- 106th Day of 2015 259 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 66 Days
- Sunrise:6:31
- Sunset:7:46
- 13 Hours 15Minutes
- Moon Rise:5:13am
- Moon Set:5:42pm
- Phase:6%
- 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:9:43am/10:08pm
- Low:3:34am/3:41pm
- Holidays
- School Librarian Day
- Celebrate Teen Literature Day
- Get To Know Your Customer Day
- National Ask An Atheist Day
- Baked Ham With Pineapple Day
- National Eggs Benedict Day
- National High Five Day
- Wear Your Pajamas To Work Day
- Save the Elephant Day
- Teach Your Daughter To Volunteer Day
- Militia Day-Cuba
- Qana Memorial Day-Lebanon
- On This Day
- 1705 --- Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton.
- 1900 --- The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.
- 1912 --- Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
- 1917 --- Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. One month before, Czar Nicholas II had been forced from power when Russian army troops joined a workers’ revolt in Petrograd, the Russian capital.
- 1940 --- The first no-hit, no-run game to be thrown on an opening day of the major league baseball season was earned by Bob Feller. The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox 1-0.
- 1943 --- Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumes LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds. After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide, Dr. Hoffman was disturbed by unusual sensations and hallucinations. In his notes, he related the experience: “Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.” After intentionally taking the drug again to confirm that it had caused this strange physical and mental state, Dr. Hoffman published a report announcing his discovery, and so LSD made its entry into the world as a hallucinogenic drug. Widespread use of the so-called “mind-expanding” drug did not begin until the 1960s, when counterculture figures such as Albert M. Hubbard, Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey publicly expounded on the benefits of using LSD as a recreational drug. The manufacture, sale, possession, and use of LSD, known to cause negative reactions in some of those who take it, were made illegal in the United States in 1965.
- 1947 --- America's worst harbor explosion occurred in Texas City, Texas, when the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up, devastating the town. Another ship, the Highflyer, exploded the following day. The explosions and resulting fires killed more than 500 people and left 200 others missing.
- 1947 --- Multimillionaire and financier Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coins the term “Cold War” to describe relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
- 1956 --- On the 'I Love Lucy' show, Lucy stomped grapes in Rome, and wrestled with another female grape stomper. An inspiration for future 'food wrestling' entrepreneurs. Actually, this is one of the funniest sitcom episodes ever made.
- 1962 --- Walter Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards as anchorman of "The CBS Evening News."
- 1962 --- Bob Dylan debuted his song "Blowin' in the Wind" at Gerde's Folk City in New York.
- 1964 --- "The Rolling Stones (England's Newest Hitmakers)," the band's debut album, was released.
- 1966 --- Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman" was released.
- 1968 --- At a series of meetings in Honolulu, President Johnson discusses recent Allied and enemy troop deployments with U.S. military leaders. He also conferred with South Korean President Park Chung Hee to reaffirm U.S. military commitments to Seoul and assure Park that his country’s interests would not be compromised by any Vietnamese peace agreement.
- 1972 --- From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Apollo 16, the fifth of six U.S. lunar landing missions, is successfully launched on its 238,000-mile journey to the moon. On April 20, astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke descended to the lunar surface from Apollo 16,which remained in orbit around the moon with a third astronaut, Thomas K. Mattingly, in command. Young and Duke remained on the moon for nearly three days, and spent more than 20 hours exploring the surface of Earth’s only satellite. The two astronauts used the Lunar Rover vehicle to collect more than 200 pounds of rock before returning to Apollo 16 on April 23. Four days later, the three astronauts returned to Earth, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
- 1972 --- In an effort to help blunt the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, the United States resumes bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong after a four-year lull. These actions were part of the U.S. response to the North Vietnamese offensive, which had begun on March 30. The North Vietnamese had launched a massive invasion designed to strike the knockout blow that would win the war for the communists. The attack was called the Nguyen Hue Offensive by the North Vietnamese, but was also more commonly known to Americans as the “Easter Offensive.”
- 1973 --- Paul McCartney starred in his first TV special, "James Paul McCartney."
- 1975 --- The Khmer Rouge Rebels won control of Cambodia after a five years of civil war. They renamed the country Kampuchea and began a reign of terror.
- 1992 --- The House ethics committee listed 303 current and former lawmakers who had overdrawn their House bank accounts.
- 1999 --- Shania Twain became the first woman to be named as songwriter/artist of the year by the Nashville Songwriters Association International.
- 2007 --- 32 students and teachers die after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University by Seung Hui Cho, a student at the school who later dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
- Birthdays
- Charlie Chaplin
- Selena Quintanilla
- Henry Mancini
- Dusty Springfield
- Wilbur Wright
- Ellen Barkin
- Merce Cunningham
- Sir Peter Ustinov
- Kareem Abdul Jabbar
- Gerry Rafferty
Thursday April 16, 2015
