I’m not sure whether @Guy54435 will continue to post these discussions every day–I do really enjoy them–but if only for today I thought one should be created, with today, April 20th, perhaps the most eerie day on the calendar.
In this April 22, 1999, file photo, Columbine High School students, from left, Darcy Craig, Molly Byrne and Emily Dubin stop to pay their respects at a makeshift memorial set up in a park near the high school in Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenage gunmen went on a killing rampage at Columbine High School in suburban Denver. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
(Original Caption) 4/1914- Trinidad, CO: Mourners watch as coffins of victims of the Ludlow coal miner’s strike war pass by in front of the Catholic Church at Ludlow. Filed 5/5/1914.
On April 20, 1999, two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher and injured 23 others before taking their own lives at Columbine High School, near Denver, Colorado.
In 1812, the fourth vice president of the United States, George Clinton, died in Washington at age 72, becoming the first vice president to die while in office.
In 1889, Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany, leader of the Nazi Party and Chancellor (Kanzler) and Führer of Germany (1933–45), was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary. His worldview revolved around two concepts: territorial expansion and racial supremacy. Those themes informed his decision to invade Poland on September 1, 1939, which marked the start of World War II, as well as the systematic killing of six million Jews and millions of others during the Holocaust.
In 1912, Boston’s Fenway Park, the oldest active stadium in Major League Baseball, hosted its first official baseball game in front of an estimated 27,000 spectators. (The Red Sox defeated the New York Highlanders 7-6 in 11 innings.)
In 1914, militia and Colorado National Guard members opened fire on an encampment of striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado; at least 19 people in the camp, including 12 children, and one National Guard member were killed in the “Ludlow Massacre.”
In 1971, the Supreme Court in the case of Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 US 1 (1971), unanimously upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.
In 1972, Apollo 16’s lunar module, carrying astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr., landed on the moon.
In 1986, following an absence of over six decades, Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz returned to the Soviet Union to perform a concert at the Grand Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
In 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, leased by BP, killed 11 workers and caused a blowout that began spewing an estimated 200 million gallons (757 million liters) of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. (The well was finally capped nearly three months later.)
In 2021, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder and manslaughter charges for the killing of George Floyd; Chauvin was later sentenced to 22½ years in prison.
Any bunny got weed? Easter Sunday, 4/20 will fall on the same day this year
Here comes Peter Cottontail, tokin’ down the bunny trail.
Call it luck, fate or a silly coincidence, but 4/20 and Easter Sunday fall on the same day this year.
This year, Sunday, April 20, is both Easter and 4/20, the unofficial marijuana holiday celebrated worldwide. Though the two events aren’t directly related, some worshippers and consumers will partake in both.
The story behind how 4/20 became the unofficial marijuana holiday remains murky, but there are a few popular theories.
Some believe the holiday is representative of “420,” a radio code that has been used for police to indicate marijuana. Others tie the “holiday” to Bob Dylan’s song “Rain Day Women #12 & 35,” with its refrain, “Everybody must get stoned” and the product of multiplying 12 by 35 is 420, according to PBS.
The most likely story though, is one that centers around a group of California high school friends in the 1970s.
According to PBS, a brother of one of these friends allegedly grew marijuana in the woods near the school and was paranoid about being caught. He drew up a map of where to find the marijuana and gave it to the friend group to harvest.
One day during the 1971 fall semester, at precisely 4:20 p.m., the friends smoked a joint and headed out to the woods, looking for the stash. Though they were never table to find it, their code “420,” caught on, as the friend group hung around the Grateful Dead a fair amount, according to PBS.