Today is April 4 2014

National Cordon Bleu Day: More
Another French dish with American origins (the Chicken version).

• Vitamin C Day: More
  
• National Tell-A-Lie Day.: More
  Just when you thought it was safe, another variation of April fools.
• World Rat Day: More
  I had a white rat for a pet. It was just for one semester in Experimental Psychology class at UofH.

• In 1768, In London, Philip Astley stages the first modern circus.
  From Wikipedia: 'A circus is a company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other object manipulation and stunt-oriented artists. The term 'circus' also describes the performance which has followed various formats through its 250-year modern history.
  
  Philip Astley is credited with being the 'father' of the modern circus when he opened the first circus in 1768 in England. Early circuses were almost exclusively demonstrations of equestrian skills with a few other types of acts to link the horsemanship performances. Performances developed significantly through the next fifty years, with large scale theatrical battle reenactments becoming a significant feature. The 'traditional' format, whereby a ringmaster introduces a varied selection of acts that mostly perform choreographed acts to traditional music, developed in the latter part of 19th century and continued almost universally to be the main style of circus up until the 1970s.
  
  As styles of performance have changed since the time of Astley, so too have the types of venues where these circuses have performed. The earliest modern circuses were performed in open air structures with limited covered seating. From the late 18th to late 19th century bespoke circus buildings (often wooden) were built with various types of seating, a centre ring and sometimes a stage. The 'traditional' large tents, commonly known as 'Big Tops' were introduced in the mid 19th century as touring circuses superseded static venues. These tents eventually became the most common venue and remain so to the present day. Contemporary circuses perform in a variety of venues including tents, theatres and casinos. Many circus performances are still held in a ring usually 13 m (42 ft) in diameter. This dimension was adopted by Philip Astley in the late 18th century as the minimum diameter that enabled an acrobatic horse rider to stand upright on a cantering horse to perform their tricks.
  
  Contemporary circus has been credited with reviving the circus tradition since the 1980s when a number of groups introduced circus based almost solely on human skills and which drew from other performing art skills and styles'.
  
  'The origin of the modern circus has been attributed to Philip Astley, a cavalry officer from England who set up the first modern amphitheatre for the display of horse riding tricks in Lambeth, London on 4 April 1768.] Astley did not originate trick horse riding, nor was he first to introduce acts such as acrobats and clowns to the English public, but he was the first to create a space where all these acts were brought together to perform a show'.
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• In 1796, Georges Cuvier delivers his first paleontological lecture at École Centrale du Pantheon of the National Museum of Natural History on living and fossil remains of elephants and related species, founding the science of Paleontology.
  From Wikipedia: 'Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "Father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.'
  
  'On 4 April 1796 he began to lecture at the École Centrale du Pantheon and, at the opening of the National Institute in April, he read his first paleontological paper, which subsequently was published in 1800 under the title Mémoires sur les espèces d'éléphants vivants et fossiles. In this paper, he analyzed skeletal remains of Indian and African elephants, as well as mammoth fossils, and a fossil skeleton known at that time as the 'Ohio animal'.
  
  'Cuvier's analysis established, for the first time, the fact that African and Indian elephants were different species and that mammoths were not the same species as either African or Indian elephants, so must be extinct. He further stated that the 'Ohio animal' represented a distinct and extinct species that was even more different from living elephants than mammoths were. Years later, in 1806, he would return to the 'Ohio animal' in another paper and give it the name, "mastodon". In his second paper in 1796, he described and analyzed a large skeleton found in Paraguay, which he would name Megatherium. He concluded this skeleton represented yet another extinct animal and, by comparing its skull with living species of tree-dwelling sloths, that it was a kind of ground-dwelling giant sloth.
  
  Together, these two 1796 papers were a seminal or landmark event, becoming a turning point in the history of paleontology, and in the development of comparative anatomy, as well. They also greatly enhanced Cuvier's personal reputation and they essentially ended what had been a long-running debate about the reality of extinction.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1818. Congress adopts the flag of the United States, with 13 red and white stripes and one star for each state.
  From Wikipedia: 'On April 4, 1818, a plan was passed by Congress at the suggestion of U.S. Naval Captain Samuel C. Reid in which the flag was changed to have 20 stars, with a new star to be added when each new state was admitted, but the number of stripes would be reduced to 13 so as to honor the original colonies. The act specified that new flag designs should become official on the first July 4 (Independence Day) following admission of one or more new states. The most recent change, from 49 stars to 50, occurred in 1960 when the present design was chosen, after Hawaii gained statehood in August 1959. Before that, the admission of Alaska in January 1959 prompted the debut of a short-lived 49-star flag'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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• In 1873, The Kennel Club is founded, the oldest and first official registry of purebred dogs in the world.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Kennel Club ("KC") is the official kennel club of the United Kingdom. It is the oldest recognised kennel club in the world. Its role is to act as governing body for various canine activities including dog shows, dog agility and working trials. It also operates the national register of pedigree dogs in the United Kingdom and acts as a lobby group on issues involving dogs in the UK.'
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• In 1914, The silent movie serial, 'The Perils of Pauline' is shown for the 1st time.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Perils of Pauline is a 1914 American melodrama film serial shown in weekly installments, featuring Pearl White as the title character. Pauline has often been cited as a famous example of a damsel in distress, although some analyses hold that her character was more resourceful and less helpless than the classic damsel stereotype.
  
  Pauline is menaced by assorted villains, including pirates and Indians. Neither Pauline nor its successor, The Exploits of Elaine, used the cliffhanger format in which a serial episode ends with an unresolved danger that is addressed at the beginning of the next installment. Although each episode placed Pauline in a situation that looked sure to result in her imminent death, the end of each installment showed how she was rescued or otherwise escaped the danger. Despite popular associations, Pauline was never tied to railroad tracks in the series, an image that comes instead from contemporary films such as Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life.
  
  In 2008 The Perils of Pauline was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."'.
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• In 1932 - Vitamin C is first isolated by C C King.
  From Wikipedia: 'In 1907 a laboratory animal model which would help to isolate and identify the antiscorbutic factor was discovered: Axel Holst and Theodor Frølich, two Norwegian physicians studying shipboard beriberi in the Norwegian fishing fleet, wanted a small test mammal to substitute for the pigeons then used in beriberi research. They fed guinea pigs their test diet of grains and flour, which had earlier produced beriberi in their pigeons, and were surprised when classic scurvy resulted instead. This was a serendipitous choice of animal. Until that time, scurvy had not been observed in any organism apart from humans, and had been considered an exclusively human disease. (Pigeons, as seed-eating birds, make their own vitamin C.) Holst and Frølich found they could cure the disease in guinea pigs with the addition of various fresh foods and extracts.
  
  This discovery of an animal experimental model for scurvy, made even before the essential idea of vitamins in foods had even been put forward, has been called the single most important piece of vitamin C research. In 1912, the Polish biochemist Casimir Funk, while researching beriberi in pigeons, developed the concept of vitamins to refer to the non-mineral micronutrients that are essential to health. The name is a blend of "vital", due to the vital biochemical role they play, and "amines" because Funk thought that all these materials were chemical amines. Although the "e" was dropped after skepticism that all these compounds were amines, the word vitamin remained as a generic name for them. One of the vitamins was thought to be the hypothesised anti- scorbutic factor in certain foods, such as those tested by Holst and Frølich. In 1928, this vitamin was referred to as "water-soluble C," although its chemical structure had still not been determined.
  
  From 1928 to 1932, the Hungarian research team of Albert Szent-Györgyi and Joseph L. Svirbely, as well as the American team led by Charles Glen King in Pittsburgh, first identified the anti-scorbutic factor. Szent-Györgyi had isolated the chemical hexuronic acid (actually, L- hexuronic acid) from animal adrenal glands at the Mayo clinic, and suspected it to be the antiscorbutic factor but could not prove it without a biological assay. At the same time, for five years King's laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh had been trying to isolate the antiscorbutic factor in lemon juice using the original 1907 model of scorbutic guinea pigs which developed scurvy when not fed fresh foods but were cured by lemon juice. They had also considered hexuronic acid, but had been put off the trail when a coworker made the explicit (and mistaken) experimental claim that this substance was not the antiscorbutic substance'.
  
  Finally, in late 1931, Szent-Györgyi gave Svirbely, formerly of King's lab, the last of his hexuronic acid with the suggestion that it might be the anti-scorbutic factor. By the spring of 1932, King's laboratory had proven this but published the result without giving Szent-Györgyi credit for it, leading to a bitter dispute over priority claims (in reality it had taken a team effort by both groups, since Szent-Györgyi was unwilling to do the difficult and messy animal studies)'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1939,- Glenn Miller recorded his theme song, 'Moonlight Serenade.
  From Wikipedia: '"Moonlight Serenade" is an American swing ballad composed by Glenn Miller with subsequent lyrics by Mitchell Parish. It was an immediate phenomenon when first released in May 1939 as an instrumental arrangement, though it had been adopted and performed as Miller's signature tune as eagerly as 1938, even before it had been given the name "Moonlight Serenade. " In 1991, Miller's recording of "Moonlight Serenade" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame'.
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• In 1949, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is created, with 12 countries.
  From Wikipedia: 'The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, where the Supreme Allied Commander also resides. Belgium is one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70 percent of the global total. Members' defense spending is supposed to amount to 2 percent of GDP.'
  
  'The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom, is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. The treaty and the Soviet Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the Western European Union's Defence Organization in September 1948. However, participation of the United States was thought necessary both to counter the military power of the USSR and to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism, so talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately resulting in the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed in Washington, D.C. on 4 April 1949. It included the five Treaty of Brussels states plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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• In 1959, Buddy Holly's 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' hit #13. It was his first posthumous hit.
  From Wikipedia: '"It Doesn't Matter Anymore" is a pop ballad written by Paul Anka and recorded by Buddy Holly in 1958. The song reached No. 13 as a posthumous hit on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in early 1959 shortly after Holly was killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. The single was a two-sided hit, backed with "Raining in My Heart". "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" was Holly's last US Top 20 hit and featured the orchestral backing of Dick Jacobs. It was also successful in the United Kingdom'.
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• In 1960, Elvis Presley recorded 'Are You Lonesome Tonight'.
  From Wikipedia: '"Are You Lonesome Tonight?" is a song which was written by Roy Turk and Lou Handman in 1926. It was recorded several times in 1927—first by Charles Hart, with successful versions by Vaughn De Leath and the duet of Jerry Macy and John Ryan. In 1950 the Blue Barron Orchestra version reached the top twenty on the Billboard's Pop Singles chart.
  
  In April 1960, after Elvis Presley's two-year service in the United States Army, he recorded the song at the suggestion of manager Colonel Tom Parker; "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" was Parker's wife, Marie Mott's, favorite song. Its release was delayed by RCA Records executives, who thought the song did not fit Presley's new (and publicized) style. When "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" was released in November 1960 it was an immediate success in the U.S., topping Billboard's Pop Singles chart and reaching number three on the RandB chart. A month after the song's release, it topped the UK Singles Chart. Presley's version was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1961 and upgraded to double platinum in 1992.
  
  Billboard ranked "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" number 81 on its "Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs" list in 2008'.
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• In 1960, At the 32nd Academy Awards:
  From Wikipedia: More
  Best Picture is, Ben-Hur
  -- At Wikipedia: More
  -- At Internet Movie Database IMDb: More
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  Best Actor is Charlton Heston for 'Ben-Hur'
  Best Actress is Simone Signoret for 'Room at the Top'
  -- At Wikipedia: More
  -- At Internet Movie Database IMDb: More
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  Best Supporting Actor is Hugh Griffith for 'Ben-Hur'
  Best Supporting Actress is Shelley Winters for 'The Diary of Anne Frank'
  Best Song is High Hopes from 'A Hole in the Head'
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• In 1964, The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart.
  From Wikipedia: 'During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five. Their popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion. Their hairstyle, unusually long for the era and mocked by many adults, became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoningyouth culture.'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
• In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the age of 39.
  From Wikipedia: 'Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.'
  
  'In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.
  
  King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in ' his honor, and a county in Washington State was also renamed for him. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011'.
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• In 1969, The first temporary artificial heart is implanted, by Dr. Denton Cooley.
  From Wikipedia: 'An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in case heart transplantation is impossible. Although other similar inventions preceded it going back to the late 1940s, the first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7 in 1982, designed by a team including Willem Johan Kolff and Robert Jarvik.
  
  An artificial heart is distinct from a ventricular assist device designed to support a failing heart. It is also distinct from a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, which is an external device used to provide the functions of both the heart and lungs and are only used for a few hours at a time, most commonly during cardiac surgery.'
  
  On April 4, 1969, Domingo Liotta and Denton A. Cooley replaced a dying man's heart with a mechanical heart inside the chest at The Texas Heart Institute in Houston as a bridge for a transplant. The man woke up and began to recover. After 64 hours, the pneumatic-powered artificial heart was removed and replaced by a donor heart. However thirty-two hours after transplantation, the man died of what was later proved to be an acute pulmonary infection, extended to both lungs, caused by fungi, most likely caused by an immunosuppressive drug complication.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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• In 1975, Microsoft Corporation is started in Albuquerque, New Mexico by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
  From Wikipedia: 'Microsoft Corporation (commonly referred to as Microsoft) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. It is the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies.'
  
  'Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. company's 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and h made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition to date'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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Nothing. Looks like I was lazy on this day.

No. 1 song

• Twist and Shout - The Beatles: More
  She Loves You, has been displaced by another Beatles song. 'Twist and Shout', which will hold the no. 1 spot until April 11th, when another Beatles song, 'Can't Buy Me Love', takes over.

Top movie

• The Pink Panther More
  Having displaced 'Kissin' Cousins', it will be there until the weekend box office of April 12, 1964 when, 'The Carpetbaggers', takes over.

• FamousBirthdays.com: April 4 Birthdays More
• FamousDaily.com: April 4 History More
• History.com: Historical Events on 4th April More
• HistoryOrb.com: Famous Deaths on 4th April More
• On-This-day.com history 4th April More
• On-This-day.com music history 4th April More
• Wikipedia.com: History April 4 More

National Florida Tomato Month National Food Month National Soft Pretzel Month National Soy Foods Month Cruelty to Animals Month National Grilled Cheese Month

April is:

April origin (from Wikipedia):
'The Romans gave this month the Latin name Aprilis but the derivation of this name is uncertain. The traditional etymology is from the verb aperire, 'to open', in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to 'open', which is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of (anoixis) (opening) for spring. Since some of the Roman months were named in honor of divinities, and as April was sacred to the goddess Venus, her Veneralia being held on the first day, it has been suggested that April was the second month of the earliest Roman calendar, before Ianuarius and Februarius were added by King Numa Pompilius about 700 BC. It became the fourth month of the calendar year (the year when twelve months are displayed in order) during the time of the decemvirs about 450 BC, when it also was given 29 days. The 30th day was added during the reform of the calendar undertaken by Julius Caesar in the mid-40s BC, which produced the Julian calendar.'

April 'is commonly associated with the season of spring in parts of the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, where it is the seasonal equivalent to October in the Northern Hemisphere and vice versa.'

April at Wikipedia: More

If you couldn't afford 90 cents for a movie ticket, 50 years ago, or your 45 RPM record player was broke, you might watch one of these shows on TV.
From this Wikipedia article: More

Best selling books of 1964 More

• Astronomy Picture of the Day: More
• NOAA: - National Hurricane Center - Atlantic Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook: More
• Listen to Old Radio Shows: (streaming mp3 with schedule) More
• NASA TV: (video feed) More
  NASA TV schedule: More
• Public Domain eBook Links

  Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More

• Podcast: A Moment of Science. Approximately 1 minute general science facts.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: The Naked Scientists. Current science, medicine, space and other science
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: Quirks & Quarks. Current science news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Articles and videos: Universe Today. Current space and astronomy news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Old Picture of the Day - "Each day we bring you one stunning little glimpse of history in the form of a historical photograph."
  Home page: More
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Below, are listed several holiday sites that I reference in addition to other holiday researches.

US Government Holidays

• 2014 Postal Holidays More
• 2014 Official Federal Holidays More

Holidays Worldwide

• List of holidays by country More
• Holidays and Observances around the World More