Work smart, work safe, go home.

Today is International Workers' Memorial Day. The day is a day set aside to remember all of those people who have been injured or killed on the job.



Each year, more than two million women and men die as a result of work-related accidents and diseases. So remember, there was a good chance; an accident brought you into this world. Don’t let one take you out.


April 28, 1939 -
Cecil B. DeMille brought the Western into a new realm when Union Pacific, premiered in Omaha, Nebraska on this date.



Robert Preston, who appeared in several Cecil B. DeMille productions, not only disliked the director personally but felt he was inept at directing actors. The scene where Preston, Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea are trapped in the boxcar took two weeks to film and, according to Preston, DeMille had nothing but "Action," "Cut," and "Print" to say to the actors. He didn't seem to care about scenes that did not include action or spectacle. When Preston became a bigger star, he turned down offers to appear in other DeMille films and avoided any relationship or contact with him.


April 25, 1951-
The Looney Tunes short, A Hound for Trouble, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Charlie Dog, debuted on this date.



Charlie Dog is trying to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's even harder for tourists to descend the flight of stairs inside the tower than it is to climb.


April 28, 1956 -
The Looney Tunes short, Rabbitson Crusoe, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, debuted on this date.



Sam is briefly seen attempting to surf, although the California surf craze was still a few years off. Surfing on wooden longboards, however, had been introduced by Hawaiian legend Duke Kahanamoku in the early 20th century.


April 28, 1965 -
Barbra Streisand's first television special, My Name is Barbra, premiered on CBS-TV, on this date.



The audience segments were filmed in a small TV studio in New York City just down the street from where Barbra Streisand was performing in Funny Girl. The audience consisted of about 200 members of Streisand's fan club.


April 28, 1969 -
Chicago's debut studio album, Chicago Transit Authority, (the only album released under their original name,) was released on this date.



The first track from Chicago's first album is an example of an early song featuring their horn section of Walter Parazaider, James Pankow and Lee Loughnane. It's also an example of a very cerebral lyric which asks the kind of existential question commonly posited in the '60s. The song stresses the importance of taking time to appreciate the small pleasures in life instead of rushing from one place to another against the clock.


April 28, 1975 –
Former Beatle Ringo Starr appeared NBC-TV’s The Smothers Brothers Show performing his No No Song with hosts Tom and Dick Smothers, on this date.



Later that evening, an interviewTom Snyder conducted with ex-Beatle John Lennon was on The Tomorrow Show was broadcast on this date.



At the time, no one knew then that John Lennon would be taking an extended hiatus from public life, taking time to raise his son and live a less public life. The interview Lennon gave Tom Snyder in 1975 revealed he had tremendous humility and an affecting sense of humor.


April 28, 1978 -
John A. Alonzo's film about a radio station with a motley collection of DJs, FM, starring Michael Brandon, Eileen Brennan, Alex Karras, Cleavon Little, Martin Mull and Cassie Yates went into general release in the US on this date. The film is often believed to be the inspiration for the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, but in fact the pilot for that sitcom was filmed before this film's release.



The theme song from the movie, Steely Dan's FM (No Static at All) won engineers Al Schmitt and Roger Nichols the 1979 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording.


April 28, 1979 -
The first of their four chart-toppers, Blondie's Heart Of Glass hits #1 in the U.S. on this date.



According to Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 Songs, Harry and Stein wrote the song in their dingy New York apartment and keyboardist Jimmy Destri provided the synthesizer hook. The result brought punk and disco together on the dance floor. Said Destri, "Chris always wanted to do disco. We used to do 'Heart Of Glass' to upset people."


April 28, 1985 -
The first single from Bryan Ferry's album Boys and Girls, Slave To Love, was released on this date.



The album, Boys and Girls, featured many brilliant guitarists, including Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bryan Adams' guitarist Keith Scott.


April 28, 1994 -
32 years ago the Fox network aired the 100th episode of The Simpsons - Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song, on this date. I wonder what ever happened to that series?



When this episode first aired, stars appeared during the commercial breaks to celebrate the 100th episode.

Luke Perry: (referring to his animated appearance) You know, I've been shot out of a lot of cannons, but there's nothing like the first time. Congratulations to the show on their 100th episode.
Leonard Nimoy: To everyone in the sleepy town of Springfield...may you live long and prosper.
Kelsey Grammer: Hello, Kelsey Grammer here. Felicitations to the people who bring The Simpsons to life. May you make 100 more.


April 28, 2009 -
A TV commercial for the UK car insurance company, Swiftcover featuring Iggy Pop was ruled as misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority. In the ad, Iggy was seen exclaiming that he had an insurance policy with Swiftcover but the company did not cover musicians at the time of the ad being shown.



Swiftcover had since started to offer policies to musicians, and Mr Osterberg, Jr. has continued to increase his retirement fund, I mean, endorse the company ever since.


April 28, 2011 -
Universal Pictures mega-hit comedy Bridesmaids, starring Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph. Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd, Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas, Michael Hitchcock, Jon Hamm, and Jill Clayburgh, premiered in the US on this date. (This film is my daughters' favorite comedy.)


 
It was originally intended that Chris O'Dowd's cop would be American, but everyone was so enamored with O'Dowd's native Irish accent that it was decided that he keep it.


April 28, 2012 –
The Gotye song (featuring Kimbra), Somebody That I Used to Know hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart on this date.



The song features New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra, who won her country's Critics' Choice awards in 2011; the award is intended to recognize and nurture up-coming talent. Gotye didn't begin writing this song as a duet, but after he finished the first verse, he realized he had nowhere to go with the character he was writing about, and needed to introduce another voice.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
April 28, 1789 -
In the middle of the South Pacific, the crew of the HMS Bounty, led by either Clark Gable, Marlon Brando or Mel Gibson mutinied, setting Charles Laughton, Trevor Howard or Anthony Hopkins and 18 other crewmen adrift in an open boat, so they can hang out with topless Tahitian teens.



Sometimes history is very confusing.


April 28, 1881 -
Billy the Kid escaped from a New Mexico jail, killing jailer Bob Ollinger and a fellow prisoner in the process. Billy survived for another three months before Pat Garrett finally killed him.

Somehow Bob Dylan, Paul Newman, Dracula and Jane Russell's Howard Hughes engineered bosom are involved in this story



Once again, history is exceedingly confusing.


April 28, 1910 -
In England, Claude Grahame-White became the first person to pilot a plane at night on this date.

The landmark flight came during the 1910 London to Manchester air race.


April 28, 1941 -
... I was always taught that you don't think you are anything special 'cause there's always someone who is more special than you. Just be the best you that you can be..





Ann-Margret Olsson, actress, singer and dancer, was born on this date.


April 28, 1945 -
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisan fighters and executed (castrated and hung upside down on a meat hook - well, Mussolini had his junk removed - Clara, well, she just got hung.)



Just because you can get the trains to run on time does not mean that the voters love you (it should be a motto every politician has tattooed to their ass.) One of our bunkies had a relative who was involved in his arrest.


April 28, 1947 -
Sailing from Peru on the balsa-raft Kon Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl began his six-man, 101-day expedition across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.



Heyerdahl's expeditions were spectacular and caught the public imagination. Although much of his work remains unaccepted within the scientific community, Heyerdahl increased public interest in ancient history and anthropology.


April 28, 1967 -
Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the army because of religious reasons on this date, and was stripped of his boxing titles and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for draft evasion.



The conviction was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court


April 28, 2001 -
Millionaire Dennis Tito, cut a $20 million check to Russia, (proving there is such a thing as 'stupid money',) and became the world's first space tourist, flying aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. For his money, he spent a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS).



Tito, and his wife Akiko, have both recently made a deal to travel on a one-week journey aboard SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, along with up to 10 other paying passengers, to the moon. Apparently he has made a lot more stupid money in the intervening years.



And so it goes.

So, was there a big bang?

On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science.



Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets.


April 27, 1922 -
Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (some have called it the first film-noir,) premiered in Berlin, Germany on this date.



Fritz Lang originally wanted the actress portraying Venus to be completely nude. When the first take was completed, he didn't like how the woman's pubic hair looked, and ordered her to shave it off. The actress indignantly refused, sending Lang into a tantrum. Eventually, a compromise was reached when a small strip of cloth was draped over the offending hair. This scene was predictably removed from the revival versions that circulated throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and has only recently been part of the film in the rare showings of the Fritz Lang archives' complete copy of Dr. Mabuse.


A Star Is Born 1937 -
William A. Wellman's drama (which has been remade three times,) A Star Is Born, starring Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander, and Owen Moore opened in the US on this date.



This is widely considered to be the first Technicolor film that was a bona-fide critical and box office success. Until A Star is Born and Nothing Sacred, color films had been garish, over-saturated and, as many critics complained, headache-inducing. Producer David O. Selznick insisted on muted, realistic color, and it was the success of these two films that paved the way for his Technicolor masterpiece Gone with the Wind.


April 27, 1940 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Hardship of Miles Standish, directed by Friz Freleng, and starring Elmer Fudd, debuted on this date. This cartoon is seldom shown on television today due to Native American stereotyping.



This cartoon was originally planned to be an Egghead cartoon directed by Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton, as with Confederate Honey. However, when Friz Freleng returned to the studio after a stint at MGM, the cartoon was taken over by him, who decided to use the Elmer Fudd character instead.


April 27, 1940 -
The Looney Tunes short, Porky's Poor Fish, directed by Robert Clampett, and starring Porky Pig, debuted on this date.



Three sequences from the storyboard got cut from the finished short, which include a view of a mama fish and three little fishes, a "dog fish" and "cat fishes," a dance number from a turtle, and an alternative scene in which the cat tries to steal a fish hiding behind a lobster, but the other fishes find out and the flying fishes attack using light bulbs as bombs.


April 27, 1948 -
Alexander Korda's lavish remake of Anna Karenina directed by Julien Duvivier and starring Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richarson premiered in NYC on this date.



Vivien Leigh's costumes were made in Paris by Barbara Karinska to Cecil Beaton's designs. She was in such pain wearing them that she even went to her doctor fearing she had broken her ribs. It was subsequently discovered that the dresser had been putting the corsets on upside down.


April 27, 1963 -
Allied Artists released the sci-fi thriller The Day of the Triffids, directed by Steve Sekely and starring Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, and Mervyn Johns in the US on this date.



Kieron Moore and Janette Scott were only added to the cast when it was discovered upon completion of filming that there was only 57 minutes of good usable footage available. The whole lighthouse sequence, directed by veteran Cinematographer Freddie Francis, was only added to help extend the movie's running time - even though these scenes contain the movie's surprise- twist denouement. Presumably this was a last-minute script change. Freddie Francis, when asked about his uncredited contribution to the film, implied strongly that the whole production had been chaos.


April 27, 1969 -
Joe Cocker made his first U.S. TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on this date. Together with the Grease Band, Cocker performed a cover of Dave Mason's Feelin' Alright.



The song would end up being a two-time charting hit for Cocker -  in 1969 and again in 1972. Cocker included a version of the song on his 1970 double album, Mad Dogs & Englishmen.


April 27, 1971 -
CBS executives finally sobered up and the last episode of Green Acres aired on this date.



This was to have been the pilot for a proposed spin off featuring Elaine Joyce as Carol. Oliver and Lisa only appear briefly in the beginning as an excuse to introduce Carol and the pilot. Oliver appears later talking to Carol on the phone.


April 27, 1975 -
The cult action film Death Race 2000, directed by Paul Bartel, and starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth, Sylvester Stallone, Mary Woronov, Martin Kove, and Don Steele, opened in the US on this date.



Both David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone did much of their own driving in this film. In addition, producer Roger Corman drove in scenes that were shot on public streets, since the custom-built cars that were used in the film were not street legal and the film's stunt drivers did not want to be caught driving them by the police.


April 27, 1990 -
The British film based on the lives and crimes of the English gangster twins Ronald and Reginald Kray, The Krays, starring Gary Kemp (of Spandau Ballet) and Martin Kemp, premiered in the UK on this date.



Roger Daltrey had originally intended to produce a film about the Kray twins life after acquiring the rights to John Pearson's book The Profession Of Violence. The idea was abandoned however once the Peter Medak version was announced.


April 27, 2001 -
And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I'd said ...



The Bee Gees performed audience and viewer requests for tunes from their long career in a concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom on the A&E series, Live By Request, on this date.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
April 27, 1509 -
The entire state of Venice was excommunicated by Pope Julius II for an entirely secular reason:



the refusal to place parts of Romagna under the Pope's control.

Oh, those wacky Pre-counterreformation Popes.


April 27, 1521 -
In an hour long battle with Philippine Islanders, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his men were repeatedly jabbed with sharpened bamboo spears. After Magellan finally succumbs to his wounds, the natives hacked him to pieces with their swords, barbecued and consumed him on this date.



They were surprised that they were not hungry an hour after eating him as they had been after eating some Asian explorers previously.


April 27, 1822 -
Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War hero and 18th President of the United States, would have been 204 today.



And if the rumors are true, he is still buried in Grant's Tomb, which was dedicated on this date in 1897.


April 27, 1861 -
In a blatantly unconstitutional act, President Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus inside a zone between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The government could detain citizens indefinitely without ever filing charges. A year and a half later, Lincoln expanded the scope of his order to the entire nation.



I will grant you that President Obama might have read a little too much, but thank God that the previous resident of the White House didn't read much at all.


April 27, 1865 -
The worst steamship disaster in the history of the United States occurs on this date. The SS Sultana, carrying over 2,000 passengers, the majority being freed Union POWs from the notorious Andersonville and Cahaba Prisons, exploded on the Mississippi River, while en route to Cairo, Illinois.



Neither the cause of the explosion nor the final count of the dead (estimated at between 1,450 and 2,000) was ever determined. Today, the Sultana disaster remains the worst of its kind.

Talk about bad luck.


April 27, 1871 -
The American Museum of Natural History opened to the public in New York City, on this date. With a series of exhibits, the Museum’s collection went on view for the first time in the Central Park Arsenal, the Museum’s original home, on the eastern side of Central Park.

The museum began from the efforts of Albert Smith Bickmore, one-time student of Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, who was successful in his proposal to create a natural history museum in New York City with the support of William E. Dodge, Junior, Theodore Roosevelt, Senior, Joseph Choate and J. Pierpont Morgan. The Governor of New York, John Thompson Hoffman, signed a bill officially creating the American Museum of Natural History on April 6, 1869.


April 27, 1932 -
Writer Hart Crane was racked with self-doubt about his ability to write good poetry and agonizing over his sexuality, had been mentally unstable for some time. Crane stood on the railing of the ship Orizaba in his pajamas (en route to the United States from Mexico,) shouted, "Goodbye Everyone," to the other stunned passengers and jumped over the side of the ship on this date.



Life preservers were thrown to him, but he makes no effort to reach them and drowned. The ship halted in the water, ten miles off the Florida coast, but never recovers his body.


April 27, 1986 -
Someone interrupted the HBO satellite feed during the movie The Falcon and The Snowman on this date. For five minutes, two-thirds of their customer base receives the message: Good evening HBO from Captain Midnight. $12.95 a month?



(Showtime-Movie Channel Beware.) Captain Midnight turned out to be John R. MacDougall of Florida. After media pressure forces the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to act, MacDougall was charged and sentenced, per a plea bargain, to a $5,000 fine and one year’s probation.


April 27, 1987 -
After determining that Kurt Waldheim had "assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of persons" during his Nazi years, the Department of Justice places him on a watch list of undesirable aliens on this date. As such, the sitting President of Austria was disallowed entry into the U.S. It is the first time that a foreign head of state is legally forbidden from visiting America.



I suppose that he suffered from Waldheimer's Disease - it's having difficulty recalling that you're a Nazi



And so it goes.

Knot your average snack.

National Pretzel Day celebrates pretzels of all shapes and sizes. Pretzels are believed to be the world's oldest snack. (This appears to be a legitimate celebration, there are many stores giving away free pretzels today.)

Wake me up when it's Very Dry Martini, straight up with Olives Day. And no that's not every day at my house, smarty pants.


April 26, 1935 -
The Tod Browning MGM comedy-horror film Mark of the Vampire, starring Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, and Jean Hersholt, premiered in the US on this date.



Throughout the film, Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) has an unexplained bullet wound on his temple. In the original script Mora was supposed to have had an incestuous relationship with his daughter Luna, and to have committed suicide. After filming began, however, MGM deleted references to the crime (and any remaining references may have been deleted when 20 minutes of footage was removed after the film's preview).


April 26, 1941 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Trial of Mr. Wolf, directed by Friz Freleng, debuted on this date.



The Wolf's compass has directions to Grandma's House, the Three Bears House, the House That Jack Built, and the Three Little Pigs.


April 26, 1945 -
United Artists wartime drama, Blood On The Sun, starring James Cagney and Sylvia Sidney, premiered in the US on this date.



The Tokyo Imperial Hotel bar seen at the start of the movie is apparently an exact replica of the actual bar situated in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.


April 26, 1950 -
Twentieth Century-Fox released the Cold War drama, shot on location in Berlin, The Big Lift, starring, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Douglas, on this date.



With the exception of Montgomery Clift and Paul Douglas, all military personnel in the film were actual members of the US military on duty in Germany at the time.


April 26, 1954 -
72 years ago, one of the greatest films in world cinema, Akira Kurosawa's iconic Seven Samurai, starring Toshiro Mifune, was released in Japan on this date. A technical and creative marvel, it became Japan’s highest-grossing movie but also was highly influential among Hollywood filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and George Lucas.



This was the first film on which Akira Kurosawa used multiple cameras, so he wouldn't interrupt the flow of the scenes and could edit the film as he pleased in post-production. He used the multiple-camera set-up on every subsequent film.


April 26, 1956 -
Godzilla debuted in America on this date. (Gojira premiered in Japan on November 3, 1954.)



The American version of the film had 40 minutes of the original excised (mostly the content dealing with World War II or the anti-nuclear message,) and had 20 minutes of the masterful deadpan stylings of Raymond Burr. The American version was released in Japan with Japanese subtitles and did very well.


April 26, 1958 -
The Looney Tunes short, A Waggily Tale, directed by Friz Freleng, debuted on this date.



Rabies in dogs was still a health concern at the time of this short. Modern vaccines have reduced the threat, though the disease continues to be found in bats, skunks, squirrels and other creatures. The sight of a dog foaming at the mouth in 1958 would have created quite a calamitous scene.


April 26, 1967 -
CBS broadcast the documentary, Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution, with the host Leonard Bernstein, on this date.



The program marked the first time that television presented pop music as a legitimate art form.


April 26, 1975 -
B. J. Thomas' song, (Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song, was No. 1 on the charts on this date. It is the longest-titled #1 charting song to date.



(Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song was B. J. Thomas' second #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, his other being Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. I really apologize for this song being stuck in your head for the rest of the day.


April 26, 1978 -
The concert billed as The Band's "farewell concert appearance", was held on November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The concert film, The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese, starring members of the band and many of their friends, premiered in the US on this date.



The Band's management had overbooked the show. Two days before the show, they tried to have Muddy Waters taken off the bill. Levon Helm, The Band's drummer, threatened not to play the show if Muddy Waters was asked to leave. Muddy Waters is in the final cut of the film. Every camera but one ran out of film during his performance of Mannish Boy. It resulted in the longest shot of the film, while Martin Scorsese scrambled to get the film cans reloaded.


April 26, 1978 –
NBC aired a a musical version of The Prince and the Pauper, Ringo, starring Ringo, Art Carney, Angie Dickinson, Carrie Fisher, Vincent Price, John Ritter, and George Harrison narrating, on this date.



Really, don't feel you have to watch the whole thing (it's not very good.)


April 26, 1988 -
We were back in Nam (again) when the pilot episode of China Beach, starring Dana Delaney, Nan Woods, Michael Boatman, and Marg Helgenberger, premiered on ABC TV on this date. (For some reason this series has almost faded into obscurity.)



Several of the storylines, and even some of the dialogue were taken directly from the experiences and recollections of actual Vietnam era military nurses.


April 26, 1991 -
For some reason ABC TV fulfilled Jim Henson dying wish of creating a TV series about puppet anthropomorphic dinosaurs when Dinosaurs aired on this date.



Jim Henson originally got the idea of a live-action show featuring animatronic dinosaurs after he was impressed by the technology his Creature Shop was developing for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When this show went into production, the same technology was used to create the Dinosaurs. Many of the Ninja Turtle suit actors worked as various Dinosaur suit actors for the series.


Another album from the discount bin at The ACME Record Shoppe


Today in History:
April 26, 1865 -
Discovered hiding in a farmer's tobacco shed, John Wilkes Booth was shot in the neck by a complete lunatic. Dying and paralyzed from the neck down, he whispers: Tell my mother I did it for my country.



As his hands are held up to his face, Booth mutters "useless...useless..."



They were his last words.


On April 26, 1923 (almost 88 years previously to the date of his great-grandson's nuptials,) the Duke of York married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in Westminster Abbey.



This wedding might have slipped into the ephemera of time had the Duke's brother not wanted to marry a woman reported so ugly, many thought her a man in drag. And calling a woman ugly in England is really saying something, as many of the British upper crust often marry their horses out of confusion.

That's British royalty.

Count Basie died on April 26, 1984; Duke Ellington was born on April 29, 1899; Ella Fitzgerald, the "First Lady of Song," was born on April 25, 1917.

That's American royalty.


April 26, 1933 -
Hermann Goering founded the Geheime Staatspolizei, otherwise known as the Gestapo on this date.



The original purpose of this "Secret State Police" is to disrupt and harass opponents of National Socialism, but it will later come to adopt many additional responsibilities.


April 26, 1933 -
When I was in college at UCLA, I took a playwriting course. I was all set to be a writer. But I had to take this acting class as a theater arts major. I had to do this scene in a one-act comedy. I just said this line, and then... this laugh happened. I thought, 'Whoa. This is a really good feeling. What have I been missing?'





Carol Creighton Burnett, the funniest woman in America was born on this day - don't argue with me, I will come to your home and hurt you. I was forced to watch The Carol Burnett Show in my bedroom and not with my family because I laughed so loudly and so hard, no one could hear it.


April 26, 1937 -
It was a beautiful Monday afternoon in Guernica, Spain on this date. At about 3:30 pm the day took a tragic turn. For over three hours, twenty-five or more of Germany's best-equipped bombers, accompanied by at least 20 more Messerschmitt and Fiat Fighters, dumped one hundred thousand pounds of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the village, slowly and systematically pounding it to rubble.



Guernica had served as the testing ground for a new Nazi military tactic - blanket-bombing a civilian population to demoralize the enemy. It was wanton, man-made holocaust.



The bombing was the subject of a famous anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso.


April 26, 1937 -
Due to a publishing error, LIFE magazine was printed without the word "LIFE" on the cover on this date.

It was the only time that LIFE was nameless.


April 26, 1962 -
The NASA Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon after sixty-four hours of flight, on this date.



The probe’s mission was to rough-land a seismometer capsule on the Moon, to collect gamma-ray data in flight, to study the radar reflectivity of the lunar surface, and to continue testing the Ranger program for development of lunar and interplanetary spacecraft.

So now you know, (this may be on the test.)


April 26, 1977 -
Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager open Studio 54 the world famous New York nightclub, renowned for being extremely difficult to get in unless you were famous / well known or considered one of the beautiful people over the years.



Studio 54 closed with a final party on February 4, 1980.


April 26, 1986 -
44 seconds into a late-night experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, reactor number four sustains two large explosions. The exploded at Chernobyl burned for 10 days. About 70% of the fallout fell in Belarus. Damage was estimated to be up to $130 billion. The Soviet news agency TASS held off reporting the incident for almost 48 hours.



A 300-hundred-square-mile area was evacuated and 31 people died as unknown thousands were exposed to radioactive material that spread in the atmosphere throughout the world. By 1998, 10,000 Russian liquidators involved in the cleanup had died and thousands more became invalids. It was later estimated that the released radioactivity was 200 times the combined bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was later found that Soviet scientists were authorized to carry out experiments that required the reactor to be pushed to or beyond its limits, with safety features disabled.

Oops.



And so it goes.