Friday! History, Remembrance, Quotes, and More!

On This Date In 1376 the first Speaker of Britain's House of Commons, Sir Peter De La Mare, took office. On This Date In 1429 During the Hundred Years' War, the 17-year-old French peasant Joan of Arc lead a French force in relieving the city of Orleans, besieged by the English since the previous October. On This Date In 1670 Emilio Bonaventura Altieri, born July 13, 1590, was elected Pope, and served as Pope Clement X from April 29, 1670 until his death on July 22, 1676. He was created cardinal priest in the consistory of November 29, 1669, yet never received the red hat and the title because Pope Clement IX died on December 9, 1669 and he was elected his successor. http://www.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1669-ii.htm On This Date In 1776 Shortly after the American victory at Boston, Massachusetts, General George Washington ordered Brigadier General Nathanael Greene to take command of Long Island, and set up defensive positions against a possible British attack on New York City. On This Date In 1792 Matthew Vassar, founder and namesake of Vassar College, was born in Norfolk, England. On This Date In 1854 By an act of the Pennsylvania legislature, Ashmun Institute, the first college founded solely for African-American students, was officially chartered. On This Date In 1857 American writer Henry James' collection of travel pieces, Transatlantic Sketches, was published. The same year, James published a collection of stories, A Passionate Pilgrim, and a novel, Roderick Hudson. These three works began James' long and influential writing career. On This Date In 1862 The Siege of Corinth (aka the First Battle of Corinth) was an American Civil War battle fought from April 29 to June 10, 1862, in Corinth, Mississippi. On This Date In 1863 The newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco, California. He was the only son and principle heir to western mining magnate George Hearst. On This Date In 1899 Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, often said to be America's greatest composer, bandleader, and recording artist, was in Washington, D.C. Nicknamed "Duke" as a youngster, Ellington turned down a visual arts scholarship to focus his life on music. With a background in classical, popular, ragtime, and stride music, Ellington emerged as arguably the greatest single talent in the history of jazz. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr29.html On This Date In 1915 ”By the Sea”, a film by Charlie Chaplin made all on location at Crystal Pier in San Diego, California, was released. The story centered on Chaplin's Little Tramp character and how he gets into trouble trying to grab the attention of the ladies on the beach. On This Date In 1916 In the single largest surrender of troops in British history to that time, some 13,000 soldiers under the command of Sir Charles Townshend gave in, after withstanding nearly five months under siege by Turkish and German forces at the town of Kut-al-Amara, on the Tigris River in the Basra province of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). On This Date In 1937 Ronald Reagan enlisted in the Army Enlisted Reserve as a private assigned to Troop B, 322nd Cavalry at Des Moines, Iowa. On This Date In 1945 The U.S. Seventh Army's 45th Infantry Division liberated 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. On This Date In 1945 The German army in Italy surrendered to the Allies, while fallen Nazi leader Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun. The couple killed themselves the following day. On This Date In 1946 Tojo Hideki, wartime premier of Japan, was indicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East of war crimes. In September 1945, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself, but was saved by an American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He was eventually hanged by the Americans in 1948 after having been found guilty of war crimes. On This Date In 1957 The actor Daniel Day-Lewis, famous for his intense Method acting and chameleon-like ability to disappear into character, was born in London, England. On This Date In 1967 American boxer Muhammed Ali was stripped of his world heavyweight title for refusing to fight for America in Vietnam. On This Date In 1968 “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, premiered on Broadway. On This Date In 1971 U.S. casualty figures for April 18 to April 24 were released. The 45 killed during that time brought total U.S. losses for the Vietnam War to 45,019 since 1961. These figures made Southeast Asia fourth in total losses sustained by the U.S. during a war, topped only by the number of losses incurred during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. On This Date In 1974 Heavy rock band Kiss performed "Firehouse" on The Mike Douglas Show. This broadcast included Simmons' first televised interview. On This Date In 1974 President Richard Nixon announced to the public he would release transcripts of 46 taped White House conversations in response to a Watergate trial subpoena issued in July 1973. On This Date In 1975 Through April 30, 1975, Operation Frequent Wind, the emergency evacuation by helicopter from Saigon, South Vietnam during the last days of the Vietnam War, took place, and moved over 50,000 people from the embattled city. On This Date In 1981 ”Fair Warning”, the fourth studio album by American hard rock band Van Halen, was released. The album went double platinum, which means it was a substantial hit, but was still the band's slowest-selling album of the David Lee Roth era. On This Date In 1983 ”Christine”, a horror novel by Stephen King, was published. It tells the story of a vintage automobile apparently possessed by supernatural forces. The movie version of Christine, directed by John Carpenter, and starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, and Harry Dean Stanton was released to theaters the same year. On This Date In 1986 In a game against the Seattle Mariners at Fenway Park, Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox became the first pitcher in Major League Baseball to strike out 20 batters in a nine-inning game. Ten years later, Clemens repeated the feat, the only player in baseball history to do so. On This Date In 1991 A Bangladesh Cyclone struck the Chittagong region in Bangladesh, killing over 138,000 people and causing damage in excess of 1.5 billion dollars. The tropical cyclone devastated the coastal area southeast of Dacca with winds in excess of 130kts and a 20 foot storm surge. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/images/global.pdf On This Date In 1992 The Los Angeles Riots of 1992, also known as the Rodney King riots, took place when a jury acquitted four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of African-American motorist Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. On This Date In 1996 ”The Sabbath Stones”, the last album by English rock band Black Sabbath with IRS Records, was released. The album is a compilation of Sabbath tracks ranging from 1983's “Born Again” to 1995's “Forbidden”, and was never formally released in the US or Canada. On This Date In 1997 Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk. On This Date In 2004 The National World War II Memorial opened 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. On This Date In 2004 The last Oldsmobile came 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. On This Date In 2005 Syria completed withdrawal from Lebanon, ending 29 years of occupation. On This Date In 2008 Grand Theft Auto IV, commonly shortened to GTA4 or GTA IV, the sixth 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto series, was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in Oceania, Europe and North America. On This Date In 2009 The Egyptian government decided to immediately start slaughtering nearly 300,000 pigs in an attempt to avert the Swine Flu outbreak. http://www.themedguru.com/articles/egypt_to_slaughter_pigs_to_avert_swine_flu-86121996.html On This Date In 2009 The Fort Worth, Dallas, Texas school district, one of the largest in the state, and affecting over 80,000 students, announced it would close all schools to prevent a possible spread of the swine flu. On This Date In 2009 The World Health Organization (WHO) raised its pandemic alert to 5, its second-highest level, warning of widespread human infection from the swine flu outbreak that originated in Mexico. On This Date In 2010 The BP Gulf Oil Spill reached land. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0430/As-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-hits-land-residents-decry-response On This Date In 2011 Prince William of Wales Married Kate Middleton. They exchanged vows at Westminster Abbey and later greeted well-wishers from a Buckingham Palace balcony.
Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page , http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history , http://timelines.com/

Happy Birthday Celeste Holm (1917), Zubin Mehta (1936), Rodney P. Frelinghuysen (1946), Jerry Seinfeld (1954), Daniel Day-Lewis (1957), Laura Harrington (1958), Eve Plumb (1958), Michelle Pfeiffer (1958), Federico Castelluccio (1964), Andre Agassi (1970), Uma Thurman (1970), Taylor Cole (1984), Jonathan Toews (1988), and Joan Harrington (!).
RIP Henri Poincare (1854 - 1912), William Randolph Hearst (1863 - 1951), Duke Ellington (1899 - 1974), Hirohito (1901 - 1989), Fred Zinnemann (1907 - 1997), Tom Ewell (1909 - 1994), and Dale Earnhardt (1951 - 2001).

Quotes:
As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. Marianne Williamson
You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims. Harriet Woods
No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you. Althea Gibson
I never wanted to be a businessman, I just wanted to change the world. Richard Branson
Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Courtesy YouTube et al:
DISCLAIMER: The near future of our world explores our earth and the human race between the years 2011 to 2200 AD. This video is a sequel (or prequel i guess) to my other popular video "Our Future (How it Ends?)" found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyLXTYEy6aY
My ‘disclaimer’: Ya never know!
Can’t hurt to think about advances, declines, the great, the terrible, and put them in perspective!

I shot this video from the University of Alabama campus. I was in the Science and Engineering Complex looking in the direction of the Campus Drive Parking Deck (aka: The Hub). The video shows the tornado traveling across 15th Street and McFarland Blvd.
According to Google Earth, I was roughly 1.2 miles away from the tornado while taking this video.

AS PREDICTED-


Embed is disabled on this great event.

If God is the DJ, then Life is the dance floor; Love is the rhythm, and You are the music. –unknown He Is Risen – May you rise for Him as well!