- 100th Day of 2012 / 266 Remaining
- 72 Days Until Summer Begins
- Sunrise:6:42
- Sunset:7:41
- 12 Hr 59 Min
- Moon Rise:11:37pm
- Moon Set:8:40am
- Moon’s Phase: 87 %
- 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:12:45am/2:22pm
- Low:7:32am/7:27pm
- Rainfall
- This Year:12.97
- Last Year:24.61
- Normal To Date:20.91
- Annual Average: 22.28
- Holidays
- Baby Massage Day
- Jenkins's Ear Day
- National Cherish an Antique Day
- National Chinese Almond Cookie Day
- Martyr's Day-Tunisia
- National Day-Iraq
- Valour Day-Philippines
- Memorial Day/Independence Day-Georgia
- On This Day In …
- 1667 --- In Paris, The first public art exhibition was held at the Palais-Royale.
- 1859 --- A 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot's license. Clemens had signed on as a pilot's apprentice in 1857 while on his way to Mississippi. He had been commissioned to write a series of comic travel letters for the Keokuk Daily Post, but after writing five, decided he'd rather be a pilot than a writer. He piloted his own boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term "Mark Twain," a boatman's call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by "Mark Twain" and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years.
- 1865 --- At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option. In retreating from the Union army's Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee's army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler's Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o'clock in the afternoon. Lee and Grant, both holding the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican War and exchanged awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property--most important, the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee's starving men would be given Union rations. Shushing a band that had begun to play in celebration, General Grant told his officers, "The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again." Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks, for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end
- 1912 --- The first exhibition baseball game was held at Fenway Park in Boston. The game was between Red Sox and Harvard.
- 1913 --- On opening day at Ebbets Field, new home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, fans had to wait an hour to get in because nobody brought the key. Then there was no flag to salute for The National Anthem. Then the Dodgers lost to Philadelphia 1-0.
- 1928 --- Mae West made her glamorous debut on Broadway in the classic production of Diamond Lil.
- 1939 --- On Easter Sunday, more than 75,000 people come to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to hear famed African-American contralto Marian Anderson give a free open-air concert. Anderson had been scheduled to sing at Washington's Constitution Hall, but the Daughters of the American Revolution, a political organization that helped manage the concert hall, denied her the right to perform because of her race. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned her membership from the organization in protest, and Anderson's alternate performance at the Lincoln Memorial served greatly to raise awareness of the problem of racial discrimination in America. Anderson had struggled out of a childhood of poverty in South Philadelphia to become a world-renowned classical singer, first winning acclaim in the 1920s and touring extensively in Europe during the 1930s. Though the great Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini told her, "Yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years," recognition came slowly for Anderson in her native country. Even after her dramatic appearance at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, it was not until 1955 that she became the first African-American to be invited to perform at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. Three years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made her an honorary delegate to the United Nations, and in 1963 President John F. Kennedy awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Anderson died in Portland, Oregon, on April 8, 1993. She was 96 years old.
- 1953 --- Warner Brothers, the first of the major Hollywood studios to introduce 3-D motion pictures, chose this day to premiere The House of Wax at the Paramount Theatre in New York City. The stage show preceding the movie was headed by singer Eddie Fisher. The film’s stars, Vincent Price, Phyllis Kirk and Frank Lovejoy attended the premiere. A precursor to Warner’s 3-D presentation occurred in 1922 when The Power of Love opened in Los Angeles. The feature-length movie was filmed in a stereoscopic process called Fairall. The first official 3-D movie (viewed with special glasses), Bwana Devil, premiered in LA five months before the major studios got into the act. It starred Robert Stack and Barbara Britton. Although the critics panned the flick as “low-grade melodrama with Polaroid glasses,” the long lines at the box office convinced Warner and others to plan their own 3-D productions. In fact, 23 3-D films were released in 1953, The House of Wax being the first.
- 1959 --- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduces America's first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald Slayton. The seven men, all military test pilots, were carefully selected from a group of 32 candidates to take part in Project Mercury, America's first manned space program. NASA planned to begin manned orbital flights in 1961.
- 1965 --- Major-league baseball’s first indoor game was played at the opening of the Houston Astrodome. President Lyndon Johnson was there, but Texas governor John Connally threw out the first ball. In an exhibition game the Houston Colt-45s beat the New York Yankees 2-1.
- 1969 --- The Chicago Eight, indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, plead not guilty. The trial for the eight antiwar activists had begun in Chicago on March 20. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party ("Yippies"); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines. They were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot. Attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass represented all but Seale. The trial, presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman, turned into a circus as the defendants and their attorneys used the court as a platform to attack Nixon, the war, racism, and oppression. Their tactics were so disruptive that at one point Judge Hoffman ordered Seale gagged and strapped to his chair. (Seale's disruptive behavior eventually caused the judge to try him separately). When the trial ended in February 1970, Hoffman found the defendants and their attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of court and sentenced them to terms ranging from two to four years. Although declaring the defendants not guilty of conspiracy, the jury found all but Froines and Weiner guilty of intent to riot. The others were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000. However, none of the defendants served time because in 1972 a Court of Appeals overturned the criminal convictions and eventually most of the contempt charges were also dropped.
- 1970 --- Paul McCartney quit the Beatles
- 1992 --- U.S. President George Bush fell suddenly ill at a state dinner in Japan. He became pale, slumped in his chair, and threw up on the Japanese Prime Minister.
- Birthdays
- Paul Robeson
- Charles Baudelaire
- Emily Hobhouse
- Sol Hurok
- Frank King
- Curly Lambeau
- Keshia Knight Pulliam
- Dennis Quaid
- Jim Fowler
- Hugh Hefner
- Ward Bond
- Carl Perkins
- Avery Schreiber
- Kristen Stewart
- Gregory Pincus