April 14 History, Trivia, and Fun Facts
April 14 History Highlights
- 1561 – A ‘celestial phenomenon’ is reported over Nuremberg, described as an aerial UFO battle.
- 1828 – Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language.
- 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
- 1933 – Jack Mackay and his wife reported seeing the Loch Ness Monster- and that got the whole modern lake monster thing started.
- If you were born on April 14th,
You were likely conceived the week of… July 22nd (prior year)
April 14 is…
Dolphin Day
Ex-Spouse Day
Moment of Laughter Day
Look up the Sky Day
Pecan Day
Reach as High as You Can Day
Cecil Chubb’s Stonehenge
In late September 1915, Cecil Chubb bought Stonehenge for £6,600, a little less than a million in today’s dollars, as a gift for his wife. The area is about 6400 acres. Mrs. Chubb was not happy. According to legend, she wanted curtains. We can only assume she later got her curtains and a lifetime of apologies. He donated Stonehenge to the UK in 1918, with the provision that locals could always visit it for free. They still can, but it’ll cost tourists about $25.00.
April 14 Birthday Quotes
“Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.”
– Anne Sullivan Macy
“You can be good in a good movie, you can be good in a bad movie, you can be bad in a bad movie, but never, ever, be bad in a good movie.”
– John Gielgud
“In the long run, you make your own luck – good, bad, or indifferent.”
– Loretta Lynn
“You’d be surprised how many shortcomings can be overcome by hustle.”
– Pete Rose
“Real heroes are all around us and uncelebrated.”
– Peter Capaldi
“A true friend is someone who says nice things behind your back.”
– Anthony Michael Hall
April 14 Birthdays
1876 – Cecil Chubb, English barrister and one-time owner of Stonehenge (died in 1934)
1904 – Sir John Gielgud, English actor, director, and producer (died in 2000
1922 – Audrey Long, American character actress (died in 2014)
1925 – Rod Steiger, American actor (died in 2002)
1932 – Loretta Lynn, American singer-songwriter
1940 – Julie Christie, English actress
1941 – Pete Rose, American baseball player
1949 – Dave Gibbons, English comic book author and illustrator
1958 – Peter Capaldi, Scottish character actor, The Twelfth Doctor
1961 – Robert Carlyle, Scottish character actor
1968 – Anthony Michael Hall, American actor
1977 – Sarah Michelle Gellar, American actress
1977 – Rob McElhenney, American actor and producer
1996 – Abigail Breslin, American actress
April 14 History
1863 – The US Patent (No. 38,200) for a continuous-roll printing press was issued to William Bullock, enabling two sides of a newspaper to be printed at once. It was first used by the New York Sun.
1865 – John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a play (Our American Cousin) at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC.
1881 – Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight occurred on El Paso Street, El Paso, Texas. Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire accounted for three of the four fatalities with his twin .44 caliber Colt revolvers.
1900 – The Exposition Universelle began in Paris, France.
1912 – RMS Titanic hit an iceberg, killing 1514 people that evening, and into the next day.
1927 – The first Volvo car was presented in Gothenburg, Sweden.
1933 – Jack Mackay and his wife reported seeing the Loch Ness Monster – ‘Nessie’, although the earliest report was in 565 AD when St. Columbia turned away a giant beast that was threatening a man in the Ness River, which flows into the lake.
1935 – ‘Black Sunday Storm’ – the worst dust storm of the US Dust Bowl, hit from the Oklahoma Panhandle and Northwestern Oklahoma to the Texas Panhandles. The Duststorm of April 14th, 1935 is also immortalized in the Woody Guthrie song “Dusty Old Dust” aka “So long been good to know you.”
1939 – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was first published by the Viking Press.
1953 – The CIA started to give unwitting subjects LSD in a search for a mind-controlling drug.
1960 – Broadway Show – Bye Bye Birdie (Musical) opened on April 14, 1960
1961 – The man-made element 103 – Lawrencium (Lw), was produced in the US by Albert Ghiorso, Torbjørn Sikkeland, Almon Larsh and Robert M. Latimer.
1969 (Tornado) East Pakistan, Pakistan
April 14, 1969 – 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee aired live on NBC
1969 – Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter) and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) tied for Best Actress Oscar.
1979 – #1 Hit April 14, 1979 – April 20, 1979: The Doobie Brothers – What a Fool Believes
1984 – My Little Pony premiered, in syndication
1990 – #1 Hit April 14, 1990 – April 20, 1990: Tommy Page – I’ll Be Your Everything
1990 – In Living Color premiered on FOX
1992 – Broadway Show – Guys and Dolls (Musical) April 14, 1992
1994 – The 24-hour movie channel Turner Classic Movies made its debut.
1995 – Stuart Saves His Family was released in theaters.
2000 – 28 Days, American Psycho, and Keeping the Faith debuted in theaters.
2001 – April 14, 2001 – June 1, 2001: Janet Jackson – All For You
2003 – The Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
2006 – The Notorious Bettie Page, Scary Movie 4, Kinky Boots, and The Wild were released in theaters.
Today’s Random Trivia and Shower Thoughts
Batman’s Arkham Asylum gets its name from the Arkham Sanitarium from the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, created by H.P. Lovecraft.
The Capital of New Zealand is Wellington
The biggest film of 1954: White Christmas (Musical) earned ~ $30,000,000
In the United States tomatoes are legally a vegetable, as established in 1893 by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.
“FOCUS = Follow On Course Until Successful.” – Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
History classes are only going to get longer and harder as time goes on.
Dr. James C. Munch testified in court, under oath, that he had smoked marijuana, and it turned him into a bat. Dr. Munch was the “official expert” on marijuana for the U.S. government from 1938 to 1962.
“He was brutally handsome and she was terminally pretty.” #songlyrics
Lisztomania was the intense hysterical reaction of fans at pianist Franz List’s concerts in the 1800s.
There are probably millions (if not billions of un-closed parentheses lying around in notes, texts, and websites all over the world.
Years ending in “00” are skipped for Leap Years, except every 400 years (2000, 2400, 2800, etc).