- 118th Day / 248 Remaining
- 54 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:6:18
- Sunset:7:58
- 13 Hr 40 Min
- Moon Rise:11:03am
- Moon Set:12:47pm
- Moon’s Phase: 34 %
- The Next Full Moon
- May 5 @ 8:36pm
- Full Flower Moon
- Full Corn Planting Moon
- Full Milk Moon
- In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon.
- Tides
- High:2:37am/5:17pm
- Low:9:46am/10:15pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:15.65
- Last Year:25.17
- Normal To Date:22.84
- Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
- Holidays
- Administrative Professionals Day
- Babe Ruth Day
- Matanzas Mule Day
- National Prime Rib Day
- National Hairball Awareness Day
- Learn to Make An Apricot Cream Pie Day
- National Arbor Day 2012 (last Friday in April - many states observe different dates according to best local tree planting times)
- Freedom Day-South Africa
- Independence Day-Sierra Leone
- Independence Day-Togo
- Dan We Zo, alias St Louis Cleimeille-Haiti
- Horse Day-Turkmenistan
- Day of Resistance-Slovenia
- Constitution Day-Montenegro
- Constitution Day-Serbia
- On This Day In …
- 1417 --- A chicken in Basel, Switzerland, was burned at the stake for violating natural law by laying a brightly colored egg. The chicken was believed to be an Araucana-Ameraucana Strain, or the "Easter Egg Chicken," which gets its name from the Indian tribe of Chile where they were first discovered. Araucanas lay colored eggs of blue-green shades from turquoise to deep olive.
- 1521 --- Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines.
- 1773 --- The British Parliament passes the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply in the colonies. Even untaxed Dutch tea, which entered the colonies illegally through smuggling, was more expensive the East India tea, after the act took effect.
- 1865 --- Days after the end of the Civil War, the worst maritime disaster in American history occurs when the steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,100 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing all but 400 of those aboard. The Mississippi, with its dikes and levees damaged by four years of war, stood at flood stage, and most of those who died were drowned in the surging river. All but 100 of those killed were Union veterans, and most were Yankee survivors of Andersonville and other brutal Confederate prisoner of war camps.Many mourned the loss of these men, who survived the deplorable conditions at the Confederate camps only to die during their long-awaited trip home. The Sultana, overloaded with passengers, exploded just north of Memphis, Tennessee, in the early morning hours. The cause of the blast was determined to be a boiler malfunction.
- 1947 --- Organized baseball celebrated Babe Ruth Day. Major-league parks throughout the U.S. and Japan participated. A crowd of 60,000 fans honored their hero in ceremonies at Yankee Stadium in New York City. Ruth, who was dying of throat cancer, managed to put in an appearance to thank his former club.
- 1956 --- World heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano retires from boxing at age 31, saying he wants to spend more time with his family. Marciano ended his career as the only heavyweight champion with a perfect record--49 wins in 49 professional bouts, with 43 knockouts.
- 1957 --- Cubs pitcher Moe Drabowsky was hit on the foot by a pitched ball and fell on the ground in pain. Teammate pitcher Dick Drott immediately borrowed a wheelchair from a handicapped fan, picked up Drabowsky at home plate, and wheeled him to first base. Everyone laughed except plate umpire Stan Landes, who kicked Drott out of the game.
- 1965 --- R.C. Duncan patented a revolutionary disposable diaper he called "Pampers."
- 1976 --- David Bowie was detained on a train trip from Russia to Poland because he had nazi books. Bowie claimed the books were for “research on a project”.
- 1978 --- Afghanistan President Sardar Mohammed Daoud is overthrown and murdered in a coup led by procommunist rebels. The brutal action marked the beginning of political upheaval in Afghanistan that resulted in intervention by Soviet troops less than two years later. Daoud had ruled Afghanistan since coming to power in a coup in 1973. His relations with the neighboring Soviet Union had grown progressively worse since that time as he pursued a campaign against Afghan communists. The murder of a leading Afghan Communist Party leader in early April 1978 may have encouraged the communists to launch their successful campaign against the Daoud regime later that month. In the political chaos that followed the death of Daoud, Nur Mohammed Taraki, head of the Afghan Communist Party, took over the presidency. In December 1978, Afghanistan signed a 20-year "friendship treaty" with the Soviet Union, by which increasing amounts of Russian military and economic assistance flowed into the country. None of this, however, could stabilize the Taraki government. His dictatorial style and his decision to turn Afghanistan into a one-party state alienated many people in the heavily Moslem country. In September 1979, Taraki was himself overthrown and murdered. Three months later, Soviet troops crossed into Afghanistan and installed a government acceptable to the Russians, and a war between Afghan rebels and Soviet troops erupted. The conflict lasted until Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew the Soviet forces in 1988.
- 1987 --- The Justice Department barred Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from entering the United States, saying he had aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II.
- 1989 --- Student protestors took over Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
- 1992 --- The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed in Belgrade by the Republic of Serbia and its lone ally, Montenegro.
- 1983 --- Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros broke Walter Johnson’s strikeout record. He struck out the 3,509th batter of his career. The Astros won 4-2 over Montreal. Johnson’s record had been in the books for 55 years before being eclipsed by ‘The Ryan Express’.
- 2009 --- American auto giant General Motors (GM) says it plans to discontinue production of its more than 80-year-old Pontiac brand. Pontiac's origins date back to the Oakland Motor Car, which was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan, by Edward Murphy, a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer. In 1909, Oakland became part of General Motors, a conglomerate formed the previous year by another former buggy company executive, William Durant. The first Pontiac model made its debut as part of the Oakland line in the 1920. The car, which featured a six-cylinder engine, proved so popular that the Oakland name was eventually dropped and Pontiac became its own GM division by the early 1930s.
- Birthdays
- Birthday - Coretta Scott King
- Ulysses S. Grant (18th President)
- Sheena Easton
- Casey Kasem
- Kate Pierson
- Jack Klugman
- Ace Frehley
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Samuel Morse
- Rogers Hornsby
- Enos "Country" Slaughter
- Walter Lantz
- Judy Carne
- Cuba Gooding
- Ann Peebles