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Wednesday April 29, 2015

  • 119th Day of 2015 246 Remaining
  • Summer Begins in 53 Days
  • Sunrise:6:15
  • Sunset:7:58
  • 13 Hours 43 Minutes
  • Moon Rise:4:05pm
  • Moon Set:3:59am
  • Phase:83%
  • 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:8:43am/9:17pm
  • Low:2;57am/2:46pm
  • Holidays
  • Denim Day
  • National Shrimp Scampi Day
  • Viral Video Day
  • Zipper Day
  •  
  • World Stationery Day
  • International Dance Day
  • World Wish Day
  • International Guide Dog Day
  • Casse Canari Ou Wet Mo Nan D’Lo-Haiti
  • Showa Day-Japan
  • On This Day
  • 1429 --- During the Hundred Years’ War, the 17-year-old French peasant Joan of Arc leads a French force in relieving the city of Orleans, besieged by the English since October. At the age of 16, “voices” of Christian saints told Joan to aid Charles, the French dauphin, in gaining the French throne and expelling the English from France. Convinced of the validity of her divine mission, Charles furnished Joan with a small force of troops. She led her troops to Orleans, and on April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of the city, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. Bringing needed supplies and troops into the besieged city, she also inspired the French to a passionate resistance and through the next week led the charge during a number of skirmishes and battles.
  • 1661 --- The Chinese Ming dynasty occupied Taiwan. 
  • 1852 --- The first edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus was published.
  • 1854 --- By an act of the Pennsylvania legislature, Ashmun Institute, the first college founded solely for African-American students, is officially chartered.
  • 1856 --- A shipment of 33 camels arrived at the Texas port of Indianola. They had been purchased on the North African Coast, for the U.S. army to use in the deserts of the Southwest.
  • 1862 --- Union troops officially take possession of New Orleans, completing the occupation that had begun four days earlier. The capture of this vital southern city was a huge blow to the Confederacy. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico.
  • 1875 --- American writer Henry James’ collection of travel pieces, Transatlantic Sketches, is published. The same year, James publishes a collection of stories, A Passionate Pilgrim, and a novel, Roderick Hudson. These three works herald the beginning of James’ long and influential writing career.
  • 1913 --- The zipper was patented by Gideon Sundback. 
  • 1916 --- The Easter uprising in Dublin collapsed as Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities.
  • 1945 --- The U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. A major Dachau subcamp was liberated the same day by the 42nd Rainbow Division.
  • 1950 --- In response to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s charge that former State Department consultant and university professor Owen Lattimore was a top Soviet spy in the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state deny that Lattimore had any influence on U.S. foreign policy. The Lattimore case was one of the most famous episodes of the “red scare” in the United States.
  • 1952 --- IBM President Thomas J. Watson, Jr., informed his company's stockholders that IBM was building "the most advanced, most flexible high-speed computer in the world." The computer was unveiled April 7, 1953, as the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine.
  • 1961 --- ABC’s "Wide World of Sports" premiered.
  • 1968 --- The musical "Hair" opened on Broadway. In a year marked by as much social and cultural upheaval as 1968, it was understandable that the New York Times review of a controversial musical newly arrived on Broadway would describe the show in political terms. “You probably don’t have to be a supporter of Eugene McCarthy to love it,” wrote critic Clive Barnes, “but I wouldn’t give it much chance among the adherents of Governor Reagan.” The show in question was Hair, the now-famous “tribal love-rock musical” that introduced the era-defining song “Aquarius” and gave New York theatergoers a full-frontal glimpse of the burgeoning 60s-counterculture esthetic.
  • 1970 --- U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launch a limited “incursion” into Cambodia. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967.
  • 1974 --- President Richard Nixon announces to the public that he will release transcripts of 46 taped White House conversations in response to a Watergate trial subpoena issued in July 1973. The House Judiciary committee accepted 1,200 pages of transcripts the next day, but insisted that the tapes themselves be turned over as well.
  • 1975 --- The U.S. embassy in Vietnam was evacuated as North Vietnamese forces fought their way into Saigon. In 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and almost 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers offshore. Cpl. Charles McMahon, Jr. and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge, USMC, were the last U.S. military personnel killed in action in Vietnam, when shrapnel from a North Vietnamese rocket struck them as they were guarding Tan Son Nhut Airbase during the evacuation. At 7:53 a.m. on April 30, the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the embassy and headed out to sea. Later that morning, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over from Tran Van Huong (who only spent one day in power after President Nguyen Van Thieu fled). The Vietnam War was over.
  • 1981 --- Truck driver Peter Sutcliffe admitted in a London court to being the "Yorkshire Ripper," the killer of 13 women in northern England over five years.
  • 1981 --- Steve Carlton, of the Philadelphia Phillies, became the first left-handed pitcher in the major leagues to get 3,000 career strikeouts. 
  • 1985 --- Billy Martin was brought back, for the fourth time, to the position of manager for the New York Yankees.
  • 1986 --- Against the Seattle Mariners at Fenway Park, Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox becomes the first pitcher in Major League Baseball to strike out 20 batters in a nine-inning game.
  • 1991 --- A devastating cyclone hits Bangladesh, killing more than 135,000 people. Even though there had been ample warning of the coming storm and shelter provisions had been built in the aftermath of a deadly 1970 storm, this disaster was one of the worst of the 20th century.
  • 1992 --- A jury in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley acquits four police officers who had been charged with using excessive force in arresting black motorist Rodney King a year earlier. The announcement of the verdict, which enraged the black community, prompted widespread rioting throughout much of the sprawling city. It wasn’t until three days later that the arson and looting finally ended. Fifty-four people were killed.
  • 1996 --- The musical "Rent" opened on Broadway.
  • 1997 --- Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.
  • 2004 --- The National World War II Memorial opens in Washington, D.C., to thousands of visitors, providing overdue recognition for the 16 million U.S. men and women who served in the war. The memorial is located on 7.4 acres on the former site of the Rainbow Pool at the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
  • 2004 --- The last Oldsmobile comes off the assembly line at the Lansing Car Assembly plant in Michigan, signaling the end of the 106-year-old automotive brand, America’s oldest. Factory workers signed the last Oldsmobile, an Alero sedan, before the vehicle was moved to Lansing’s R.E. Olds Transportation Museum, where it went on display.
  • Birthdays
  • Duke Ellington
  • Willie Nelson
  • Michelle Pfeiffer
  • Jerry Seinfeld
  • William Randolph Hearst
  • Uma Thurman
  • Donald Mills
  • Lonnie Donegan
  • Rod McKuen
  • Otis Rush
  • Zubin Mahta
  • Tammi Terrell
  • Kate Mulgrew
  • Daniel Day Lewis
  • Eve Plumb
  • Andre Agassi