- 97th day of 2014 278 days remaining
- 75 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise 6:44
- Sunset 7:38
- Moon Rise 12:49pm
- Moon Set 2:17am
- Moon Phase First Quarter
- This year 12.30
- Last year 16.24
- Normal 21.88
- Holidays
- National Coffee Cake Day
- National Beer Day
- No Housework Day
- International Beaver Day
- International Snailpapers Day
- World Health Day
- Day of Beauty & Mothers-Armenia
- Toussaint L’Ouverture Day-Haiti
- Women’s Day-Mozambique
- On This Day In History
- 1857 --- A cold front barrels over the U.S. and snow falls in every state in the country.
1862 --- Two days of heavy fighting conclude near Pittsburgh Landing in western Tennessee. The Battle of Shiloh became a
Union victory after the Confederate attack stalled on April 6, and fresh Yankee troops drove the Confederates from the field on April 7.
- 1927 --- The first long-distance TV transmission was sent from Washington, DC, to New York City. The audience saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.
- 1933 --- The beginning of the end of Prohibition. On this day 3.2 percent beer sales were allowed in advance of Prohibition's ratification.
- 1940 --- Booker T. Washington became the first African American to be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp. His likeness was issued on a 10-cent stamp.
- 1948 --- The World Health Organization (WHO) was established.
- 1948 --- The musical "South Pacific" by Rogers and Hammerstein debuted on Broadway.
- 1953 --- By a vote of 57 to 1, Dag Hammarskjold is elected secretary-general of the United Nations.The son of Hjalmar Hammarskjold, a former prime minister of Sweden, Dag joined Sweden's foreign ministry in 1947, and in 1951 formally entered the cabinet as deputy foreign minister. The same year, he traveled to the United Nations as vice chairman of the Swedish delegation, and in 1952 was appointed acting chairman. Elected U.N. secretary-general on the recommendation of the Security Council on April 7, 1953, he led missions to China, the Middle East, and elsewhere to become better acquainted with the United Nations' member states and to arrange peace settlements. In 1957, he was unanimously re-elected secretary-general.
- 1954 --- President Dwight D. Eisenhower coins one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a "domino" effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called "domino theory" dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade.
- 1961 --- President John F. Kennedy sends a letter to Congress in which he recommends the U.S. participate in an international campaign to preserve ancient temples and historic monuments in the Nile Valley of Egypt. The campaign, initiated by UNESCO, was designed to save sites threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
- 1963 --- Josip Broz Tito was proclaimed to be the leader of Yugoslavia for life.
- 1963 --- Jack Nicklaus became the youngest golfer to win the Green Jacket at the Masters Tournament. The ‘Golden Bear’ earned the win at one of golf’s premier events at the age of 23.
- 1969 --- The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
1970 --- John Wayne wins his first--and only--acting Academy Award, for his star turn in the director Henry Hathaway’s Western True Grit. Wayne appeared in some 200 movies over the course of his long and storied career. He established his tough, rugged, uniquely American screen persona most vividly in the many acclaimed films he made for the directors John Ford and Howard Hawks from the late 1940s into the early 1960s. He earned his first Oscar nomination, in the Best
Actor category, for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). The Alamo (1960), which Wayne produced, directed and starred in, earned a Best Picture nomination.Wayne’s Oscar for True Grit at the 42nd annual Academy Awards was generally considered to be a largely sentimental win, and a long-overdue reward for one of Hollywood’s most enduring performers.
- 1976 --- China's leadership deposed Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping
- 1979 --- Ken Forsch of Houston pitched a no-hitter over the Atlanta Braves, 6-0. Forsch walked only two batters. It was the earliest no-hitter ever pitched in a baseball season. He and his brother, Bob, a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, were the only brothers to ever pitch no-hitters in the big leagues. Bob threw a no-hitter on April 16, 1978.
- 1983 --- Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson made the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
- 1988 --- Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to final terms of a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Soviet troops began leaving on May 16, 1988
- 1989 --- A Soviet submarine carrying nuclear weapons sank in the Norwegian Sea.
- 1990 --- At Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center a display of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs went on display. On the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. The charges resulted in acquittal.
- 1994 --- Rwandan armed forces kill 10 Belgian peacekeeping officers in a successful effort to discourage international intervention in the genocide that had begun only hours earlier. In approximately three months, the Hutu extremists who controlled Rwanda brutally murdered an estimated 500,000 to 1 million innocent civilian Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the worst episode of ethnic genocide since World War II.
- 2000 --- U.S. President Clinton signed the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act of 2000. The bill reversed a Depression-era law and allows senior citizens to earn money without losing Social Security retirement benefits.
- 2001 --- NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft took off on a six-month, 286-million-mile journey to the red planet.
- 2002 --- The Roman Catholic archdiocese announced that six priests from the Archdiocese of New York were suspended over allegations of sexual misconduct.
- 2009 --- Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.
- Birthdays
- Billie Holiday
- Irene Castle
- WK Kellogg
- Janis Ian
- John McGraw
- Walter Winchell
- Daniel Ellsberg
- Freddie Hubbard
- Spencer Dryden
- David Frost
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Gov Jerry Brown (76)
- Jackie Chan
- Ravi Shankar
