Friday, April 20, 2012

April is the cruelest month . . .

So I started something on Twitter that represents a kind of mental fungus that I've been dealing with for several years.  It seems like a lot of bad stuff happens in April.  Perhaps we can blame Eliot's The Waste Land for starting the idea, perhaps not.

Anyway, here is the beginning of a list of things (mostly bad) that happened in April.

April 1st
- Beer Hall Putsch (Hitler's first power grab)
- Marvin Gaye shot and killed by his own father

April 2nd
- Pope John Paul II dies
- Argentina invades the Falkland islands

April 3rd
- Bruno Hauptmann is executed for kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby
- the Unabomber is arrested

April 4th
- Assassination of Martin Luther King
- Second Battle of the Somme

April 5th
- Rosenbergs sentenced to death for spying
- Kurt Cobain commits suicide

April 6th
- US Declares war on Germany and enters WWI
- Oscar Wilde arrested
- Black Hawk War begins

April 7th
- Rwandan civil war begins

April 9th
- Civil War ends at Appomattox

April 10th
- Zapata is assassinated in Mexico
- Bataan Death March begins

April 11th
- Napoleon exiled to Elba
- Idi Amin is overthrown
- US troops liberate Buchenwald concentration camp

April 12th
- Civil War begins
- Franklin Roosevelt dies
- Galileo is convicted of heresy

April 13th
- Amritsar Massacre
- Apollo 13 oxygen tank explodes

April 14th
- Lincoln is shot
- Titanic hits iceberg
- US bombs Libya
- Soviets announce withdrawal from Afghanistan
- Major Dust Bowl storm strikes

April 15th
- Pol Pot dies
- Sacco and Vanzetti receive national press

April 16th
- Virginia Tech massacre
- Lenin returns from exile to Russia

April 17th
- Bay of Pigs invasion
- Ben Franklin dies
- Khmer Rouge seize power in Cambodia

April 18th
- Great San Francisco Earthquake
- Bombing of US Embassy in Beirut

April 19th
- Warsaw Uprising
- David Kuresh and the Branch Davidian compound burns
- Oklahoma City bombing
- Lord Byron's untimely death in Greece

April 20th
- Columbine High School massacre
- Ludlow massacre of striking workers

April 21st
- Battle of San Jacinto

April 22nd
- Germans are first to use poison gas
- Pat Tillman killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan

April 23rd
- Easter Rebellion
- Failed hostage rescue mission in Iran

April 25th
- Invasion of Gallipoli begins

April 26th
- Chernobyl nuclear disaster

April 27th
- Afghan president is overthrown and murdered
- First multiracial elections held in South Africa

April 28th
- Mussolini executed
- Mutiny on the HMS Bounty

April 29th
- Rodney King trial verdict announced leading to riots in LA

April 30th
- Hitler commits suicide
- Monica Seles stabbed
- South Vietnam surrenders




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