April
01
April Fools Day
First lead pencils are manufactured for commercial sales (1827)
Science fiction and fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey (The Dragonriders of Pern) is born (1926)
Science fiction and fantasy writer and critic Samuel R. Delany is born (1942)
Apple Computer Company is born (1976)
Nickelodeon Channel debuts (1979)
02
First U.S. movie theatre opens in Los Angeles (1902)
First cell phone call is made (in New York City) (1973)
03
Washington Irving’s birthday (Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) (1783)
Birth of NATO after 12 nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty (1949)
The first issue of TV Guide is published (1953)
04
Fantastic cinema icon Anthony Perkins’ (Psycho) birthday (1922)
Maya Angelou’s birthday (1928)
Writer Dan Simmons is born (1948)
Writer Ann C. (AC) Crispin is born (1950)
The Beatles command the top five slots on the Billboard singles record chart (1964)
Microsoft is formed (1975)
05
Native American Pocahontas marries British settler John Rolfe (1614)
Writer Robert Bloch’s birthday (Psycho; “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper;” hundreds of other horror and science fiction stories and essays) (1917)
Fantastic cinema producer/director Roger Corman’s birthday (1926)
06
Melbourne, Australia: A UFO is witnessed by hundreds of schoolchildren and their teachers (1966)
07
Blues singer Billie Holiday is born (1915)
Long-distance television is displayed to the public for the first time (a transmission from Washington, DC to Bell Laboratories in New York) (1927)
Iconic western actor John Wayne finally wins a Best Actor Academy Award (for his role as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit) (1969)
The Odyssey is launched to explore Mars (2001; the probe is named after Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey)
08
The first 3D picture, Man in the Dark, is released (1953)
Gemini 1 is launched (1964)
“Who killed Laura Palmer?” – Twin Peaks debuts (1990)
09
General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the American Civil War to an end (1865)
The Astrodome opens and the first indoor baseball game is played. The Astros beat the Yankees 2-1 (1965)
“Come on down!” For The Price is Right’s 5000 episode, every prize on this show is a new car (1998)
10
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is published (1925)
Classic 3D horror film, The House of Wax, premieres (1953)
“And in the end . . .” Paul McCartney announces breakup of The Beatles (1970)
11
First Apple Computer is built (1976)
12
For declaring that Planet Earth orbits the Sun, Galileo is convicted of heresy (1633)
The first Space Shuttle is launched (Columbia) (1981)
14
Websters Dictionary is published (American Dictionary of the English Language; 1828)
First modern-day sighting of the Loch Ness Monster (1933; Jack Mackay and his wife made the report; the earliest reported sighting dates back to 565 A.D.)
Science fiction writer Jack McDevitt is born (1935)
Science fiction (cyberpunk) writer Bruce Sterling is born (1954)
15
Painter Leonardo da Vinci is born (The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper) (1452)
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language published (London; 1755)
President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated (1865)
The Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks, taking the lives of 1,517 men, women, and children (1912)
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American player in Major League Baseball; signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson plays his first game at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field (1947)
Fire breaks out at Notre Dame, causing major damage to the famous cathedral; firefighters and emergency rescuers save many irreplaceable artifacts, including the crown of thorns allegedly worn by Jesus Christ (2019)
16
Charlie Chaplin’s birthday (1889)
What a trip: Albert Hoffmann discovers LSD by accident (1943)
17
Geoffrey Chaucer tells The Canterbury Tales for the first time (to Richard II’s court) (1397)
George Adamski (Flying Saucers Have Landed, Inside the Spaceships, Flying Saucers Farewell) is born and eventually claims to have met Nordic aliens or “Space Brothers” who buzzed him around the cosmos in their flying saucers (1891)
A UFO allegedly crashes in Aurora, Texas (1897)
The Ford Mustang debuts (1964)
At 5 a.m., in Portage County, Ohio, Policemen Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff embark on a high-speed chase after a UFO. They chase the craft into Pennsylvania (1966)
NASA’s Kepler probe reports existence of an earth-sized planet in a star zone potentially able to sustain life (2014)
18
Paul Revere takes his ride (1775)
A massive earthquake measuring at least 8.0 on the Richter Scale rocks San Francisco (1906)
It’s “the house that Ruth built!” – Yankee Stadium opens (1923)
The Disney Channel debuts (1983)
Iconic paranormal investigator and clairvoyant, Lorraine Warren (wife of demonologist Ed Warren), dies (2019)
19
“The shot heard round the world” is fired in Lexington, Massachusetts and the American Revolution begins (1775)
21
Twin brothers Romulus and Remus found Rome (753 B.C.)
Writer Charlotte Bronte (Jayne Eyre and other Victorian works) is born (1816)
The Daily Mail publishes one of the most famous photographs ostensibly depicting the Loch Ness Monster. Known as “the surgeon’s photo” and for years lauded as authentic by cryptozoologists and experts alike, the photo was eventually debunked as a photograph of a model. The hoax was the brainchild of big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, who enlisted the help of his stepson, Christopher Spurling, to create and photograph a model of the creature. Physician Robert Kenneth Wilson was then given the task of claiming to the be the photographer and turning the photo over to the media. After all, doctors don’t lie. (1934)
Geraldo Rivera opens “Al Capone’s Vault” in a famous live TV special that reveals lackluster contents of dirt and a few glass bottles (1986)
21-22
Seventeen-year-old William Bartlett spots a glowing-eyed albino creature with spindly limbs hovering atop a stone fence in Dove, Massachusetts. Fifteen-year-old Abby Brabham claims to see the same creature two nights later. The cryptid comes to be known as “The Dover Demon” (1977).
22
The Boston Stockings at The Philadelphia Athletics: The first National League baseball game is played; Boston wins the game 6-5 (1876)
23
William Shakespeare is born (1564)
The Boston Latin School opens, making it the first public school in America (1635)
First YouTube video uploaded (“Me at the Zoo;” 2005)
24
Legendary singer Ella Fitzgerald is born (1917)
First IBM personal computer (1981)
Space Shuttle Discovery launches the Hubble Telescope into orbit (1990)
28
Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird) is born (1926)
29
Jazz icon Duke Ellington is born (1899)
Prolific science fiction writer Jack Williamson is born (1908)
Debut of ABC’s Wide World of Sports (1962)
30
Science fiction writer Larry Niven (Ringworld and many other works) is born (1938)