On This Day
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On This Day:
Sunday April 26, 2009
This is the 116th day of the year, with 249 days remaining in 2009.
Fact of the Day: Audubon
John James Audubon (1785-1851) was a youngster growing up in France when
he developed an interest in drawing birds. At 18, he was sent to the United
States to avoid having to serve in the army and he became fascinated with North
American birds - which he studied from Florida to Labrador in Canada. In 1824,
he started to consider publishing the exquisite drawings but was advised to
seek a European publisher because the methods for printing the drawings was
more advanced there. The engraver Robert Havell of London undertook the project
and published the four-volume The Birds of America with its 435 hand-colored
plates between 1827-1838. The Audubon Society was founded in 1905. Although
Audubon had no role in the organization that bears his name, there is a
connection: George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early Audubon
Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy Audubon, John James's widow.
Holidays
Feast day of St. Cletus, St. Riquier, St. Stephen of Perm, St. Peter of
Braga, St. Franca of Piacenza, and St. Paschasius Radbertus.
Tanzania: Union Day.
United States: Confederate Memorial Day in southern U.S. (esp. Florida,
Georgia).
Events
1514 - Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.
1607 - A group of English colonists, including Captain John Smith, went
ashore at Cape Henry, Virginia, to establish the first permanent English
settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
1921 - Weather broadcasts were heard for the first time on radio, WEW in
St. Louis, Missouri.
1937 - During the Spanish Civil War, German planes attacked the sleeping
town of Guernica in Northern Spain. This intervention by Nazi Germany in the
Spanish Civil War has been described as practice for World War II.
1941 - The first organ was played at a baseball stadium, in Chicago.
1964 - The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form
Tanzania. Pemba also became part of Tanzania.
1968 - The largest underground nuclear device ever to be tested in the
U.S. was exploded in Nevada.
1986 - The worst nuclear power plant accident in history occurred when an
explosion and fire at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union killed 32 people and sent
radioactivity into the atmosphere.
1992 - Worshippers celebrated Russian Orthodox Easter for the first time
in 74 years in Moscow.
1994 - More than 22 million South Africans turned out to cast ballots in
the country's first multiracial parliamentary elections, choosing
anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela to head a new coalition government.
2000 - Vermont governor Howard Dean signed the nation's first bill
allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
2005 - Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troops from Lebanon, ending
its 29-year military occupation.
Births
121 - Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor.
1785 - John Audubon, American ornithologist, naturalist, artist.
1822 - Frederick Law Olmsted, American landscape architect, designer of
Central Park in New York City, Yosemite National Park, and others.
1889 - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher.
1900 - Charles Richter, American seismologist who helped develop the
Richter scale.
1936 - Carol Burnett, American Emmy Award-winning entertainer, comedienne.
Deaths
1865 - John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, by
federal troops near Bowling Green, Virginia.
1984 - Count Basie (born William Basie), American musician and composer.
1986 - Broderick Crawford, American actor.
1989 - Lucille Ball, American comedienne and actress.
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