So I started something on Twitter that represents a kind of mental fungus that I’ve been dealing with for several years.  It seems like a lot of bad stuff happens in April.  Perhaps we can blame Eliot’s The Waste Land for starting the idea, perhaps not.

Anyway, here is the beginning of a list of things (mostly bad) that happened in April.

April 1st
– Beer Hall Putsch (Hitler’s first power grab)
– Marvin Gaye shot and killed by his own father

April 2nd
– Pope John Paul II dies
– Argentina invades the Falkland islands

April 3rd
– Bruno Hauptmann is executed for kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby
– the Unabomber is arrested

April 4th
– Assassination of Martin Luther King
– Second Battle of the Somme

April 5th
– Rosenbergs sentenced to death for spying
– Kurt Cobain commits suicide

April 6th
– US Declares war on Germany and enters WWI
– Oscar Wilde arrested
– Black Hawk War begins

April 7th
– Rwandan civil war begins

April 9th
– Civil War ends at Appomattox

April 10th
– Zapata is assassinated in Mexico
– Bataan Death March begins

April 11th
– Napoleon exiled to Elba
– Idi Amin is overthrown
– US troops liberate Buchenwald concentration camp

April 12th
– Civil War begins
– Franklin Roosevelt dies
– Galileo is convicted of heresy

April 13th
– Amritsar Massacre
– Apollo 13 oxygen tank explodes

April 14th
– Lincoln is shot
– Titanic hits iceberg
– US bombs Libya
– Soviets announce withdrawal from Afghanistan
– Major Dust Bowl storm strikes

April 15th
– Pol Pot dies
– Sacco and Vanzetti receive national press

April 16th
– Virginia Tech massacre
– Lenin returns from exile to Russia

April 17th
– Bay of Pigs invasion
– Ben Franklin dies
– Khmer Rouge seize power in Cambodia

April 18th
– Great San Francisco Earthquake
– Bombing of US Embassy in Beirut

April 19th
– Warsaw Uprising
– David Kuresh and the Branch Davidian compound burns
– Oklahoma City bombing
– Lord Byron’s untimely death in Greece

April 20th
– Columbine High School massacre
– Ludlow massacre of striking workers

April 21st
– Battle of San Jacinto

April 22nd
– Germans are first to use poison gas
– Pat Tillman killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan

April 23rd
– Easter Rebellion
– Failed hostage rescue mission in Iran

April 25th
– Invasion of Gallipoli begins

April 26th
– Chernobyl nuclear disaster

April 27th
– Afghan president is overthrown and murdered
– First multiracial elections held in South Africa

April 28th
– Mussolini executed
– Mutiny on the HMS Bounty

April 29th
– Rodney King trial verdict announced leading to riots in LA

April 30th
– Hitler commits suicide
– Monica Seles stabbed
– South Vietnam surrenders