- 110th Day of 2015 255 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 62 Days
- Sunrise:6:26
- Sunset:7:50
- 13 Hours 24 Minutes
- Moon Rise:8:02am
- Moon Set:10:16pm
- Phase:1%
- Full Moon May 3 @ 8:44pm
- Full Flower 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:12:06am/1:27pm
- Low:6:44am/6:45pm
- Holidays
- Boston Marathon Day
- Patriots Day
- Lima Bean Respect Day
- National Look Alike Day
- National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day
- National Pot Smokers Day
- Chinese Language Day
- On This Day
- 1689 --- James II, the former British king, begins a siege of Londonderry, a Protestant stronghold in Northern Ireland. In 1688, James II, a Catholic, was deposed by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, in a bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution. James fled to France and in 1689 landed in Ireland, hoping to incite his Catholic supporters there and regain the British throne.
- 1775 --- American troops began the siege of British-held Boston.
- 1792 --- France declared war on Austria, marking the start of the French Revolutionary wars.
- 1841 --- Edgar Allen Poe’s story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, first appears in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. The tale is generally considered to be the first detective story. The story describes the extraordinary “analytical power” used by Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin to solve a series of murders in Paris. Like the later Sherlock Holmes stories, the tale is narrated by the detective’s roommate.
- 1865 --- Safety matches were first advertised.
- 1871 --- With passage of the Third Force Act, popularly known as the Ku Klux Act, Congress authorizes President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations, and use military force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
- 1902 --- Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolate radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris. In 1898, the Curies discovered the existence of the elements radium and polonium in their research of pitchblende. One year after isolating radium, they would share the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with French scientist A. Henri Becquerel for their groundbreaking investigations of radioactivity.
- 1916 --- Sir Roger Casement landed in Ireland to incite rebellion against the British. Casement, a British diplomat, was captured within hours and was hanged for high treason on August 3.
- 1926 --- Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), and the Warner Brothers film studio officially introduce Vitaphone, a new process that will enable the addition of sound to film.
- 1939 --- Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams made his major league debut with the Boston Red Sox.
- 1945 --- Soviet troops began their attack on Berlin.
- 1955 --- Bo Diddley made his first appearance at the Apollo Theater in New York City.
- 1971 --- The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.
- 1972 --- The manned lunar module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon.
- 1977 --- Woody Allen's film "Annie Hall" premiered.
- 1978 --- Soviet aircraft force a Korean Air Lines passenger jet to land in the Soviet Union after the jet veers into Russian airspace. Two people were killed and several others injured when the jet made a rough landing on a frozen lake about 300 miles south of Murmansk.
- 1980 --- The Castro regime announces that all Cubans wishing to emigrate to the U.S. are free to board boats at the port of Mariel west of Havana, launching the Mariel Boatlift. The first of 125,000 Cuban refugees from Mariel reached Florida the next day.
- 1986 --- Michael Jordan scores 63 points in an NBA playoff game against the Boston Celtics, setting a post-season scoring record. Despite Jordan’s achievement, the Bulls lost to the Celtics in double overtime, 135-131.
- 1992 --- In London, a memorial concert was held for Freddie Mercury (Queen). Elton John, Guns N' Roses, Roger Daltrey, Liza Minnelli, David Bowie, George Michael, Def Leppard, and Spinal Tap performed.
- 1999 --- The Disney film 'A Bug's Life' was released. It was the first 100% digital DVD. It was transferred directly from the digital source to DVD.
- 1999 --- Two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. At about11:20 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in long trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage.
- 2008 --- 26-year-old Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 at Twin Ring Montegi in Montegi, Japan, making her the first female winner in IndyCar racing history.
- 2010 --- An explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, kills 11 people and triggers the largest offshore oil spill in American history. The rig had been in the final phases of drilling an exploratory well for BP, the British oil giant. By the time the well was capped three months later, an estimated 4.9 million barrels (or around 206 million gallons) of crude oil had poured into the Gulf. The disaster began when a surge of natural gas from the well shot up a riser pipe to the rig’s platform, where it set off a series of explosions and a massive blaze. Of the 126 people on board the nearly 400-foot-long Deepwater Horizon, 11 workers perished and 17 others were seriously injured. The fire burned for more than a day before the Deepwater Horizon, constructed for $350 million in 2001, sank on April 22 in some 5,000 feet of water.
- Birthdays
- Carmen Electra
- Denis Leary
- Harold Lloyd
- Lionel Hampton
- Tito Puente
- Elena Verdugo
- George Takei
- Ryan O’Neal
- Steve Spurrier
- Luther Vandross
- Clint Howard
- Crispin Glover
Monday April 20, 2015
