- 113th Day of 2016 253 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 59 Days
- Sunrise: 6:22
- Sunset: 7:52
- 13 Hours 30 Minutes
- Moon Rise: 8:30pm
- Moon Set: 6:55am
- Full Moon April 22 @ 1:25am
- 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: 12:21pm/11:49pm
- Low: 5:54am/5:47pm
- Holidays
- Earth Day
- April Showers Day
- Girl Scout Leaders Day
- National Jelly Bean Day
- Chemists Celebrate The Earth Day
- “In God We Trust” Day
- International Mother Earth Day
- On This Day
- 1509 --- Henry VIII became king of England following the death of his father, Henry VII.
- 1778 --- Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the port at midnight, when ebb tide would leave the shops at their most vulnerable. Jones and his 30 volunteers had greater difficulty than anticipated rowing to the port, which was protected by two forts. They did not arrive until dawn. Jones’ boat successfully took the southern fort, disabling its cannon, but the other boat returned without attempting an attack on the northern fort, after the sailors claimed to have been frightened away by a noise. To compensate, Jones set fire to the southern fort, which subsequently engulfed the entire town.
- 1889 --- At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land. The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. Initially considered unsuitable for white colonization, Indian Territory was thought to be an ideal place to relocate Native Americans who were removed from their traditional lands to make way for white settlement. The relocations began in 1817, and by the 1880s, Indian Territory was a new home to a variety of tribes, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Cheyenne, Commanche, and Apache.
- 1954 --- Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army, which he charges with being “soft” on communism. These televised hearings gave the American public their first view of McCarthy in action, and his recklessness, indignant bluster, and bullying tactics quickly resulted in his fall from prominence.
- 1956 --- Elvis Presley made his Las Vegas debut at the Frontier Hotel.
- 1970 --- The first Earth Day activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify. Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological awareness. “The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy,” Senator Nelson said, “and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda.” Earth Day indeed increased environmental awareness in America, and in July of that year the Environmental Protection Agency was established by special executive order to regulate and enforce national pollution legislation.
- 1972 --- Antiwar demonstrations prompted by the accelerated U.S. bombing in Southeast Asia draw somewhere between 30,000 to 60,000 marchers in New York; 30,000 to 40,000 in San Francisco; 10,000 to 12,000 in Los Angeles; and smaller gatherings in Chicago and other cities throughout the country. The new bombing campaign was in response to the North Vietnam’s massive invasion of South Vietnam in March. As the demonstrations were happening, bitter fighting continued all over South Vietnam. In the Mekong Delta, for example, the fighting was the heaviest it had been in 18 months.
- 1978 --- Bob Marley and the Wailers performed at the One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica. It was Marley's first public appearance in Jamaica since being wounded in an assassination attempt a year and a half earlier.
- 1978 --- It was Marshall Checker, of the legendary Checker brothers, who first discovered them in the gritty blues clubs of Chicago’s South Side in 1969 and handed them their big break nine years later with an introduction to music-industry heavyweight and host of television’s Rock Concert,Don Kirshner. Actually, none of that is true, but it’s the story that Saturday Night Live‘s Paul Shaffer told on April 22, 1978 as he announced the worldwide television debut of that night’s musical guest, the Blues Brothers—the not-quite-real, not-quite-fake musical creation of SNL cast members Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. The characters and the band that Belushi and Aykroyd unveiled that night took more than two years to evolve. The first incarnation came during SNL‘s first season, in a January 17, 1976, appearance singing “I’m a King Bee” as “Howard Shore and his All-Bee Band.” There were no dark suits, skinny ties or Ray-Bans at that point, but the appearance did feature Aykroyd on the harmonica and Belushi on vocals belting out a blues classic very much in the style of the future Elwood and “Joliet” Jake Blues, albeit while wearing bee costumes. Belushi and Aykroyd honed their concept for the Blues Brothers Band and recruited an incredible roster of backing instrumentalists drawn from among the finest blues and R&B session musicians in the country. Even if their debut performance on this night in 1978 hadn’t been a huge hit, the band was far too good to break up after a single gig. Indeed, the closing portion of Paul Shaffer’s introduction that night—”Today they are no longer an authentic blues act, but have managed to become a viable commercial product”—ended up being borne out in real life, with the Blues Brothers earning three top-40 hits (“Soul Man,” “Rubber Biscuit” and “Gimme Some Lovin'”), a #1 pop album (Briefcase Full of Blues) and a piece of screen immortality via their 1980 film, The Blues Brothers.
- 1992 --- Dozens of sewer explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico, kill more than 200 people and damage 1,000 buildings on this day in 1992. The series of explosions was caused by a gas leak, the warning signs of which were ignored by the Mexican government and the national oil company. Three days prior to the explosions, the residents of a working-class neighborhood in Guadalajara noticed a foul smell in the air. The people experienced stinging in their eyes and throats. Some felt nauseous. Despite complaints, the local authorities did not seriously investigate the issue. At about 11:30 a.m., a series of powerful explosions began. They took place in an area about one mile long and seemed to come from 35 feet below-ground along the sewer system. Twenty square blocks of Guadalajara were leveled or seriously damaged. In two places, craters nearly 300 feet deep opened up, swallowing the surrounding buildings, roads, cars and buses.
- 1997 --- Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori orders a commando assault on the Japanese ambassador’s home, hoping to free 72 hostages held for more than four months by armed members of the Tupac Amaru leftist rebel movement. On December 16, 1996, 14 Tupac Amaru terrorists, disguised as waiters and caterers, slipped into the home of Japanese Ambassador Morihisa Aoki, where a reception honoring the birthday of the Japanese emperor was being held. The armed terrorists took 490 people hostage. Police promptly surrounded the compound, and the rebels agreed to release 170 women and elderly guests but declared they would kill the remaining 220 if their demands were not met.
- 2004 --- Pat Tillman, who gave up his pro football career to enlist in the U.S. Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, is killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. The news that Tillman, age 27, was mistakenly gunned down by his fellow Rangers, rather than enemy forces, was initially covered up by the U.S. military. Tillman was killed by gunfire while on patrol in a rugged area of eastern Afghanistan. The Army initially maintained that Tillman and his unit were ambushed by enemy forces. Tillman was praised as a national hero, awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart medals and posthumously promoted to corporal. Weeks later, Tillman’s family learned his death had been accidental. His parents publicly criticized the Army, saying they had been intentionally deceived by military officials who wanted to use their son as a patriotic poster boy. They believed their son’s death was initially covered up by military officials because it could’ve undermined support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- 2010 --- The Deepwater Horizon oil platform, operated by BP, sank into the Gulf of Mexico two days after a massive explosion that killed 11 workers.
- Birthdays
- Robert J Oppenheimer
- Immanuel Kant
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
- Dorothy Alexander
- Charles Mingus
- Yehudi Menuhin
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Eddie Albert
- Charlotte Rae
- Glen Campbell
- Jack Nicholson
- John Waters
- Peter Frampton
- Sheryl Lee
National Jelly Beans Day-KALW Almanac-4/22/2016
