April 5

On the 5th in 1930, in India, Mohandas Karamcha Gandhi, at the head of his followers, began the Salt March to Dandi. Upon arriving at the sea on the 6th, Gandhi dipped his hand into the ocean, scooped a bit of mud into his hand, raised his arm and called out “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire”. Gandhi’s birthday, October 2, 1869, is widely recognized as the International Day of Non-violence.

In an arranged marriage, Gandhi married Kasturba Makhanji when they were both thirteen years old. They would have four children. At the time of their marriage, Katurba was illiterate and Gandhi taught her to read and write.

April 4

For those of you who, like me, are fans of dangerous, time-consuming heart surgery, on the 4th in 1969 Dr. Denton Cooley and Dr. Domingo Liotta, the designer of the first artificial heart, implanted it in a human.
Cooley is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, in the Department of Medical Sciences. One question: Why?
Dr. Liotta is the founder and director of the Domingo Liotta International Foundation – Medical Corporation that is a non-profit organization dedicated to the Artificial Heart and Assisted Circulation research. He is the author of the book The Artificial Heart: The Frontier of Human Life.

April 3

On the 3rd in 1882, Robert Newton Ford[i] (pictured) shot and killed outlaw Jesse James[ii] in order to collect a $5000 reward. Ford took his show on the road, posing for photographs and signing autographs billing himself as the man who killed Jesse James. On June 8, 1892, Edward Capeheart O’Kelley[iii] in turn murdered Ford. Judith Ries, O’Kelley’s great-great-grand niece, would years later write the book “Ed O’Kelley: The man who murdered Jesse James’ Murderer.”
[i] When Ford attempted to collect the reward offered for James, he was arrested on charges of murder. Ford was convicted and sentenced to hang but the Governor of Missouri pardoned him before the sentence was carried out. He subsequently only received a small portion of the $5000 reward.
[ii] James must have recovered because today he is allegedly happily married to his third wife, actress Sandra Bullock, and in his spare time designs and builds exotic motorcycles.
[iii] To illustrate yet again that the internet is not all it is cracked up to be - In O’Kelley’s biography at findagrave.com, author Judith Ries has posted this comment about his obituary there “I have no idea who wrote this so-called “bio” about Edward Capeheart O’Kelley, but it is so incorrect as to be totally humorous!! I am a great-great niece of Ed O’Kelley and I wrote the book entitled “Ed O’Kelley: The Man who murdered Jesse James’ Murderer”. If you want/need the correct information about him, please contact me!! Thanks a bunch!!

April 2

Abraham Ortelius was born on the 2nd in 1527 in what is known today as Belgium. His life’s work, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World, is widely considered the world’s first atlas and made him quite famous. While the atlas wasn’t nearly as accurate as any over-the-counter GPS system, you really have to give the guy a break. He was, after all, working in the freaking 16th century for crying out loud. The atlas would go through more than 25 editions in various languages before Ortelius’s death on June 28, 1592.

April 1

In spite of the bad rap it gets, April 1st must not be exclusively for fans of pranks because on that day in 1826, Samuel Morey[i] patented the internal combustion engine, in 1854, Charles Dickens[ii]’ book Hard Times[iii] began serialization in the magazine he was editing, Household Words[iv], and in 1857, Herman Melville[v] published The Confidence- Man: His Masquerade[vi].

[i] Morey’s first patent, obtained in 1793, was for a steam-powered spit. On his death, on April 17, 1842 Morey held twenty patents.
[ii] As a 12 year old, Dickens would spend ten-hour days in a boot-blacking factory pasting labels on jars of polish. The money went to help support his family because his father had been tossed in to Marshalsea, a debtors’ prison in London, England
[iii] The 100,000 words of the novel were serialized between April 1 and August 12, 1854.
[iv] Sales of the magazine Household Words, of which Dickens was the editor, were disastrously low and he serialized the novel in the hope that it would boost sales,
[v] Such was Melville’s fame in his own day, that when he died on September 28, 1891 and the venerable New York Times published his obituary they got his name wrong. It was not Herman Melville who had died it was Henry Melville.
[vi] The Confidence Man was Melville’s last major novel. I’m certain that it was merely a coincidence that its publication date is also the date in which all the action in the novel occurs.

March 31

On the 31st in 1547, Francis I, King of France[i] died. His death was immediately followed by Henry II’s (pictured) coronation as king. I am sure that Francis would disagree but this all worked surprisingly well because the date was also Henry’s 39th birthday which meant that the royal bakers only had to make one cake. While Francis managed to have a long and happy reign, Henry would not share that happy feature with him. Henry was rather fond of jousting and similar recreational activities. On June 30, 1559, Henry traveled to the Place des Vosges in Paris to participate in a joust to celebrate the signing of the Peace Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, which ended the war with his enemies of long standing, the Habsburgs of Austria. Now tell me what the odds of what follows happening is, o.k.? In the joust, his opponent’s lance suddenly shattered. A small piece of it flew through the open space on his visor. It penetrated Henry’s eye, then travelled through his brain and ultimately exited through his ear. Henry would linger until July 10, in which could only have been excruciating pain and then died.

[i] He’s the guy who sent Jacques Cartier to explore the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada.

March 30

Crawford Williamson Long was born in Danielsville, Georgia in the early years of the 19th century. He would survive infancy and go on to become a physician, surgeon, and pharmacist. One of his patients, the unfortunate James M. Venable came to him with a rather nasty tumor growing on his neck (Venable’s neck, not Long’s). On the 30th in 1842, Dr. Long removed the tumor in the first operation using general anesthesia, a feat that was in all likelihood greatly appreciated by Mr. Venable.
John Henry ‘Doc’ Holiday, renowned in the Old West (Why do they call it the Old West? Duh, it happened in the west and it happened a long time ago, so its old.), was a man with a lot of talent. He was a dentist, a gambler and a gunfighter. He was also Long’s cousin.