GREETINGS from the TORNADO TAVERN GALLERY!

Old Mother Nature is certainly playing an April Fool on Northeastern Wisconsin. I think we received more snow in one shot than any other time this winter. To make things worse, it looks like this snow will be around for a while. Coincidently it was kicked off with a exceptional weekend. Easter, Passover, Loki’s Day, Ishtar/Eastra, New Moon – WOW

Well back to the mundane, the TORNADO TAVERN GALLERY has a show this weekend. On Saturday April 7^th we will be the annual Ice Bear Craft Show at the Bay Port High School in Green Bay. The show is a fund raiser for the Green Bay Area Girl’s High School Hockey Team, otherwise known as the Bay Area Ice Bears.

Next up is the periodic TORNADO TAVERN GALLERY “This Day in History. Let me know what you think.

DATE	NAME	HISTORY
3/30/2018 to 4/7/2018	PASSOVER	Passover or Pesach is a major, biblically derived Jewish holiday. Jews celebrate Passover as a commemoration of their liberation by God from slavery in ancient Egypt and their freedom as a nation under the leadership of Moses. It commemorates the story of the Exodus as described in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Book of Exodus, in which the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. According to standard biblical chronology, this event would have taken place at about 1300 BCE (AM 2450).
4/4/1913	Muddy Waters	When Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he permanently alienated a portion of his passionate fan base. When Muddy Waters went electric roughly 20 years earlier, he didn’t have a fan base to be concerned about, and those who did go to his shows probably had no quarrel with his motivation for plugging in, which was simply to play loud enough to be heard inside a raucous nightclub. Little could those lucky Chicagoans have known that they were hearing the birth of a style of blues that would become a fundamental part of their city’s cultural identity. Out of all the bluesmen plying their trade in the clubs of the Windy City in the late 40s and early 50s, none did more than Muddy Waters to create the Chicago Blues—the hard-driving, amplified, distinctly urban sound with roots in the rural Mississippi Delta, where Waters was born on this day in 1913.
4/15/1452	Leonardo da Vinci	Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian Renaissance polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of paleontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter and tank, he epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.
4/8/0563 bc	Gautama Buddha	On this day, Buddhists celebrate the commemoration of the birth of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, thought to have lived in India from 563 B.C. to 483 B.C. Actually, the Buddhist tradition that celebrates his birthday on April 8 originally placed his birth in the 11th century B.C., and it was not until the modern era that scholars determined that he was more likely born in the sixth century B.C., and possibly in May rather than April. According to the Tripitaka, which is recognized by scholars as the earliest existing record of the Buddha’s life and discourses, Gautama Buddha was born as Prince Siddhartha, the son of the king of the Sakya people. The kingdom of the Sakyas was situated on the borders of present-day Nepal and India. Siddhartha’s family was of the Gautama clan. His mother, Queen Mahamaya, gave birth to him in the park of Lumbini, in what is now southern Nepal. A pillar placed there in commemoration of the event by an Indian emperor in the third century B.C. still stands.
4/12/1945	Franklin D. Roosevelt	While on a vacation in Warm Springs, Georgia, President Roosevelt suffers a stroke and dies. His death marked a critical turning point in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union, as his successor, Harry S. Truman, decided to take a tougher stance with the Russians.
4/4/1968	Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.	Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.
4/14/1865	Lincoln is shot	On this day in 1865, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shoots President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
4/14/1912	RMS Titanic hits iceberg	Just before midnight in the North Atlantic, the RMS Titanic fails to divert its course from an iceberg, ruptures its hull, and begins to sink.
4/2/1917	Woodrow Wilson asks U.S. Congress for declaration of war	The world must be made safe for democracy, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaims on this day in 1917, as he appears before Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany.
4/12/1954	“Rock Around The Clock”	Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock.” If rock and roll was a social and cultural revolution, then “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” was its Declaration of Independence. And if Bill Haley was not exactly the revolution’s Thomas Jefferson, it may be fair to call him its John Hancock.
4/3/1955	ACLU says it will contest obscenity of HOWL	The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges. The U.S. Customs Department had seized some 520 copies of the book several weeks earlier as the book entered the U.S. from England, where it had been printed. Poet Allen Ginsberg had first read the title poem, Howl, at a poetry reading in the fall of 1956 to enormous acclaim from his fellow Beat poets. The poem’s racy language, frank subject matter, and lack of form offended some conservative readers, but to young people in the 1960s, it sounded a call to revolt against convention. Along with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the poem served as the reference manual and rallying cry for a new generation. Ginsberg himself coined the term “flower power.”
4/7/1969	The internet is born	The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) awarded a contract to build a precursor of today's world wide web to BBN Technologies. The date is widely considered as the internet's symbolic birthday.
4/10/1970	official split of the Beatles	The break-up of the Beatles was a cumulative process throughout the period 1968 to 1970, marked by rumours of a split and ambiguous comments by the Beatles themselves regarding the future of the group. Although in September 1969 John Lennon privately informed the other Beatles that he was leaving the group, there was no public acknowledgement of the break-up until Paul McCartney announced on 10 April 1970 he was leaving the Beatles. There were numerous causes for the Beatles' break-up. It was not a single event but rather a long transition, including the cessation of touring in 1966, and the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, in 1967. Conflict arose from differences in artistic vision. Both George Harrison and Ringo Starr temporarily left the group at various points during 1968–69 and all four band members had begun working on solo projects by 1970 as they all realised the likelihood the band would not regroup. Ultimately, animosity made it impossible for the group to continue working together in the years following.
4/2/1972	Charlie Chaplin prepares for return to United States after two decades	On this day in 1972, the great silent film actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin prepares for his first voyage to the United States since 1952, when he was denied a re-entry visa amid questions about his leftist politics. Born in Britain in 1889, Chaplin first became famous as the “Little Tramp” in Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedy films. Over the course of his four decades in Hollywood, Chaplin was one of the motion-picture industry’s most accomplished figures, writing, producing, directing and acting in such gems as The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1929), Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). With Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, Chaplin founded United Artists, the first major movie production company to be controlled by filmmakers instead of businessmen.
4/7/2018	Jarl Hakon Day	Haakon Sigurdsson Jarl (Old Norse: Hákon Sigurðsson, Norwegian: Håkon Sigurdsson), (d. 995) was the son of Sigurd Haakonsson, Earl of Lade, and thus Trøndelag. Haakon claimed descent from the divine linage of Sæming. Haakon became earl after his father was killed by King Harald Greyhide's men in 961. He warred with King Harald for some time, until he was forced to flee to Denmark and Harald Bluetooth. In Denmark he conspired with Harald Bluetooth against Harald Greyhide. Harald Greyhide was killed in 971. After this, Haakon Jarl ruled Norway as a vassal of Harald Bluetooth, but he was in reality an independent ruler. For Harald, he attacked Götaland and killed its ruler Jarl Ottar. Haakon was a strong believer in the old Norse gods, and when Harald Bluetooth attempted to force Christianity upon him around 975, Haakon broke his allegiance to Denmark. A Danish invasion force was defeated at the battle of Hjörungavágr in 986. In 995, a quarrel broke out between Haakon and the Trønders just as Olaf Tryggvason, a descendant of Harald Fairhair arrived. Haakon quickly lost all support, and was killed by his own slave and friend, Þormóðr Karkr, while hiding in the pig sty. His two sons Eric and Sven, and several others, fled to the king of Sweden, Olof Skötkonung, and the Hakon Jarl Runestones may refer to them.
4/15/2018	Saille	Celtic Tree month; Willow Month (April 15th - May 12th) - Willow Tree Meanings According to the Celtic Ogham The Celtic meaning of willow has a long history of symbolism associated with metaphysical and ritual practices. Specifically, the willow wood has been (and still is) used in ceremonies intended for enhancement of psychic abilities, honoring the moon as well as increase the essence of love in our lives.
4/10/1778	John Paul Jones sets out to raid British ships	On April 10, 1778, Commander John Paul Jones and his crew of 140 men aboard the USS Ranger set sail from the naval port at Brest, France, and head toward the Irish Sea to begin raids on British warships. This was the first mission of its kind during the Revolutionary War. Commander Jones, remembered as one of the most daring and successful naval commanders of the American Revolution, was born in Scotland, on July 6, 1747. He became an apprentice to a merchant at 13 and soon went to sea, traveling first to the West Indies and then to North America as a young man. In Virginia at the onset of the American Revolution, Jones sided with the Patriots and received a commission as a first lieutenant in the Continental Navy on December 7, 1775.
4/10/1849	The safety pin was patented	Walter Hunt, of New York, NY, received patent #6,281 for the safety pin on April 10, 1849. Hunt's pin was made from one piece of wire, which was coiled into a spring at one end and a separate clasp and point at the other end, allowing the point of the wire to be forced by the spring into the clasp. Walter Hunt was extremely creative, and in 1834 he built America's first sewing machine, which also used the first eye-pointed needle. Hunt did not patent his invention because he thought it would put hand sewers out of work. Nearly 20 years later, Elias Howe reinvented and patented an eye-pointed needle sewing machine.
4/11/1803	Talleyrand offers to sell Louisiana	In one of the great surprises in diplomatic history, French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand makes an offer to sell all of Louisiana Territory to the United States. Talleyrand was no fool. As the foreign minister to French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, he was one of the most powerful men in the world. Three years earlier, Talleyrand had convinced Napoleon that he could create a new French Empire in North America. The French had long had a tenuous claim to the vast area west of the Mississippi River known as Louisiana Territory. In 1800, Napoleon secretly signed a treaty with Spain that officially gave France full control of the territory. Then he began to prepare France’s mighty army to occupy New Orleans and bolster French dominion. When President Thomas Jefferson learned of Napoleon’s plans in 1802, he was understandably alarmed. Jefferson had long hoped the U.S. would expand westward beyond the Mississippi, but the young American republic was in no position militarily to challenge France for the territory. Jefferson hoped that his minister in France, Robert Livingston, might at least be able to negotiate an agreement whereby Napoleon would give the U.S. control of New Orleans, the gateway to the Mississippi River. At first, the situation looked bleak because Livingston’s initial attempts at reaching a diplomatic agreement failed. In early 1803, Jefferson sent his young Virginia friend James Monroe to Paris to assist Livingston. Fortunately for the U.S., by that time Napoleon’s situation in Europe had changed for the worse. War between France and Great Britain was imminent and Napoleon could no longer spare the military resources needed to secure control of Louisiana Territory. Realizing that the powerful British navy would probably take the territory by force, Napoleon reasoned it would be better to sell Louisiana to the Americans than have it fall into the hands of his enemy.
4/12/1633	Galileo is convicted of heresy	On this day in 1633, chief inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuola, appointed by Pope Urban VIII,begins the inquisition of physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church. Standard practice demanded that the accused be imprisoned and secluded during the trial. This was the second time that Galileo was in the hot seat for refusing to accept Church orthodoxy that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe: In 1616, he had been forbidden from holding or defending his beliefs. In the 1633 interrogation, Galileo denied that he “held” belief in the Copernican view but continued to write about the issue and evidence as a means of “discussion” rather than belief. The Church had decided the idea that the Sun moved around the Earth was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed, despite the fact that scientists had known for centuries that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
4/12/1861	The Civil War begins	The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”
4/13/1598	The Edict of Nantes	The Edict of Nantes, signed in April 1598 by King Henry IV of France, granted the Calvinist Protestants of France (also known as Huguenots) substantial rights in the nation, which was still considered essentially Catholic at the time. In the edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity. The edict separated civil from religious unity, treated some Protestants for the first time as more than mere schematics and heretics, and opened a path for secularism and tolerance. In offering general freedom of conscience to individuals, the edict offered many specific concessions to the Protestants, such as amnesty and the reinstatement of their civil rights, including the right to work in any field or for the state and to bring grievances directly to the king. It marked the end of the religious wars that had afflicted France during the second half of the 16th century.
4/2/1777	Ebenezer Learned	On this day in 1777, the Continental Congress promotes Colonel Ebenezer Learned to the rank of brigadier general of the Continental Army. Learned was an experienced military man who served the British during the French and Indian War. In 1757, he contracted smallpox at Fort Edward near Lake George in New York and spent a month confined to the hospital. At the end of the war, he returned to farming in Oxford, Massachusetts. Upon the outbreak of the American Revolution, though, Learned became active in a local militia before being named colonel of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety in April 1775. Learned was given command of the pivotal Dorchester Heights position at the siege of Boston in March 1776 by General George Washington and was the first to enter Boston after the British evacuation. Due to illness, Learned was forced to temporarily resign his position in May 1776, but returned to active duty in April 1777. After being promoted to brigadier general, Learned was reassigned to the Northern Department of the Continental Army, leading troops in several battles, including the Battle at Freeman’s Farm in September 1777 and the pivotal Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. Following the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga, General Learned was ordered to join General Washington at Valley Forge, where Learned formed and commanded a division within the Massachusetts Brigade under General Baron Johan DeKalb. Due to continued health problems, Learned was forced to resign his position for good in March 1778, but continued to serve Massachusetts in several elected positions until his death in 1801.
4/2/1792	U.S. dollar is introduced	The Mint Act of 1792 established the Dollar as U.S. currency. About two-thirds of global trade today is based on the U.S. Dollar. The United States authorizes the minting of the $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & $2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins as well as the silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime.
4/2/1863	Richmond riots over food shortages	Responding to acute food shortages, hundreds of angry women riot in Richmond, Virginia, demanding that the government release emergency supplies. For several hours, the mob moved through the city, breaking windows and looting stores, before Confederate President Jefferson Davis threw his pocket change at them from the top of a wagon. Davis ordered the crowd to disperse or he would order the militia to fire upon them. The riot ended peacefully, although 44 women and 29 men were arrested.
4/3/1776	Congress authorizes privateers to attack British vessels	Because it lacked sufficient funds to build a strong navy, the Continental Congress gives privateers permission to attack any and all British ships on this day in 1776. In a bill signed by John Hancock, its president, and dated April 3, 1776, the Continental Congress issued, INSTRUCTIONS to the COMMANDERS of Private Ships or vessels of War, which shall have Commissions of Letters of Marque and Reprisal, authorizing them to make Captures of British Vessels and Cargoes. Letters of Marque and Reprisal were the official documents by which 18th-century governments commissioned private commercial ships, known as privateers, to act on their behalf, attacking ships carrying the flags of enemy nations. Any goods captured by the privateer were divided between the ship’s owner and the government that had issued the letter.
4/3/1860	Pony Express debuts	On this day in 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a new standard for speedy mail delivery.
4/5/1242	The Battle on the Ice	The Battle on the Ice was fought between the Republic of Novgorod led by prince Alexander Nevsky and the crusader army led by the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights on April 5, 1242, at Lake Peipus. The battle is notable for having been fought largely on the frozen lake, and this gave the battle its name. The battle was a significant defeat sustained by the crusaders during the Northern Crusades, which were directed against pagans and Eastern Orthodox Christians rather than Muslims in the Holy Land. The Crusaders' defeat in the battle marked the end of their campaigns against the Orthodox Novgorod Republic and other Slavic territories for the next century.
4/5/1614	Pocahontas marries John Rolfe	Pocahontas, 13 year old daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indian confederacy, marries English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia. Her real name was Matoaka, and Pocahontas was a pet name that has been translated variously as “playful one” and “my favorite daughter.” The marriage ensured peace between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatan Indians for several years.
4/5/1792	first presidential veto	George Washington exercises the first presidential veto of a Congressional bill on this day in 1792. The bill introduced a new plan for dividing seats in the House of Representatives that would have increased the amount of seats for northern states. After consulting with his politically divided and contentious cabinet, Washington, who came from the southern state of Virginia, ultimately decided that the plan was unconstitutional because, in providing for additional representatives for some states, it would have introduced a number of representatives higher than that proscribed by the Constitution.
4/6/1832	Black Hawk War begins	Determined to resist the growing presence of Anglo settlers on traditional tribal lands, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk is drawn into war with the United States. Called Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak by his people, Black Hawk was born in 1767 in the village of Saukenuk in the present-day state of Illinois. He quickly earned a reputation as a fierce and courageous fighter in the frequent skirmishes between the Sauk and their principle enemy, the Osage. By the early 1800s, however, Black Hawk began to realize that the real threat to his people was the rapidly growing numbers of white people streaming into the region.
4/6/1896	First modern Olympic Games	On April 6, 1896, the Olympic Games, a long-lost tradition of ancient Greece, are reborn in Athens 1,500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. At the opening of the Athens Games, King Georgios I of Greece and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed athletes from 13 nations to the international competition.
4/7/1827	The first friction match is sold	John Walker, English chemist, developed a keen interest in trying to find a means of obtaining fire easily. Several chemical mixtures were already known which would ignite by a sudden explosion, but it had not been found possible to transmit the flame to a slow-burning substance like wood. While Walker was preparing a lighting mixture on one occasion, a match which had been dipped in it took fire by an accidental friction upon the hearth. He at once appreciated the practical value of the discovery, and started making friction matches. They consisted of wooden splints or sticks of cardboard coated with Sulphur and tipped with a mixture of sulphide of antimony, chlorate of potash, and gum, the sulphur serving to communicate the flame to the wood. They were soon banned in France and Germany because burning fragments would sometimes fall to the floor and start fires.
4/9/1770	Captain James Cook discovers Botany Bay	Botany Bay, an open oceanic embayment, is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 13 km (8 mi) south of the Sydney central business district. Its source is the confluence of the Georges River at Taren Point and the Cooks River at Kyeemagh which flows 10 km (6 mi) to the east before meeting its mouth, the Tasman Sea, midpoint between La Perouse and Kurnell. The land adjacent to Botany Bay was settled for many thousands of years by the Tharawal and Eora Aboriginal peoples and their associated clans. On 29 April 1770, Botany Bay was the site of James Cook's first landing of HMS Endeavour on the land mass of Australia, after his extensive navigation of New Zealand. Later the British planned Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony. Out of these plans came the first European habitation of Australia at Sydney Cove. Although the penal settlement was almost immediately shifted to Sydney Cove, for some time in Britain transportation to "Botany Bay" was a metonym for transportation to any of the Australian penal settlements.
4/9/1865	Robert E. Lee surrenders	At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.