Welcome to April, named for Aprilis, an Etruscan Goddess of Agriculture and planting or it may even be a corruption of the name of the Greek Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The month was considered by Romans sacred to Venus- Venuralia. To Ancient Egyptians it was the birthday of the God Het-Heth or Hathor.

Happy April Fool’s Day – The Ancient Romans considered today ALL FOOLS DAY-a day of comedy- they did things backwards, men and women swapped clothes and carried on. Before the Gregorian Reforms in 1582 some Old Style Calendars had the year begin in April instead of January. As the new modern calendar became more widely accepted the people who stubbornly clung to the old practice were made fun of and called April-Fools.


"This is the day upon which we are reminded what we really are on the other three hundred and sixty four.." -Mark Twain

Birthdays: Edmund Rostand the creator of Cyrano De Bergerac, Lon Chaney, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ali McGraw, Toshiro Mifune, Big Jim Fisk, Debbie Reynolds, Hans Conreid the voice of Disney's Captain Hook, Phil Neikro, Wallace Beery, Jane Powell,Annette O’Toole

1488-Ludovico Buonarotti, after going through a lot of trouble to get his son in the wool and draper’s guild, gives up hope that the boy would ever be anything other than an artist. He reluctantly takes him to be an apprentice to fresco painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Michelangelo's career begins.

1747-Georg Frederich Handel premiered his oratorio Judas Maccabeus with the song "Hail, Conquering Hero !" frequently used at royal functions.

1867- Opening of the Paris World Exhibition. The gala worlds fair was seen as the zenith of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. Visitors marveled to fascinating exhibits as Dr Lister’s new Disinfectant, a new alloy called Aluminum, a butter that never spoils called oleomargarine and in the American exhibit a novel bit of furniture called a Rocking Chair. The Art galleries of the exhibition were filled with Ingres, Courbets and Delacroix. But judges accepted nothing from those weird painters Cezanne, Manet , Pizarro, who would one day be called Impressionists.

1923- Developers S.H. Woodruff and Canadian William Whitley start advertising lots for sale in Hollywoodland, beneath his his giant new Hollywoodland sign. The sign originally was covered with lightbulbs. It collapsed and was repaired in 1939, the 'land' part never restored. The Hollywood Sign was made over again in 1978.

1944- Tex Avery's "Screwball Squirrel" Only a few shorts were made. As one artist reminisced:" Everyone found that squirrel just too annoying!"

1949- Zsa Zsa Gabor married George Sanders.

1961- Rev Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker get married.

1970- A symbol of the 70’s.- AMC’s compact car the Gremlin introduced.

1972- In a gesture of turnabout-is-fair-play for women, Cosmopolitan Magazine ran its first male nude centerfold- Burt Reynolds.

1984- Motown star Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his own father in an argument over plans for the singer's 45th birthday party the next day.

1995- Chasen's restaurant closed and turned into a supermarket. The Chasen family claims it will reopen it at another location, but this was the original since 1936. During the filming of Cleopatra (1963) Elizabeth Taylor had Chasen's famous chili flown out to her hotel in Rome. Walt Disney met Leopold Stokowski over dinner at Chasens and conceived the film Fantasia, Orson Welles and Joe Mankiewicz got into a fistfight over the script outline of Citizen Kane there, Bogart, Bacall and John Huston discussed how to fight the Hollywood Blacklist there.

1996- Animation World Network, Toontown’s virtual trade magazine, started up. www.AWN.com