, mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, who founded the wave theory of light, discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn, and contributed to the science of dynamics – the study of the action of forces on bodies
1827 Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, archaeologist often called the “father of British archeology,” who stressed the need for total excavation of sites, thorough stratigraphic observation and recording, and prompt and complete publication
1857 Sir Victor Horsley, physiologist and neurosurgeon who was first to remove a spinal tumor; he also made valuable studies of thyroid activity, rabies prevention, and the functions of localized areas of the brain
1866 Anne Mansfield Sullivan, teacher best known as the tutor of Helen Keller
1898 Harold Stephen Black, electrical engineer who discovered and developed the negative-feedback principle, in which amplification output is fed back into the input, thus producing nearly distortionless and steady amplification
1904 Sir John Gielgud, Academy Award-winning actor (Arthur, Becket, Shine, Time After Time)
1925 Rod Steiger, Academy Award-winning actor (In the Heat of the Night, On the Waterfront, The Amityville Horror, End of Days)
1926 Gloria Jean, actress (Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, Ghost Catchers, Copacabana)
1929 Gerry Anderson, iconic TV producer (Thunderbirds, Supercar, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, UFO, Space: 1999)
1930 Bradford Dillman, actor (Compulsion, The Bridge at Remagen, The Mephisto Waltz, Escape from the Planet of the Apes)
1935 Loretta Lynn, Grammy Award-winning country music singer-songwriter (“Coal Miner’s Daughter”, “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man”)
1936 Kenneth Mars, actor (The Producers, Young Frankenstein)
1936 Frank Serpico, retired New York City Police Department officer who is most famous for testifying against police corruption in 1971
1941 Julie Christie, Academy Award-winning actress (Darling, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Demon Seed, Don’t Look Now)
1949 John Shea, Emmy Award-winning actor (Baby M, Lois and Clark, Mutant X, Stealing Home)
1949 Chris Langham, actor and Emmy Award-winning writer (The Muppet Show, Help, The Thick of It, People Like Us)
1949 Dave Gibbons, writer and comic book artist (Watchmen, Dan Dare, The Originals)
1954 Bruce Sterling, science fiction author (The Artificial Kid, Islands in the Net, Holy Fire)
1957 Richard Jeni, stand-up comedian and actor (The Mask, Bird)
1960 Brad Garrett, Emmy-winning actor (Everybody Loves Raymond, Til Death, Ratatouille)
1961 Robert Carlyle, actor (Trainspotting, Hamish Macbeth, The Full Monty, Angela’s Ashes)
1961 Gina McKee, actress (Atonement, MirrorMask, The Lost Prince, Notting Hill)
1968 Anthony Michael Hall, actor (The Dead Zone, The Dark Knight, Weird Science, Edward Scissorhands)
1973 Adrien Brody, Academy Award-winning actor (The Pianist, King Kong, Angels in the Outfield)
1977 Sarah Michelle Gellar, Emmy Award-winning actress (All My Children, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scooby Doo)
1996 Abigail Breslin, actress (Nim’s Island, Signs, Raising Helen)

DIED:
1759 Georg Frideric Handel, Baroque composer who is famous for his operas, oratorios and concerti grossi (Messiah, Water Music), dies at 73
1917 Ludovik Lazarus Zamenhof, physician and oculist who created the most important of the international artificial languages – Esperanto, dies at 57
1934 Karl Dane, silent film actor (The Big Parade, The Son of the Sheik, Navy Blues), commits suicide at 47
1947 Herbert Spencer Jennings, zoologist, one of the first scientists to study the behaviour of individual microorganisms and to experiment with genetic variations in single-celled organisms, dies at 78
1964 Rachel Carson, biologist well known for her writings on environmental pollution and the natural history of the sea, dies at 56
1983 Pete Farndon, bassist for the band The Pretenders, dies of a drug overdose at the age of 29
1986 Simone de Beauvoir, author and philosopher (She Came to Stay, The Second Sex), dies at 78
1995 Burl Ives, Academy Award-winning actor, acclaimed folk music singer and author (The Big Country, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, East of Eden), dies at 85
1999 Anthony Newley, actor, singer, Grammy Award-winning songwriter (Doctor Dolittle, X the Unknown, The Old Curiosity Shop), dies at 67
1999 Ellen Corby, Emmy Award-winning actress (The Waltons, I Remember Mama, Shane), dies at 87
2007 Don Ho, musician and entertainer (“Tiny Bubbles”), dies at 76