April 18

And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long. 

Psalm 35:28

April is:

• Child Abuse Prevention Month - Educates people about how to prevent child abuse. Sponsor: National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse.
  
  
• Confederate Heritage Month - Activities take place each week in April in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
  
  
• Dog Appreciation Month - April was declared Dog Appreciation Month in a 1994 Outlast comic strip.

Today is:

• First country to adopt fingerprinting (1907) - Denmark was the first to adopt fingerprinting as a way to identify criminals.
  
  
• First crossword puzzle book published (1974) - Simon & Schuster published the first crossword puzzle book. 40,000 copies were sold in 3 months. Contact: Simon & Schuster.
  
  
• First laundromat opened (1934) - A washeteria opened in Fort Worth, Texas.
  
  
• First Walk/Don't Walk signs installed (1955)
  
  
• Pet Owners Independence Day - lf you own a pet, take the day off. Sponsor: Wellness Permission League.
  
  
• Third World Day - The phrase ''third world'' was first used in 1955 when the president of Indonesia gave his opening address at the Bandung Conference of African and Asian nations.
  
  
• Time Out Day - Take time out today to get to know someone new, read, play, visit family members, watch the sunset. Celeboated twice a year in April and October. Sponsor; All My Events. 

Born on this Day

• 1480: Italian duchess Lucrezia Borgia
  

• 1819: Franz von Suppe was born in the Croatian seaport of Split . Von Suppe became a well-known conductor and composer for the theater. The most popular von Suppe works are the "Poet and Peasant" and "Light Cavalry" overtures.
  

• 1605: Composer Giacomo Carissimi, near Roma
  

• 1857: Lawyer Clarence Darrow
  

• 1882: Symphony conductor Leopold Stokowski
  

• 1907: Movie composer Miklos Rozsa
  

• 1922: Actress Barbara Hale
  

• 1924: Blues singer Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown
  

• 1930: Actor Clive Revill
  

• 1934: Actor James Drury
  

• 1937: Actor Robert Hooks
  

• 1946: Actress Hayley Mills
  

• 1947: Actor James Woods
  

• 1947: Country musician Walt Richmond (The Tractors)
  

• 1947: Actress-director Dorothy Lyman
  

• 1947: Actress Cindy Pickett
  

• 1954: Actor Rick Moranis
  

• 1956: Actress Melody Thomas Scott ("The Young and the Restless")
  

• 1956: Actor Eric Roberts
  

• 1956: Actor John James
  

• 1956: Actress Melody Thomas Scott ("The Young and the Restless")
  

• 1958: Rock musician Les Pattinson (Echo and the Bunnymen)
  

• 1960: Actor Eric McCormack ("Will and Grace")
  

• 1963: Talk show host Conan O'Brien
  

• 1963: Actress Jane Leeves
  

• 1967: Actress Maria Bello ("E-R")
  

• 1970: Rock musician Craig Eklund (Everclear)
  

• 1976: Actress Melissa Joan Hart ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch")   
     

Events in History on this day
  

• 1221: Jacques de Vitry writes to Pope Honorius III about "King David" (the KaKhan of the Mongols)
  

• 1318: Cornerstone laid for a monastery endowed by Othon de Grandson
  

• 1417: Frederick of Hohenzollern invested as Elector of Brandenburg
  

• 1454: Venice signs a treaty with the Turks
  

• 1479: Reconstruction of the Japanese Imperial Palace begins, after it, and the city of Kyoto were destroyed in a Civil War
  

• 1504: Filippino Lippi, Renaissance Florentine painter, dies
  

• 1506: Foundation stone for the new St. Peter's Basilica laid in Rome
  

• 1587: John Foxe, preacher, writer (Book of Martyrs), dies
  

• 1636: Death of Sir Julius Caesar, English barrister
  

• 1775: American patriot Paul Revere began his famed ride through the Massachusetts countryside, crying out "The British are coming!" to rally the Minutemen.
  

• 1846: The telegraph ticker was patented by R.E. House of New York City.
  

• 1868: San Francisco Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals formed.
  

• 1869: 1st International Cricket Match, held in San Francisco, won by California
  

• 1895: New York State passed an act that established free public baths. They were to be open 14 hours a day and provide hot and cold water.
  

• 1906: A devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires. About 700 people died. It lasted 48 seconds and registered 8.25 on the Richter Scale, qualifying as America's worst ever earthquake.
  

• 1921: Junior Achievement, created to encourage business skills in young people, was incorporated.
  

• 1923: The first game was played in Yankee Stadium. The Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox, 4-1. Fred Lieb of the New York Evening Telegraph dubbed the stadium as "The House that Ruth built," and the name stuck.
  

• 1934: The first coin-operated laundry (called a "washateria") was opened by J.F. Cantrell in Fort Worth, Texas.
  

• 1942: An air squadron from the USS "Hornet" led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
  

• 1942: The first World War II edition of The Stars and Stripes was published as a weekly newspaper for U.S. troops in Northern Ireland. (It became a daily paper the following November.)
  

• 1944: Leonard Bernstein's ballet "Fancy Free" - about sailors on shore leave - was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The music was so well-received that Bernstein reworked the material into a musical called "On the Town."
  

• 1945: Famed American war correspondent Ernie Pyle, 44, was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa.
  

• 1946: The League of Nations went out of business. All of its assets were handed over to the United Nations.
  

• 1949: The Republic of Ireland formally declared itself independent from Britain. With the Republic of Ireland Act Southern Ireland came into being.
  

• 1955: Physicist Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey.
  

• 1956: Actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco in a civil ceremony. (A church wedding took place the next day.)
  

• 1960: The Mutual Broadcasting System was sold to the 3M Company of Minnesota for $1.25 million. Previously, the network had been owned by MONY (Mutual of New York).
  

• 1966: Bill Russell was named player-coach of the Boston Celtics, the first African-American coach in the National Basketball Association.
  

• 1974: The Washington District Court conducting the Watergate proceedings issued a subpoena on President Richard M. Nixon to produce tape recordings and other material demanded by the Special Prosecutor.
  

• 1978: The U.S. Senate voted 68-32 to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control on Dec. 31, 1999.
  

• 1980: Rhodesia became the independent nation of Zimbabwe as the British flag was lowered at a ceremony in Salisbury.
  

• 1983: 62 people, including 17 Americans, were killed at the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber.
  

• 1983: Pulitzer Prizes went to Alice Walker for her novel "The Color Purple" and Marsha Norman for her play "'night, Mother."
  

• 1984: Two unarmed U.S. Army helicopters, one of them carrying two American senators, made forced landings after coming under fire on a flight over Honduras near the border with El Salvador.
  

• 1985: Amid controversy over his plans to visit a German military cemetery, President Reagan told news editors in Washington that the German soldiers had been "victims" of the Nazis "just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.""
  

• 1986: A Titan rocket carrying a secret military payload exploded seconds after liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
  

• 1987: President Reagan used his weekly radio address to express hope the superpowers could reach an agreement to sharply reduce the threat of intermediate-range nuclear weapons.
  

• 1988: An Israeli court convicted John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Cleveland, of committing war crimes at the Treblinka death camp more than 40 years earlier. (Israel's Supreme Courtl later overturned Demjanjuk's conviction.)
  

• 1989: Thousands of Chinese students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party headquarters in Beijing.
  

• 1990: The Soviet Union shut off a pipeline that supplied the rebellious republic of Lithuania with crude oil ; a day later, the Soviets severely reduced the flow of natural gas.
  

• 1990: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may make it a crime to possess or look at child pornography, even in one's home.
  

• 1991: President Bush unveiled his America 2000 education strategy, which included a voluntary nationwide exam system and aid pegged to academic results.
  

• 1991: The Census Bureau estimated its 1990 census had failed to count up to 6.3 million people.
  

• 1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev ended his summit in Japan without winning the major aid package he'd been hoping for.
  

• 1992: Serbia issued a protest to the United States, accusing Washington of siding with Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia in the Yugoslav crisis.
  

• 1992: Democrat Jerry Brown met with black leaders in Philadelphia while front-runner Bill Clinton visited a Phillies-Pirates ballgame as the two courted Pennsylvania primary voters.
  

• 1993: The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina agreed to a truce, effectively relinquishing besieged Srebrenica. Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic threatened to boycott further U.N. peace talks if tougher U.N. sanctions were implemented.
  

• 1994: Former President Nixon suffered a stroke at his home in Park Ridge, New Jersey, and was taken to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center; he died four days later.
  

• 1994: The Federal Reserve boosted short-term interest rates for the third time in 1994, from 3.5 to 3.75 percent.
  

• 1995: President Clinton held a prime-time news conference in which he said he was satisfied that he remained relevant in a Republican-dominated capital, and challenged Congress to send him an acceptable welfare bill.
  

• 1995: Quarterback Joe Montana retired from professional football.
  

• 1995: The Houston Post newspaper closed after more than a century.
  

• 1996: President Clinton addressed the Japanese Parliament, hailing security ties between the two countries as the cornerstone of stability in Asia.
  

• 1996: Congress passed and sent to President Clinton long-awaited legislation giving federal law officers new powers to use against terrorism.
  

• 1996: Gunmen opened fire at a hotel in Egypt, killing 18 Greek tourists.
  

• 1996: Israeli shells killed 91 Lebanese refugees in a U.N. camp (Israel called the attack an "unfortunate mistake").
  

• 1997: President Clinton held a news conference in which he warned Republicans that a balanced-budget deal may not come quickly, while reassuring nervous Democrats that he would not abandon the party's prized social programs.
  

• 1998: Despite fierce internal dissent, Northern Ireland's main Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, approved a peace agreement.
  

• 1998: The remains of Pol Pot were cremated, three days after the Khmer Rouge leader blamed for the killings of up to two million Cambodians died at age 73.
  

• 1998: Former North Carolina governor and US senator Terry Sanford died in Durham at age 80.
  

• 1999: NATO launched its most active day of airstrikes in its assault on Yugoslavia, pummeling refineries, bridges and dozens of other targets in the 25th straight day of attacks.
  

• 1999: Wayne Gretzky played his last National Hockey League game as his New York Rangers lost to Pittsburgh 2-1 in overtime at Madison Square Garden.
  

•  2000: In a defeat for the United States, a United Nations commission in Geneva voted 22-18 against censuring China's human rights record. 
  

• 2000: Robert L. Yates Jr. was arrested in Spokane, Wash., and charged with murdering a teen-age prostitute. (Yates later confessed to killing 13 people, and was sentenced to 408 years in prison.) 
  

• 2000: In his first game back following a 12-game suspension for making disparaging remarks about minorities, gays and immigrants, Atlanta's John Rocker pitched a scoreless ninth inning in a 4-3, 12-inning victory over Philadelphia. 
  
  
  

Today's Daily Miscellany

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