GREETINGS FROM THE TORNADO TAVERN GALLERY

I’m looking outside the gallery window and I see a snow blizzard. I can’t really tell how much snow has fallen because in some parts of the yard I see, at least, 2 foot snow drifts and others I see the yard plants sticking out of the snow. Guessing from the weather map, it looks like about half of the snow has yet to get here. It’s easy to gaze out and imagine that I’m out in the wilderness. I have a small fire in the stove and surrounded by things that comfort me. It seems to me that I don’t really appreciate this place until weather like this “forces” me too.

Looking forward, we will be at the Sheboygan Area Spirit Fair this coming Saturday. The fair will be held in the Windjammer Banquet Hall with a number of quality vendors, readers and healing services. We will not be reading runes but will demonstrate our style of throwing runes.

The “a day in history” portion is lengthy and I hope you can find the time to browse it. Mary, my spouse, has suggested that I reduce the size by publishing the blog more frequently and I will consider that. I don’t really get feedback from “out there” so I’m not sure how the blog is being received. I do enjoy putting the blog together so I will continue. I am encouraged by Mary, my friend, who reportedly reads the blog to her husband.

DATE	NAME	HISTORY - 4/16 to 4/29
4/15/2018	Celtic Tree month	Saille, the Willow Month (April 15th to May 12th) Within the Ogham, Saille is the lunar month, a Peasant, representing the letter S. Numerologically, it relates to the number 5. It is often the symbol for the Ovate Grade of Druidry, although other Trees are also used for this Grade. Although the most commonly accepted concept of the Willow Tree is that which is known as the Weeping Willow (Salix babylonica), this is not the Willow utilized within the Celtic Ogham. For the most part, the Willow that concerns us here is the White Willow, salix alba. The White Willow is a naturalized Tree, having one-to-four trunks and an open crown of spreading branches. A tall Tree, She grows to an average height of fifty-to-eighty feet with a diameter of two feet or more. The leaves are 2 to 4 inches long, to 1 inch wide. They are lance-shaped to elliptical, saw-toothed, shiny dark green above, whitish and silky beneath. These leaves turn yellow in the autumn. The bark is grey, rough and furrowed into narrow ridges. The twigs are yellow to brown, silky when young and, as with all the trees within this genera, flexible and droopy, although not quite as sweeping as the Weeping variety. Her flowers are in the form of catkins 1 to 2 inches in length with yellow, hairy scales at the end of short, leafy twigs. They appear in the early spring and all Willows are the vanguards of that season. The fruit matures in late spring to early summer and is a half-inch long, hairless capsule, light brown in color. The willow tree has a long history of symbolism rooted in spirituality and cultural traditions. There are references to the willow tree in Celtic and Christian tradition, among others. One of the most valuable traits of the willow tree is its flexibility. The willow tree is one of the few trees that is capable of bending in outrageous poses without snapping. This can be a powerful metaphor for those of us seeking recovery or a spiritual path. The message of the willow tree is to adjust with life, rather than fighting it, surrendering to the process.
4/20/2018	First Nations Month	Beaver - 20th April - 20th May. “The Growing Time” Direction: East Element: Earth with Fire. Plant: Wild Clover Mineral: Jasper Bloodstone. Function: to consolidate
4/29/2018	FULL MOON	April’s Full Moon, the Full Pink Moon, heralds the appearance of the “moss pink,” or wild ground phlox—one of the first spring flowers. It is also known as the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and the Fish Moon. These names were used by early Colonial Americans—who learned the names from the local Native Americans; time was not recorded by using the months of the Julian or Gregorian calendar. Many tribes kept track of time by observing the seasons and lunar months, although there was much variability. The name itself usually described some activity that occurred during that time in their location.
4/22/2018 to 4/23/2018	Lyrid meteor shower	The Northern Hemisphere will get a view of the Lyrid meteor shower, the dusty trail of a comet with a centuries-long orbit around the sun. About a week before the full moon, the Lyrid meteor shower will occur, peaking overnight on April 22-23. The moon will be at first quarter at that time and will set by midnight, leaving the sky darker and better for meteor watching. A few stray meteors are visible on any night, and even a week after a meteor shower peaks, some stragglers can still be seen. However, on a night with a full moon it is much harder to see them, because the moon's light washes out fainter objects. As with most meteor showers, the peak viewing time will be before dawn.
4/25/1917	Ella Fitzgerald	Ella Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia. The jazz legend was called “The First Lady of Song,” an honor whose meaning is captured in a compliment paid to her by the great composer Ira Gershwin: “I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.” Quite apart from the quality of her voice, there was a warmth and intelligence behind it that gave even melancholy songs a plausible tilt toward optimism. Billie Holliday or Frank Sinatra might fully inhabit the dark side of a torch song, but Fitzgerald, in the words of the critic Frank Rich, “could turn any song into an oxygen rush of bouncing melody that reached the listener’s ears as pure, untroubled joy—the eternally young sound of a young country.” Ella’s own life as a young woman, though, was far from untroubled. Her mother, Temperance “Tempie” Fitzgerald, migrated north to Yonkers, New York, shortly after Ella was born, and Ella spent her childhood there aspiring to be a dancer and traveling frequently into nearby Harlem, where she would one day get her big break. But Ella very nearly fell through the cracks. Tempie Fitzgerald died in 1932, leaving her 15-year-old daughter orphaned, broke and vulnerable at a very dangerous time in American history–the very low point of the Great Depression. Ella was taken in at first by an aunt in Harlem, but she soon dropped out of school and ran into trouble with the law while working as a lookout in a bordello and courier for a local numbers-runner. She was placed in the Riverdale Colored Orphan Asylum but soon ran away from that facility, which earned her a trip upstate to a tough reformatory near Albany called the New York State Training School for Girls. Ella Fitzgerald never spoke publicly about this period in her life, and she certainly never betrayed any hint of it in her performances. It lends an incredible backdrop, however, to the oft-repeated story of the Apollo Theater Amateur Night performance in 1934 that put her on a path toward stardom. Still technically a ward of the State of New York, Ella was officially paroled in 1935 to Chick Webb’s orchestra, the group she would make her name with over the next seven years.
4/21/1838	Naturalist John Muir	John Muir, a dedicated advocate for the protection of American wild lands, is born in Dunbar, Scotland. When he was still a boy, Muir’s parents immigrated to the United States. He grew up on a farm in central Wisconsin in the 1850s, a time when the region was still a relatively wild western frontier. When he was 23, Muir left the family farm and traveled around the Midwest working in a variety of industrial jobs. A talented mechanic and inventor, he seemed to be headed for a successful career in the rapidly expanding industrial economy—but an accident changed Muir’s direction in life. While working in an Indianapolis factory for wagon parts, Muir’s hand slipped, and a file he was using cut the cornea of his left eye. Not long after, his right eye also temporarily failed in a sympathetic reaction. Muir’s experience of being blind for several weeks led him to rethink his life plans. When he recovered his sight, he abandoned his career as a skilled mechanic and opted instead to embark on a 1,000-mile walking tour of the American West. During his western ramblings, the beautiful Sierra Nevada range in California especially moved Muir. Drawing on the ideas of American transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Muir argued that wild nature offered a “window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.” Muir developed a near-religious veneration for the Sierra Nevada territory and a passionate desire to preserve the wild state of the area. In 1892, he and several other early preservationists formed the Sierra Club. Muir served as the club president for 22 years, tirelessly advocating the importance of preserving wilderness as a place where thousands of “tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people” could find spiritual and physical rejuvenation.
4/23/1564	William Shakespeare	According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare’s date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before.
4/1/1910	Samuel Langhorne Clemens	Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1875) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel". Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. His humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published in 1865, based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention and was even translated into French. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well; he died the day after the comet returned. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist this country has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature".
4/21/1918	Baron Manfred von Richthofen	The Red Baron was the name applied to Manfred von Richthofen, a German fighter pilot who was the deadliest flying ace of World War I. During a 19-month period between 1916 and 1918, the Prussian aristocrat shot down 80 Allied aircraft and won widespread fame for his scarlet-colored airplanes and ruthlessly effective flying style. Richthofen’s legend only grew after he took command of a German fighter wing known as the Flying Circus, but his career in the cockpit was cut short in April 1918, when he was killed in a dogfight over France.
4/17/1960	Eddie Cochran	Eddie Cochran, the man behind “Summertime Blues” and “C’mon Everybody,” was killed on this day in 1960 when the taxi carrying him from a show in Bristol, England, crashed in route to the airport in London, where he was to catch a flight back home to the United States. A raw and exciting rocker with a cocky, rebellious image, Eddie Cochran was very different from the polished and packaged idols being heavily marketed to American teenagers in the years between the rise of Elvis Presley and the arrival of the Beatles. And while he may have faded from popular memory in the years since his tragic and early death, his biggest hits have not.
4/25/1995	Ginger Rogers	Ginger Rogers, best known for the 10 films she made with her dance partner Fred Astaire, dies at the age of 83. Born in Missouri, Rogers began taking dance and singing lessons as a toddler. By age five, she was appearing in commercials. At age 15, she won a Charleston dancing contest and soon after began touring the Southern and Midwestern vaudeville circuit with her act, “Ginger and the Redheads.” Her mother, Lela, a reporter and writer, worked as Ginger’s manager and traveled with her as a chaperone. She and Ginger’s father had divorced shortly after Ginger was born, and Lela would continue to manage her daughter’s career until her death in 1971. After making a splash on Broadway in George Gershwin’s hit play Girl Crazy, Rogers signed a film contract in 1931. She would play a series of wisecracking blondes in a number of B movies, working at various studios before settling at RKO. In 1933, she was paired with Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio. Although she lacked formal ballroom training, she and Astaire made a perfect match on the dance floor. Audiences flocked to the 10 movies they made together, including The Gay Divorcee (1933), Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936) and Shall We Dance? (1937). Apart from her graceful dance moves, Rogers also established her credentials as a serious actress with her performance in the 1940 film Kitty Foyle, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. According to an obituary published in the New York Times, Rogers was the highest-paid women in America by 1941, earning $355,000 per year. In addition to a hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills, she also bought a ranch on Oregon’s Rogue River, where she spent as much of her free time as possible. Married and divorced five times, Rogers had no children. She continued to perform into the mid-1960s, scoring triumphs on Broadway in Hello, Dolly in 1965 and in London with Mame in 1969. Rogers made her final film appearance in 1965, when she played the mother of the actress Jean Harlow in the biopic Harlow.
4/17/2012	Dick Clark	Richard Wagstaff Clark (November 30, 1929 – April 18, 2012) was an American radio and television personality, television producer and film actor, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American Bandstand from 1957 to 1987. He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which transmitted Times Square's New Year's Eve celebrations. Clark was well known for his trademark sign-off, "For now, Dick Clark — so long!", accompanied by a facsimile of a military salute.
4/17/1790	Benjamin Franklin	On April 17, 1790, American statesman, printer, scientist, and writer Benjamin Franklin dies in Philadelphia at age 84. Born in Boston in 1706, Franklin became at 12 years old an apprentice to his half-brother James, a printer and publisher. He learned the printing trade and in 1723 went to Philadelphia to work after a dispute with his brother. After a sojourn in London, he started a printing and publishing press with a friend in 1728. In 1729, the company won a contract to publish Pennsylvania’s paper currency and also began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was regarded as one of the better colonial newspapers. From 1732 to 1757, he wrote and published Poor Richard’s Almanack, an instructive and humorous periodical in which Franklin coined such practical American proverbs as “God helps those who help themselves” and “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
4/23/1014	King Brian of Ireland	Brian Boru, the high king of Ireland, is assassinated by a group of retreating Norsemen shortly after his Irish forces defeated them. On April 23, 1014, Good Friday, forces under Brian’s son Murchad met and annihilated the Viking coalition at the Battle of Clontarf, near Dublin. After the battle, a small group of Norsemen, flying from their defeat, stumbled on Brian’s tent, overcame his bodyguards, and murdered the elderly king. Victory at Clontarf broke Norse power in Ireland forever, but Ireland largely fell into anarchy after the death of Brian.
4/18/1906	The Great San Francisco Earthquake	At 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing hundreds of people as it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles.
4/29/1913	Hookless Fastener No. 1 Zipper is patented	Gideon Sundback (April 24, 1880 – June 21, 1954) was a Swedish-American electrical engineer, who is most commonly associated with his work in the development of the zipper. Otto Fredrik Gideon Sundback was born on Sonarp farm in Ödestugu Parish, in Jönköping County, Småland, Sweden. He was the son of Jonas Otto Magnusson Sundback, a prosperous farmer, and his wife Kristina Karolina Klasdotter. After his studies in Sweden, Sundback moved to Germany, where he studied at the polytechnic school in Bingen am Rhein. In 1903, Sundback took his engineer exam. In 1905, he emigrated to the United States (Hoboken). He was responsible for improving the "Judson C-curity Fastener". At that time the company's product was still based on hooks and eyes. Sundback developed an improved version of the C-curity, called the "Plako", but it too had a strong tendency to pull apart, and was not any more successful than the previous versions. Sundback finally solved the pulling-apart problem in 1913, with his invention of the first version not based on the hook-and-eye principle, the "Hookless Fastener No. 1". He increased the number of fastening elements from four per inch to ten or eleven. His invention had two facing rows of teeth that pulled into a single piece by the slider, and increased the opening for the teeth guided by the slider.
4/16/1917	Lenin returns to Russia	Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile in Switzerland to take the reins of the Russian Revolution.
4/16/1922	Annie Oakley shoots 100 clay targets in a row	Annie Oakley was not just an entertainer with a rifle slung over her shoulder.  She was the first bona fide American female superstar.  Her story is an inspirational tale of a child who rose from stark and abusive poverty, who never forgot her roots or those who faced similar hurdles, who did everything in her power to better the lives of girls and women, and who was a staunch patriot in deed as well as in word. Phoebe Ann (Annie) Moses was born in a log cabin in rural northwest Ohio, the sixth of seven children of Jacob and Susan Moses. Jacob had fought in the War of 1812. He died of pneumonia in 1866, when Annie was five.  Annie taught herself how to shoot, using her late father's old 40-inch cap-and-ball Kentucky rifle. At age eight, she began trapping and hunting small game to support her widowed mother and her siblings.  She would kill the animals with a head shot, preserving as much edible meat as possible. She sold the game to Katzenberger's Restaurant in Greenviile, Ohio.  Annie so good that by age 15 she had earned enough to pay off her mother's mortgage. At age nine she was admitted to an infirmary in Darke County, Ohio along with her sister. The superintendent's wife taught her how to sew and decorate.  Annie was also "bound out" to a local family to help care for their infant son, on the false promise of fifty cents a week and an education. For two years t she endured the couple's mental and physical abuse. She would often have to do boys' work. One time she was put out in the freezing cold, without shoes, to punish her for falling asleep over some darning. Annie referred to the family as "the wolves." But in her autobiography, she did not reveal the couple's real name. Word of Annie's prowess as a sharpshooter spread throughout the region. Her escape hatch from a grinding life of penury was that singular – but now forgotten - American institution, the traveling road show.  On Thanksgiving Day, 1875, the Baughman and Butler shooting act was performing in Cincinnati.  Traveling marksman and former dog trainer Frank Butler, an Irish immigrant, placed a $100 side bet – one worth more than $2500 today - with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost. The bet: that Butler could beat any local shooter. Frost arranged a match between the 25-year-old Butler and Annie, saying, "The last opponent Butler expected was a five-foot-tall 15-year old girl." Butler missed on his 25th shot, losing both match and bet.  But he eventually won big. He began courting Annie. They married in August 1876 and stayed together until their deaths 50 years later. They first lived in the Oakley district of Cincinnati, and Oakley became her stage name. Offstage, she always referred to herself as Mrs. Frank Butler.
4/25/1947	White House bowling alley	President Harry S. Truman officially opens the first White House bowling alley on this day in 1947. The two-lane bowling alley, situated in the West Wing, had been constructed earlier that year. According to Smithsonian Magazine, a group of Truman’s fellow Missourians funded the construction of the bowling alley in honor of the president. They had intended to open the alley as part of Truman’s 63rd birthday celebration on May 8, but construction was completed ahead of schedule. Truman’s favorite pastime was poker and although he had not bowled since he was a teenager, he gamely hoisted the first ball, knocking down 7 out of 10 pins. One of the pins is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
4/25/1959	St. Lawrence Seaway opened	The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to navigation in 1959. Construction of the 189-mile (306-kilometer) stretch of the Seaway between Montreal and Lake Ontario is recognized as one of the most challenging engineering feats in history. Seven locks were built in the Montreal-Lake Ontario section of the Seaway, five Canadian and two U.S., in order to lift vessels to 246 feet (75 meters) above sea level. The 28-mile (44 kilometer) Welland Canal is the fourth version of a waterway link between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, first built in 1829. The present canal was competed in 1932, deepened in the 1950s as part of the Seaway project, and further straightened in 1973. Today its eight locks, all Canadian, lift ships 326 feet (100 meters) over the Niagara Escarpment. The official opening on 26 June was attended by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II and Italian laborers constructing the Welland Canal in Ontario.
4/17/1964	Ford Mustang debuts at World’s Fair	The Ford Mustang, a two-seat, mid-engine sports car, is officially unveiled by Henry Ford II at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, on April 17, 1964. That same day, the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers. Named for a World War II fighter plane, the Mustang was the first of a type of vehicle that came to be known as a “pony car.” Ford sold more than 400,000 Mustangs within its first year of production, far exceeding sales expectations.
4/17/1968	London Bridge was sold	London Bridge was sold to American oil tycoon Robert P McCulloch for a cool $2,460,000. The landmark was subsequently dismantled and shipped over to Lake Havasu in Arizona, where it was reassembled and still stands today. This was the 19th century granite bridge, designed by John Rennie, itself a Victorian replacement for a medieval predecessor. The bridge was sinking, and needed urgent attention. Rebuilding was deemed preferable to repairing  So, on 18 April 1968 the old bridge was sold and history was made. But this wasn't a simple case of selling off unwanted goods to the highest bidder. "It was a novel thing, and there was a lot of anxiety in Britain around that time," explains Travis Elborough, author of London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing. "The Empire had fallen and America emerged as the new, post-war super power. This idea that Americans could now come and buy our old bridges (or huge chunks of of Britain) hit a nerve." The Arizona bridge is a reinforced concrete structure clad in the original masonry of the 1830s bridge. McCulloch had exterior granite blocks from the original bridge numbered and transported to America to construct the present bridge in Lake Havasu City, a planned community he established in 1964 on the shore of Lake Havasu. The bridge was completed in 1971 (along with a canal), and links an island in the Colorado River with the main part of Lake Havasu City.
4/22/1970	The first Earth Day	Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems, is celebrated in the United States for the first time. Millions of Americans, including students from thousands of colleges and universities, participated in rallies, marches, and educational programs. Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological awareness. “The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy,” Senator Nelson said, “and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda.” Earth Day indeed increased environmental awareness in America, and in July of that year the Environmental Protection Agency was established by special executive order to regulate and enforce national pollution legislation.
4/29/1974	White House Watergate tapes	President Richard Nixon announces to the public that he will release transcripts of 46 taped White House conversations in response to a Watergate trial subpoena issued in July 1973. The House Judiciary committee accepted 1,200 pages of transcripts the next day, but insisted that the tapes themselves be turned over as well. In his announcement, Nixon took elaborate pains to explain to the public his reluctance to comply with the subpoena, and the nature of the content he planned to release. He cited his right to executive privilege to protect state secrets and stated that the transcripts were edited by him and his advisors to omit anything “irrelevant” to the Watergate investigation or critical to national security. He invited committee members to review the actual tapes to determine whether or not the president had omitted incriminating evidence in the transcripts. “I want there to be no question remaining,” Nixon insisted, “about the fact that the President has nothing to hide in this matter” and “I made clear there was to be no cover up.” On August 8, 1974, Nixon avoided a Senate impeachment trial by becoming the first American president to resign from office. He was later pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford, “for all offenses against the United States which he committed, or may have committed.”
4/17/1976	four consecutive homers	On this day in 1976, Mike Schmidt of the Philadelphia Phillies hits four consecutive home runs in a game against the Chicago Cubs. Schmidt was only the fourth player in the history of Major League Baseball to accomplish this feat. After attending Ohio University, Schmidt was drafted by the Phillies as the 30th overall pick in the 1971 MLB draft and made his big-league debut on September 12, 1972. In 1974, he led the National League in home runs for the first of what would turn out to be eight times in his career. In 1976, Schmidt, who became known for a batting stance in which he practically turned his back to the pitcher, knocked out a record 12 homers in the first 15 games of the season. Included in the dozen round trippers were the four in a row he hit on April 17 of that year to help the Phillies defeat the Cubs in 10 innings, 18-16. Bobby Lowe of the Boston Beaneaters was the first player on record to hit four home runs in a row, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds on May 30, 1894. He was followed by Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees on June 3, 1932, in a game against the Philadelphia Athletics. On June 10, 1959, Rocky Colavito of the Cleveland Indians knocked out four straight homers against the Baltimore Orioles.
4/21/1997	Buried in Space	The first private space burial, Celestis' Earthview 01: The Founders Flight, was launched on April 21, 1997. An aircraft, departing from the Canary Islands, carried a Pegasus rocket containing samples of the remains of 24 people, including Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary, to an altitude of 11 km (38,000 ft) above the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket then carried the remains into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 578 km (359 mi) and a perigee of 551 km (342 mi), orbiting the Earth once every 96 minutes until reentry on May 20, 2002, northeast of Australia. Space burial refers to the blasting of cremated remains into outer space. Missions may go into orbit around the Earth, to other planetary bodies (such as the Moon), or into deep space. The cremated remains are not actually scattered in space, and thus do not contribute to space debris. Instead, the ashes remain sealed inside their spacecraft until the spacecraft either: re-enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up upon re-entry (Earth orbit missions); reaches its final, extraterrestrial destination (e.g. the Moon); or escapes the solar system (deep space missions). To a lesser extent, suborbital flights provide the opportunity to briefly fly ashes into space and return them back to Earth for recovery. Only a sample of remains is launched so as to make the service affordable.
4/23/2018	SIGURD'S DAY	Sigurðr, German: Siegfried) was a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga. The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving (c. 1000) and the Gök Runestone (11th century). As Siegfried, he is the hero in the German Nibelungenlied, and Richard Wagner's operas Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. The name Sigurðr is an Icelandic or Norwegian corruption of the German Siegfried as the correct Old Norse would have been Sigruþr (Sigröd), a form which appears in the Ramsund carving that depicts the legend. http://www.odinistfellowship.co.uk
4/16/1746	Battle of Culloden	The Jacobite uprising in England ends when Charles “Bonnie Prince Charlie” Stuart is defeated by King George’s, Duke of Cumberland. This is the last pitched battle fought in Britain.
4/16/1881	Bat Masterson’s last shootout	On the streets of Dodge City, famous western lawman and gunfighter Bat Masterson fights the last gun battle of his life. Bartholomew “Bat” Masterson had made a living with his gun from a young age. In his early 20s, Masterson worked as a buffalo hunter, operating out of the wild Kansas cattle town of Dodge City. For several years, he also found employment as an army scout in the Plains Indian Wars. Masterson had his first shootout in 1876 in the town of Sweetwater (later Mobeetie), Texas. When an argument with a soldier over the affections of a dance hall girl named Molly Brennan heated up, Masterson and his opponent resorted to their pistols. When the shooting stopped, both Brennan and the soldier were dead, and Masterson was badly wounded.
4/19/1775	The American Revolution begins	At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.
4/20/1689	Siege of Londonderry	James II, the former British king, begins a siege of Londonderry, a Protestant stronghold in Northern Ireland. In 1688, James II, a Catholic, was deposed by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, in a bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution. James fled to France and in 1689 landed in Ireland, hoping to incite his Catholic supporters there and regain the British throne. Aided by French forces, James captured Dublin in late March and in April marched on Londonderry, the northern town where Irish supporters of Britain had fled.
4/21/0753 bc	Rome founded	According to tradition, on April 21, 753 B.C., Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated sometime in the fourth century B.C., and the exact date of Rome’s founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C. According to the legend, Romulus and Remus were the sons of Rhea Silvia, the daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa. Alba Longa was a mythical city located in the Alban Hills southeast of what would become Rome. Before the birth of the twins, Numitor was deposed by his younger brother Amulius, who forced Rhea to become a vestal virgin so that she would not give birth to rival claimants to his title. However, Rhea was impregnated by the war god Mars and gave birth to Romulus and Remus. Amulius ordered the infants drowned in the Tiber, but they survived and washed ashore at the foot of the Palatine hill, where they were suckled by a she-wolf until they were found by the shepherd Faustulus.
4/21/1836	The Battle of San Jacinto	During the Texan War for Independence, the Texas militia under Sam Houston launches a surprise attack against the forces of Mexican General Santa Anna along the San Jacinto River. The Mexicans were thoroughly routed, and hundreds were taken prisoner, including General Santa Anna himself.
4/22/1778	American raid on Whitehaven, England	At 11 p.m. on this day in 1778, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the port at midnight, when ebb tide would leave the shops at their most vulnerable. Jones and his 30 volunteers had greater difficulty than anticipated rowing to the port, which was protected by two forts. They did not arrive until dawn. Jones’ boat successfully took the southern fort, disabling its cannon, but the other boat returned without attempting an attack on the northern fort, after the sailors claimed to have been frightened away by a noise. To compensate, Jones set fire to the southern fort, which subsequently engulfed the entire town.
4/22/1889	The Oklahoma land rush begins	At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land. The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. Initially considered unsuitable for white colonization, Indian Territory was thought to be an ideal place to relocate Native Americans who were removed from their traditional lands to make way for white settlement. The relocations began in 1817, and by the 1880s, Indian Territory was a new home to a variety of tribes, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Cheyenne, Commanche, and Apache.
4/26/1607	"The First Landing"	This appears to me, to be the extension of the prevailing governments’ supported enmeshment of corporate business and Christianity and the myth of “freedom of religion” in the “New World”. Cape Henry was named on April 26, 1607 in honor of Henry Frederick Stuart, the elder of two sons of King James I of England to survive to the age of 18 and heir-apparent to the throne of the Kingdom of England (later united in 1707 with neighboring Scotland as the Kingdom of Great Britain), by an expedition of the London Company branch of the proprietary Virginia Company headed by Captain Christopher Newport. After an unusually long voyage of 144 days from England, it was their first landfall, an event which has come to be called "The First Landing". Soon after this landing the English colonists erected a wooden cross and gave thanks for a successful crossing to a new land.[1] They named the first British colony Jamestown. In the First Charter of Virginia, King James I devoted parcels of land for the purpose of spreading the Christian religion. The Charter reads in part: "We greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Desires for the Furtherance of so noble a Work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance..." Cape Henry is a cape on the Atlantic shore of Virginia located in the northeast corner of Virginia Beach. It is the southern boundary of the entrance to the long estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. Across the mouth of the bay to the north is Cape Charles the opposite point of the Bay's gateway. Named for two sons of King James I of England in 1607, together Cape Henry and Cape Charles form the Virginia Capes.
4/27/1805	To the shores of Tripoli	After marching 500 miles from Egypt, U.S. agent William Eaton leads a small force of U.S. Marines and Berber mercenaries against the Tripolitan port city of Derna. The Marines and Berbers were on a mission to depose Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States. The First Barbary War had begun four years earlier, when U.S. President Thomas Jefferson ordered U.S. Navy vessels to the Mediterranean Sea in protest of continuing raids against U.S. ships by pirates from the Barbary states–Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripolitania. American sailors were often abducted along with the captured booty and ransomed back to the United States at an exorbitant price. After two years of minor confrontations, sustained action began in June 1803, when a small U.S. expeditionary force attacked Tripoli harbor in present-day Libya.
4/27/1861	West Virginia secedes from Virginia	May 13, 1861. In 10 days, Virginia voters would decide whether to ratify an ordinance to sever ties with the Union, drafted a month earlier during a secession convention in Richmond. An ad hoc delegation from 27 western Virginia counties assembled at Wheeling in the far northwestern corner of the state. There, the 436 delegates now gathered in Washington Hall, Wheeling’s Masonic building, debated whether the northwest—that area west of the Alleghenies and north of the Big Kanawha River—would agree to secede. The most radical delegates wanted to break away from the Old Dominion and form a new Union-loyal state, an unprec¬edented course that would cut the region loose from its moorings to sail an uncharted sea with no guarantee of safe harbor. A banner above 65 delegates from Wood County, along the Ohio River, read, “New Virginia, now or never.” Urging on the “now or never” crowd was John S. Carlile of Clarksburg, 35 miles south of the Pennsylvania line. He had believed for a decade western Virginia should shake loose from the east. Moderates advocated merely drafting resolutions condemning secession and detailing a history of wrongs the government at Richmond had inflicted on the west. Carlile reminded them that Richmond had already called for Confederate militia to be raised in the northwest. “No people who contented themselves with paper resolves, while bayonets were bristling all around them…ever maintained their freedom,” he thundered. Waitman T. Willey, an attorney from Morgantown—just below the Pennsylvania border—cautioned that forming a new state would be considered “triple treason: treason against the United States, treason against Virginia, and treason against the Confederate States of America.”
4/28/1897	Chickasaw and Choctaw abandon communal lands	The Chickasaw and Choctaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes, become the first to agree to abolish tribal government and communal ownership of land. The other tribes soon followed, finally throwing open all of Indian Territory to white settlement. Representatives of the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes had been negotiating the future of their people with the Dawes Commission since 1893. President Grover Cleveland created the Dawes Commission to realize the goals of the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act. Backers of the Dawes Severalty Act believed Indians would be better able to integrate into mainstream society if they abandoned tribal governments and communal ownership of land. Instead, every male Indian received a plot of land to own privately. Any tribal land that remained–which in most cases was a substantial amount–would be open to settlement by Anglo-Americans. Most Native American tribes were forced to abide by the Dawes Severalty Act regardless of their wishes. However, a treaty from 1830 promised the Five Civilized Tribes living in Oklahoma Indian Territory their land for “as long as the grass grows and water runs,” and the Dawes Act did not apply to them. Instead, the Dawes Commission was formed to convince them to adopt its principles voluntarily. At the same time, Congress also threatened to make it harder for the Five Civilized Tribes to maintain their traditional ways of life. The Curtis Act, for example, invalidated the authority of all tribal courts. Recognizing that they had little hope of maintaining their old ways, in 1897, the Choctaws and Chickasaws became the first to agree voluntarily to abandon tribal government and land ownership. By 1902, the other three tribes–the Cherokees, Seminoles, and Creeks–had followed suit. Despite the sincere humanitarian goals of the Dawes Act and Commission, the ultimate effect was to deprive Indians of most of their landholdings. Fraud was rampant, and some Indians either did not know they needed to apply for their private acreage or refused to do so in protest. From 1887 to 1934, Indian landholdings declined from 138 million to 47 million acres. Since the Dawes Act was rescinded in 1934, however, tribal ownership and government have again become legal.
4/29/1813	Rubber is patented.	Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 – July 1, 1860) was an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber, for which he received patent number 3633 from the United States Patent Office on June 15, 1844. Goodyear is credited with inventing the chemical process to create and manufacture pliable, waterproof, moldable rubber. However, the Mesoamericans used a more primitive stabilized rubber for balls and other objects as early as 1600 BC. Goodyear's discovery of the vulcanization process followed five years of searching for a more stable rubber and stumbling upon the effectiveness of heating after Thomas Hancock. His discovery initiated decades of successful rubber manufacturing in the Lower Naugatuck Valley in Connecticut, as rubber was adopted to multiple applications, including footwear and tires. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is named after him.