Hopefully, you're ready

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

But since today is Monday, they're due today.

(Because Patriot's Day and Emancipation Day, which fall on April 15 and April 16, respectively, Maine and Massachusetts have a tax filing deadline of April 17, 2024.) If you don't live in either of those states and 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. (I've seen the date listed as March 12 as well.)



Dr. De Forest received in 1959 an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (The piano player in the background, is a very young Oscar Levant.)


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



Brian Jones, who was The Stones guitarist until his death in 1969, played the dulcimer on the album, an instrument you play on your lap by plucking or strumming the strings. Jones could learn just about any instrument very quickly. He had just recently learned how to play it when they recorded Lady Jane.


April 15, 1967 –
The Nancy Sinatra and Frank Sinatra very sweet and slightly weird song, Somethin’ Stupid, hit no. #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart on this date.



Being that this is a love song performed by a father and daughter, some awkward connotations could have prevented it from being a hit. One of the execs at Frank Sinatra's Reprise Records, through which this song was released, feared the worst and told Frank to scrap the project, but Ol' Blue Eyes wasn't worried about it. It became a hit, of course, and he included it on his 1967 album, The World We Knew.


April 15, 1972 -
Roberta Flack's breakout single, First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, goes to No. 1 on the Billboard Charts, on this date.



Folk singer Ewan MacColl wrote this in 1957 for his lover, Peggy Seeger. She was in a play and phoned him for suggestions on a song for a romantic scene. MacColl wrote this on the spot in less than an hour, playing it over the phone for her to use in her play.

April 15, 1990 -
Fox TV premiered the Wayans Bros. comedy series In Living Color on this date.



According to an Oscar profile in Entertainment Weekly, Thomas Haden Church auditioned for a spot on the show, but was edged out by Jim Carrey.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
April 15, 1452 -
Leonardo da Vinci was born on this date. Mr. da Vinci was one of the great minds of the Renaissance. Sadly, he is best known for having painted the Mona Lisa (in Italian, La Joconde,) in which he accurately and exquisitely captured the unmistakable smile of a dignified woman who's just farted.



For some reason, many lonely computer geeks celebrate this day by releasing computer virii in hopes that female FBI agents will break down their doors.


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 -
She won't think anything about it. ...



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 Tru TV.


April 15, 1912: 12:50 a.m. EST -
A junior wireless operator at Cape Race, Newfoundland, received a report from the Virginian that they were trying to reach the Titanic ocean liner, but had lost communication. Titanic's last signals at 12:27 a.m. were "blurred and ended abruptly."



The 'unsinkable' ship Titanic sank after being torn by iceberg, with a loss of 1493 passengers on this date.



From the moment it struck the iceberg, the Titanic remained afloat for approximately 160 minute - the first lifeboat was not deployed from the ship for almost 60 minutes after the initial collision.

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.

Roger Bricoux was the Titanic's cello player and just 21 years old when he perished during the ship's sinking. But Bricoux wasn't officially declared dead until 2000 (through the efforts of French Association of the Titanic,) though all of the musicians died on April 15, 1912. The French army even called him a deserter when he failed to show up to serve in World War I.

In the race to publish a headline about the disaster, numerous newspapers gave families and loved ones false hope about the sinking of the Titanic. The World reported no fatalities, the Daily Mail declared "no lives lost," and the Belfast Telegraph claimed "no danger of loss of life." American newspapers were able to take advantage of the time difference, and their headlines were more accurate.


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 11, 1960 -
Ella Baker led a meeting at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina that resulted in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which became a driving force for whites and blacks in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, on this date.



SNCC (“snick”) attracted many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to pay salaries for SNCC’s activists across the South. The group played a major role in the sit-ins, freedom rides, and the 1963 March on Washington, demonstrating that ordinary women and men, young and old, could create extraordinary change. 


April 15, 1962 -
Actress Clara Blandick, 80, who played Auntie Em in 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 and seventy five 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 150 of the girls had been freed, rescued or escaped. Of the other 112, who remain officially unaccounted for, estimates are that at least 40 have died.



And so it goes.