April 27
1667: The blind and impoverished John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.
1861: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
1902: J. Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day, died at age 70 in Nebraska City, Neb.
1974: Ten thousand people marched in Washington, D.C., calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.
1981: Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.) introduced the first computer mouse.
2006: Construction began on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City. (The name was changed on March 30, 2009, to 1 World Trade Center.)
April 28
1503: The Battle of Cerignola in southern Italy was fought. It was the first battle in history won by small-arms fire using gunpowder.
1869: Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad laid 10 miles of track in one day, a feat that has never been matched.
1930: The first night game in organized baseball history took place in Independence, Kansas.
1932: Yellow fever vaccine was introduced.
2001: American Dennis Tito paid $20 million to the Russian space program and became the first paying passenger in outer space.
April 29
1967: Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title one day after refusing induction into the U.S. Army for “religious reasons.”
2004: Oldsmobile built its final car, ending 107 years of production.
April 30
1789: The first inaugural ball was held in New York for President George Washington.
1803: The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.
1812: The Territory of Orleans became the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana.
1900: Hawaii became a territory of the United States with Sanford B. Dole as governor.
1927: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
1938: The animated cartoon short Porky’s Hare Hunt debuted in movie theaters, introducing Happy Rabbit, a prototype of Bugs Bunny.
May 1
1840: The first official postage stamp with an adhesive back was issued in the United Kingdom.
1846: The few remaining Mormons left in Nauvoo, Ill., formally dedicated the Nauvoo Temple.
1884: Moses Fleetwood Walker became the first black person to play in a professional baseball game in the United States.
1927: The first cooked meals on a scheduled flight were introduced on an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris.
1930: The dwarf planet Pluto was officially named.
1931: The Empire State Building in New York City was dedicated.
1956: The polio vaccine, developed by Jonas Salk, was made available to the public.
1971: Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) took over operation of U.S. passenger rail service.
1999: The body of British climber George Mallory (“Because it’s there”) was found on Mount Everest, 75 years after his disappearance in 1924.
2001: The Rio Grande River, which forms part of the border between the United States and Mexico, dried up 500 yards short of the Gulf of Mexico.
May 2
1670: King Charles II of England granted a permanent charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America.
1885: Good Housekeeping magazine went on sale for the first time.
1918: General Motors purchased Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware.
1952: The world’s first jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1, made its maiden flight, from London to Johannesburg, South Africa.
1986: The city of Chernobyl, Ukraine, was evacuated six days after the nuclear power plant there exploded and melted down.
2000: President Bill Clinton announced that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.
2012: A pastel version of The Scream, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, sold for $120 million in a New York City auction, setting a new world record for a work of art at auction.
May 3
1802: Washington, D.C., was incorporated as a city.
1913: The first full-length Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra, was released, marking the start of the Indian film industry.
1921: West Virginia became the first state to legislate a sales tax.
1937: Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Gone With The Wind.
1952: The Kentucky Derby was televised nationally for the first time, on the CBS network. Lt. Cols. Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States landed a plane at the North Pole.
1957: Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agreed to move the team from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, Calif.
1973: The 108-story Sears Tower in Chicago became the world’s tallest building at 1,451 feet.
2000: The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2003: New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
ON THIS DAY… APRIL 27 – MAY 3
April 27
ADMINISTRATIVE PROFESSIONALS DAY
This holiday even got its own episode on “The
Office.”
April 28
NATIONAL BLUEBERRY PIE DAY
This underappreciated dessert has deep roots in American Colonial History.
April 29
NATIONAL ZIPPER DAY
Zippers come in apparel, purses, boots, etc. and are incredibly useful.
April 30
NATIONAL BUGS BUNNY DAY
This day commemorates the date this happy go lucky bunny made his first appearance in 1938.
May 1
MAY DAY
Today, specifically in the United States as other countries, it is a celebration of the season of Spring.
May 2
INTERNATIONAL HARRY POTTER DAY
May 3
NATIONAL TEACHER DAY
Everyone has had that special teacher that has helped inspire them. Today is meant to honor those teachers.