- 106th Day of 2016 260 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 66 Days
- Sunrise: 6:32
- Sunset: 7:46
- 12 Hours 46 Minutes
- Moon Rise: 2:03pm
- Moon Set: 3:08am
- Phase: 65% 8 Days
- Next Full Moon April 21 @ 10:25pm
- Full Pink Moon, this name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High: 6:18am/8:11pm
- Low: 12:49am/1:12pm
- Rainfall (July 1 – June 30)
- This Year: 21.47
- Last Year: 17.97
- YTD Avg.: 22.33
- Annual Avg.: 23.80
- Holidays
- National Glazed Spiral Ham Day
- Income Tax Day
- Rubber Eraser Day
- Take A Wild Guess Day
- Jackie Robinson Day
- DNA Day
- Day Of Silence
- Microvolunteering Day
- Army Day-Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Recollection of The Deceased-Georgia
- Youth Day-Palau
- Cambodian/Thai/Laos New Year
- On This Day
- 1850 --- The city of San Francisco was incorporated.
- 1865 --- President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, dies from an assassin’s bullet. Shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington the night before, Lincoln lived for nine hours before succumbing to the severe head wound he sustained. Lincoln’s death came just after the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lincoln had just served the most difficult presidency in history, successfully leading the country through civil war. His job was exhausting and overwhelming at times. He had to manage a tremendous military effort, deal with diverse opinions in his own Republican party, counter his Democratic critics, maintain morale on the northern home front, and keep foreign countries such as France and Great Britain from recognizing the Confederacy. He did all of this, and changed American history when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, converting the war goal from reunion of the nation to a crusade to end slavery.
- 1878 --- Ivory Soap was developed by Harley Proctor. Air was whipped into the soap during production, which made it float. First sold in 1879, it was a huge success.
- 1894 --- Bessie Smith is born. Despite the immense influence her records had on the shape and course of American popular music in the 20th century, the recorded legacy of Bessie Smith only captures part of her historical significance. Yes, her first recording, “Downhearted Blues” (1923) sold a then-astonishing 800,000 copies, and her subsequent Columbia Records releases throughout the 1920s earned her the title “Empress of the Blues” and influenced countless important musicians in the decades that followed. But by the time Bessie Smith made her first record, she was already a seasoned show-business veteran—an actress, dancer, singer, all-around force of nature and, eventually, the highest-paid African-American performer in the world, by many accounts.
- 1912 --- The British ocean liner Titanic sinks into the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. The massive ship, which carried 2,200 passengers and crew, had struck an iceberg two and half hours before. On April 10, the RMS Titanic, one of the largest and most luxurious ocean liners ever built, departed Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The Titanicwas designed by the Irish shipbuilder William Pirrie and built in Belfast, and was thought to be the world’s fastest ship. It spanned 883 feet from stern to bow, and its hull was divided into 16 compartments that were presumed to be watertight. Because four of these compartments could be flooded without causing a critical loss of buoyancy, the Titanic was considered unsinkable. While leaving port, the ship came within a couple of feet of the steamer New Yorkbut passed safely by, causing a general sigh of relief from the passengers massed on theTitanic‘s decks. On its first journey across the highly competitive Atlantic ferry route, the ship carried some 2,200 passengers and crew. After stopping at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, to pick up some final passengers, the massive vessel set out at full speed for New York City. However, just before midnight on April 14, the RMS Titanic failed to divert its course from an iceberg and ruptured at least five of its hull compartments. These compartments filled with water and pulled down the bow of the ship. Because the Titanic‘s compartments were not capped at the top, water from the ruptured compartments filled each succeeding compartment, causing the bow to sink and the stern to be raised up to an almost vertical position above the water. Then the Titanic broke in half, and, at about 2:20 a.m. on April 15, stern and bow sank to the ocean floor.
- 1947 --- Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson broke the color barrier in a sport that had been segregated for more than 50 years. Exactly 50 years later, on April 15, 1997, Robinson’s groundbreaking career was honored and his uniform number, 42, was retired from Major League Baseball by Commissioner Bud Selig in a ceremony attended by over 50,000 fans at New York City’s Shea Stadium. Robinson’s was the first-ever number retired by all teams in the league.
- 1955 --- The first franchised McDonald's was opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, by Ray Kroc, who bought the hamburger restaurant owned by the McDonald brothers. On opening day a 2 patty hamburger was 15 cents and French Fries were 10 cents.
- 1959 --- Four months after leading a successful revolution in Cuba, Fidel Castro visits the United States. The visit was marked by tensions between Castro and the American government. The trip got off to an inauspicious start when it became clear that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had no intention of meeting with Castro. Instead, Eisenhower went to the golf course to avoid any chance meeting with Castro. Castro gave a talk to the Council on Foreign Affairs, a New York-based group of private citizens and former government officials interested in U.S. international relations. Castro was confrontational during the session, indicating that Cuba would not beg the United States for economic assistance. Angered by some of the questions from the audience, Castro abruptly left the meeting. Finally, before departing for Cuba, Castro met with Vice President Richard Nixon. Privately, Nixon hoped that his talk would push Castro “in the right direction,” and away from any radical policies, but he came away from his discussion full of doubt about the possibility of reorienting Castro’s thinking. Nixon concluded that Castro was “either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline-my guess is the former.”
- 1967 --- The Nancy and Frank Sinatra duet "Somethin' Stupid" hit #1 on the U.S. singles chart. It was the first father and daughter act to hit #1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkQtbxA0N4g
- 1967 --- Massive parades to protest Vietnam policy are held in New York and San Francisco. In New York, police estimated that 100,000 to 125,000 people listened to speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., Floyd McKissick, Stokely Carmichael and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Prior to the march, nearly 200 draft cards were burned by youths in Central Park. In San Francisco, black nationalists led a march, but most of the 20,000 marchers were white.
- 1989 --- Students in Beijing launched a series of pro democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang. The protests led to the Tienanmen Square massacre.
- 1989 --- In Sheffield, England, 96 people were killed and hundreds were injured at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium when a crowd surged into an overcrowded standing area. Ninety-four died on the day of the incident and two more later died from their injuries.
- 2000 --- Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles became the 24th major league player to reach 3,000 hits.
- 2013 --- Two bombs go off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people in attendance. Four days later, after an intense manhunt that shut down the Boston area, police captured one of the bombing suspects, 19-year-old Dzhohkar Tsarnaev; his older brother and fellow suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died following a shootout with law enforcement earlier that same day. The 117th Boston Marathon began in the morning from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, with some 23,000 participants. At around 2:49 that afternoon, with more than 5,700 runners still in the race, two pressure cooker bombs hidden in backpacks exploded within seconds of each other near the finish line along Boylston Street. Three people died: a 23-year-old woman, a 29-year-old woman and an 8-year-old boy. Among the scores of others who were injured, more than a dozen people required amputations.
- Birthdays
- Leonardo Da Vinci
- A Philip Randolph
- Henry James
- Harold Washington
- Bessie Smith
- Nikita Kruschcev
- Hans Conried
- Roy Clark
- Elizabeth Montgomery
- Claudia Cardinale
- Walt Hazzard
- Amy Wright
- Heloise (Ponce Kiah Marchelle Heloise Cruse Evans)
- EmmaThompson
- Samantha Fox
- Emma Watson
- Seth Rogan
Glazed Spiral Ham Day-KALW Almanac-4/15/2016
