April 19

The 15th century was a rather rough patch for Joan of Arc, what with her being burned at the stake and all. Joan was executed on May 30, 1431. Things got a bit better when Pope Callixtus III re-opened her case and she was granted a new trial. While at the conclusion of the trial she was declared innocent of all charges, the trial unfortunately took place on July 7, 1456 and really did Joan absolutely no good at all. The twentieth century proved to be much friendlier century for her. Joan’s prospects looked a bit brighter when Pope Pius X beatified her on the 19th in 1909. But things really started looking up for her when Pope Benedict XV canonized the dear girl on May 16, 1920.

April 18

Certainly, everyone has heard the poem of Paul Revere’s midnight ride “Listen my children and you shall hear of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere….” It is widely understood that the ride was to warn people that the British were coming to do battle. They were not; the British wanted to seize a munitions stockpile in Concord. That ride began when two lanterns were seen hanging in the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston, Massachusetts on the 18th in 1775. Overlooked, however, is the fact that Revere was not alone on this ride. There were three riders giving the warning and the warning had little to do with an invasion. Riding with Revere were William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. In addition to warning of the approach of British forces to Concord, the three men were also riding to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British were coming to arrest them. While Prescott was the only one to actually reach Concord, I kind of think everything worked out all right in the end.

William Dawes’ great-great grandson, Charles Gates Dawes, was the nation’s 30th Vice-president in Calvin Coolidge’s administration. He followed that job by becoming the United States’ Ambassador to the Court of St. James, which is just a fancy way of saying the United Kingdom. Charles wrote the music for the hit song, It’s All In the Game, which has been covered by Nat ‘King’ Cole, Van Morrison, Elton John and Keith Jarret, among others.

A[ril 16

Dr. Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist, stumbled upon the psychedelic effects of LSD on the 16th in 1943 while conducting an experiment. Following this, he calmly rode his bicycle home from work in Basel, Switzerland. Beginning with the surge in the popularity of psychedelics in the 1960s, the 16th would often be celebrated as Bicycle Day. Hoffman wrote the book, LSD: My Problem Child.

April 17

Taksin was born on the 17th in 1735. He would become King of Siam (now Thailand) in 1768. As with many destined to become king, he had a rather lofty opinion of himself. Teetering on the edge of sanity, Taksin became convinced that he was destined to become a Buddha and directed that those monks who did not worship him as such be flogged. In March of 1782, Taksin was declared insane and removed from power. He was then wrapped in a velvet sack and beaten to death with a sandalwood club. As a royal whose blood could not be allowed to hit the ground, he was locked in the sack.

April 15

Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth would occasionally go for long walks with her brother William. On one of these walks, on the 15th in 1802, the pair happened to pass a large field of daisies. The sight of these flowers inspired William to burden the world with the poem The Daffodills, which is the one that begins with I wandered Lonely as a Cloud. Isn’t her mobcap just the cutest little thing you ever saw?
Dorothy was also a writer, though she languished in her more famous brother’s shadow. In 1931, Beatrix Potter bought a house the brother and sister had occupied and discovered a vast collection of Dorothy’s work, which Potter published as the Grasmere Journal in 1933.

April 14

As hard as it may be to believe there are still a few people who rely on actual dictionaries to check their spelling or more rarely, look up a word’s definition. Most people seem to rely, instead, on Bill Gates’ spell-check. If you actually have a dictionary and know how to use it, pause for a moment on the 14th and offer a word of thanks to Noah Webster, who, on that date in 1828, copyrighted his first dictionary.

In 1774, when he was 16, Webster entered Yale College. He earned a law degree in 1781. In 1793, Alexander Hamilton gave him $1500 to move to New York and edit a newspaper, which Hamilton had started to use as a propaganda machine for the Federalists.
Webster was a little slow out of the gate however because on the 15th in 1755, Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London, England.

April 13

On the 13th in 1729, Thomas Percy[i] was born in Bridgnorth, England. As many of the time did, as an adult he took holy orders and would become the Bishop of Dromore. He had a lifelong fascination with poetry however. His book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry[ii], for which he is best known, was published in 1765. In 1763, however he published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, poems from Iceland, which Percy “translated and improved." What is it with some people; can’t they just leave well enough alone?