April is the cruelest month [View All]

[WilliamPitt]

I got to thinking about April today while trying to nail down whether Gonzales was still scheduled to appear before the Senate tomorrow. His testimony had been slated for Tuesday, but was bumped after the Virginia Tech shootings. Tomorrow, when he will appear, is the 19th, the date marking both the fire at Waco and the OK City bombing.

Scratch the history of any day, and you'll probably find an event wreathed in darkness. The thirty days of April, however, seem especially freighted with woe. An abridged list of dark April days is below:

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4/4/1968: Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader, assassinated in Memphis at age 39;

4/6/1954: US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Bikini Island;

4/7/1933: First two Nazi anti-Jewish laws enacted, barring Jews from legal & public service;

4/7/1971: President Richard Nixon orders Lieutenant Calley (My Lai) freed;

4/9/1927: Sacco & Vanzetti given death sentences;

4/10/1923: Hitler demands "hatred & more hatred" in Berlin;

4/12/1861: Fort Sumter SC is shelled by Confederacy, starting the Civil War;

4/12/1966: 1st B-52 bombing of North Vietnam begins;

4/13/1873: Colfax Massacre in Grant Parish LA (60 Blacks killed);

4/14/1865: President Abraham Lincoln shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth;

4/14/1909: Anglo-Persian Oil Company forms in London;

4/15/1865: President Abraham Lincoln dies at 7:22 am after being shot by John Wilkes Booth;

4/15/1912: Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM in North Atlantic as the band plays on;

4/16/1975: Khmer Rouge occupy Phnom Penh;

4/16/2007: Gunman murders 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech before committing suicide, largest school massacre in American history;

4/17/1945: 8th Air Force bombs Dresden;

4/18/1906: San Francisco earthquake & fire kills nearly 4,000 & destroys 75% of the city;

4/18/1983: US Embassy in Beruit bombed, 63 killed;

4/19/1989: Gun turret explodes on USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors;

4/19/1993: Davidian compound at Waco assaulted by Federal agents, resulting fire kills 74;

4/19/1995: Truck bomb explodes outside Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 & injuring 500;

4/20/1889: Adolf Hitler is born;

4/20/1914: 33 killed by soldiers during mine strike in Ludlow CO;

4/20/1999: Teen gunmen kill 13 and wound 23 at Columbine High School;

4/21/1981: US furnishes $1 billion in arms to Saudi-Arabia;

4/22/1994: 7,000 Tutsi's slaughtered in Rwandan stadium;

4/24/1915: German army fires chloroform gas in Ieper;

4/24/1969 US B-52's drop 3,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia;

4/24/1980: US military operation to save 52 hostages in Iran fails, 8 die;

4/26/1933: Jewish students are barred from school in Germany;

4/27/1950: South Africa passes Group Areas Act segregating races;

4/29/1970: 50,000 US & South Vietnamese troops invade Cambodia;

4/29/1992: Jury acquits Los Angeles police officers of beating Rodney King, riots erupt;

4/30/1975: Last US helicopter leaves US embassy groundsin Vietnam, Saigon surrenders.