Okay, mayhaps a game which we can
learn from each day will work.

Rules : Each person posts ONE event or famous
birthday from today's date in history with
some details of the event. Obviously, DP Time/Date
apply. Next person(s) post something else
from the date in history. It can be from
history, sports, music, whatever flips
your switch.

January 12, 1964- The New York Jets
upset the Baltimore Colts 16 -7 in Super
Bowl III. Jets' quarterback Joe Namath, who
had guaranteed victory, was the game's MVP.

June 24, 1509

Henry VIII was crowned King of England.

April 4, 1968


Just after 6 p.m. Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.

more here

April 4th, 1581

On his return from circumnavigating the globe Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I on board The Golden Hind .

[You see, there's nothing new. Governments have always had time for pirates and crooks provided that these were on the side of the party in power ]

April 5, 1993

The Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies begin play in the National League; the Marlins would beat the Dodgers while the Rockies are shut out by the Mets...

April 5,1967
'Piper at the Gates of Dawn,' the debut album by Pink Floyd -- and the only one to feature Syd Barrett as bandleader -- was released.

April 6, 1973

Ron Blomberg of the N.Y. Yankees becomes baseball's first designated hitter during a 13-5 loss to the Red Sox...

April 6

1830 Mormon Church established


In Fayette Township, New York, Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, organizes the Church of Christ during a meeting with a small group of believers

Here's more, man.



Sorry, couldn't resist

April 7, 1984

Detroit Tigers pitcher Jack Morris pitches a no-hitter vs. the White Sox; it would be symbolic of a magical season for the Tigers--who'd go on to win the World Series vs. the Padres...

April 7,1891
P.T. Barnum dies


American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum dies in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Though he was gravely ill, the 81-year-old showman's sense of humor hadn't deserted him. He requested that a New York paper run his obituary before he died so he could enjoy reading it, and the paper obliged.

more here

April 8, 1974

Hank Aaron becomes baseball's all-time home run king (listening, Mr. Bonds?)--taking Dodgers pitcher Al Downing deep for HR # 715...

April 8, 563


On this day, Buddhists celebrate the commemoration of the birth of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, thought to have lived in India from 563 B.C. to 483 B.C.
more here

APril 8, 1895

The United States Supreme Court declares income tax to be unconstitutional


...and it's been a year since 4/8/05, when Pope John Paul II was laid to rest.

April 9, 1913

The Brooklyn Dodgers play their first ever regular season game at Ebbets Field; they lose 1-0 to the Phillies before a crowd of approximately 12,000 people...

April 9 is a busy date and I could not choose a single event....

1859,
a 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot's license.

Clemens had signed on as a pilot's apprentice in 1857 while on his way to Mississippi. He had been commissioned to write a series of comic travel letters for the Keokuk Daily Post, but after writing five, decided he'd rather be a pilot than a writer. He piloted his own boats for two years, until the Civil War halted steamboat traffic. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term "Mark Twain," a boatman's call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by "Mark Twain" and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years.


1865
At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War

1881
After a one-day trial, Billy the Kid is found guilty of murdering the Lincoln County, New Mexico, sheriff and is sentenced to hang.

1932
Carl Perkins was born

1959,
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduces America's first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald Slayton. The seven men, all military test pilots, were carefully selected from a group of 32 candidates to take part in Project Mercury, America's first manned space program

1969
The Chicago Eight, indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, plead not guilty. The trial for the eight antiwar activists had begun in Chicago on March 20. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party ("Yippies"); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.

They were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot.

1970
Paul McCartney announces his "break with the Beatles" in a typed statement enclosed in copies of the solo album McCartney sent to the British press. Paul McCartney attributes the split to "personal differences, musical differences, business differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family."

April 10, 1913

After giving up a run in the first inning vs. the Yankees, Senators pitcher Walter Johnson starts his run of 56 consecutive scoreless innings--which would later be eclipsed by Don Drysdale of the Dodgers..

April 10, 1915 -

Actor Harry Morgan, best known for his role of Colonel Sherman Potter on the TV series M*A*S*H, was born in Detroit, Michigan.

April 11, 1990

In his first game with the California Angels, pitcher Mark Langston combines with Mike Witt to throw a no-hitter vs. Langston's former team--the Seattle Mariners...

April 11,1931
The witty and caustic Dorothy Parker resigns her job as drama critic for The New Yorker. However, she continues to write book reviews until 1933, which are published in 1971 as A Month of Saturdays.

The funny, sophisticated Parker symbolized the Roaring Twenties in New York for many readers. Parker was born in New Jersey and lost her mother as an infant. Shortly after she finished high school, her father died, and she struck out on her own for New York, where she took a job writing captions for fashion photos for Vogue for $10 a week. She supplemented her income by playing piano at nights at a dancing school.
More on my favorite poet here.

April 11, 2002 - An attempted coup d'état in Venezuela against President Hugo Chavez began.