Sabbatum Sanctum

Today is Holy Saturday, also known as the Great Sabbath, Black Saturday, or Easter Eve. You kids today are soft; we used to have to fast the entire day today.

Today is the last day of Lent - you have one more day of having to give up something (or one could have done something extra.)


You might think that today, April 15, is the deadline for submitting personal tax returns, but this is not always the case. (Please follow along) when the date falls on a weekend, it is often moved to the following Monday.

However, once again, this year's deadline the 15th occurs on a weekend, so the Internal Revenue Service has given taxpayers until April 18 to pay their taxes, but not thought the goodness of their heart.

Instead, the IRS is observing a holiday that is usually only observed in Washington, DC.

Emancipation Day marks the day that the Compensated Emancipation Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16 1862. Emancipation Day is a legal holiday in DC, and public employees are given the day off work. However, because April 16, 2017, falls on a Sunday, it is celebrated on the closest weekday, which is Monday April 17. (Are you following?)

This means that public employees such as those that work for the IRS will have April 17 off of work, and so it pushes the tax deadline to April 18, a Tuesday, which is the next business day.

(For taxpayers who live in Maine or Massachusetts, another holiday helped pushes their tax deadline back to Tuesday April 18. This legal holiday is Patriots' Day, and it is always observed on the third Monday of April.)

This will absolutely be on the test.  If you haven't started your taxes, you better hustle.


April 15, 1923 -
Dr. Lee De Forest demonstrates his Phonofilm sound-on-film process to the first paying movie audience at an invitation-only event at the Rialto Theater in New York City.



Dr. De Forest received in 1959 an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.


April 15, 1966 -
Decca Records released the fourth British studio album of The Rolling Stones, Aftermath, on this date.



This was their first album to consist entirely of Mick Jagger/Keith Richards compositions.


Don't forget to tune in to today's episode of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour


Today in History:
April 15, 1792 -
The Guillotine was first tested on human corpses on this date.

Delis all over France have to wait years for the meat slicer to be invented.


April 15, 1865 -
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, died from a bullet wound inflicted the night before by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer.



The president's death came only six days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.


April 15, 1910 -
In San Francisco detective Tim Riordan arrested Jolly Trixie, aka Miss Kitty Plunkett on this date, for allegedly violating the Penal Code. She was accused of being deformed and exhibiting her deformity in a Fillmore Street show house.

Plunkett said she weighed only 585 pounds as opposed to the alleged 685 pounds. Two physicians testified that she was perfectly symmetrical.You just know if television was around at the time, this would have been a reality series on Fox TV.


April 15, 1912 -
Unsinkable ship Titanic sank after being torn by iceberg, with a loss of 1493 passengers on this date.



There were 212 staff members among the 712 survivors. Nearly all of the first-class women passengers survived, except for Ida Straus, Bessie Waldo Allison and Loraine Allison, Edith Corse Evans, and Elizabeth Ann Isham.

Only 306 of the victims bodies were found. The dead were taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Its Maritime Museum has a dedicated section that includes a deckchair recovered from the wreck, mortuary bags, and the shoes of an unknown victim.

Charles Joughin, the ship’s baker, reportedly trod water for two hours before being rescued with little ill-effects. He claimed he had not felt the cold due to the amount of whiskey he had drunk.


April 15, 1945 -
British and Canadian troops liberated the Bergen-Belsen death camp in northern Germany on this date.



Bergen-Belsen was located in a village in West Germany about 30 miles north of Hanover. About 40,000 people were liberated from the camp, although about 13,000 later died of illness. Overall, about 70,000 people died in Belsen.


April 15, 1947 -
Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball when he played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers on this date.



Taking the field that day made him the first African-American to play Major League Baseball.


April 15, 1955 -
The first McDonald's franchise opens in Des Plains, a suburb of Chicago. Because it is the first one launched by Ray Kroc, he names it "McDonald's #1" despite the fact that the McDonald brothers had already opened eight of their chain restaurants before they began accepting licensees.

Kroc's unfortunate numbering system guarantees perpetual confusion for amateur fast food historians the world over.


April 15, 1962 -
Actress Clara Blandick, 80, the Auntie Em of The Wizard of Oz, took an overdose of sleeping pills and tied a plastic bag around her head in a Hollywood hotel room on this date.



Prior to this, she had prominently arranged her resume and press clippings so the newspapers would get her obituary right. Police also found her suicide note, which read: “I am now about to make the great adventure. I cannot endure this agonizing pain any longer. It is all over my body. Neither can I face the impending blindness. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”


April 15, 1983 -
Tokyo Disneyland, the first Disney park built outside of the United States, opened on this date.



It is owned by The Oriental Land Company, which licenses the theme from The Walt Disney Company. Tokyo Disneyland and its companion park, Tokyo DisneySea, are the only Disney parks not owned by The Walt Disney Company either partially or outright.


April 15, 1990 -
Greta Garbo finally got her wish,



and died in New York City at age 84, on this date.


April 15, 2013 -
Two pressure cooker bombs were set off at the Boston Marathon near the finish line, killing three people and injuring another 264 people, on this date.



The bombers were Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Police eventually chased down the suspects during a confrontation in which Tamerlan was run over by Dzhokar while trying to escape. Tamerlan was killed after a gun battle with the police and Dzhokar still awaits the results of his death penalty appeal.


April 15, 2014 -
More than two hundred schoolgirls were kidnapped from their school after an attack by the Boko Haram Islamist militant group in Chibok, Nigeria, on this date.



It is believed that the girls were taken to a hard to reach area of forest in the country or out of the country. Over fifty of the girls had been able to escape.



And so it goes.


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