One of the reasons I’m a mere student of history rather than
an “historian” is that I like to play with history as much as I like being
taught by it. Since time and history are
inseparable, one can play the game of history by date, by day of the week, by
year, by decade, by century, by millennium, and, finally, by month.
April, like its eleven sister months, marks beginnings and
endings. It is the birth month of its share of celebrities, great and small. It brings forth pain (April 15th
-- Income Tax Day since 1955) and pleasure as the authoritative voices of
thousands of umpires are heard once again across the land. There has also been the pain of the
assassinations of Abraham Lincoln on April 14th, 1865 and of Dr.
Martin Luther King on April 4th, 1968 and the terror bombing at the Patriot’s
Day celebration in Boston on April 14th, 2013.
Strangely, April marks the beginnings of more major American
wars than any other month. The
Revolutionary War, which commenced at Lexington, Massachusetts on the night of
Tuesday, April 18th, 1775, began it all.
On Saturday, April 25th, 1846, President James K.
Polk began composing his war message to Congress, after he learned that Mexico
had refused to meet with his negotiator John Slidell to discuss financial
claims against the Mexican government by American nationals living in Texas.
On Friday, April 12th, 1861, General Pierre
Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (“The Little Creole”) shelled Union Commander Major
Robert Anderson and Abner Doubleday (the man who didn’t invent baseball) out of
Fort Sumter, South Carolina, thus beginning the Civil War.
On Monday, April 25th, 1898, a reluctant
President William McKinley asked Congress to declare war on Spain. McKinley’s decision brought about the
resignation of Secretary of State John Sherman two days later on Wednesday,
April 27th. Sherman, who’d spent the
previous 38 years going back and forth from the U.S. Senate to the Cabinets of Presidents
Hayes and McKinley, opposed our hostility to Spain’s policies in Cuba. He was
one of the few men ever to have bitter feelings toward President William
McKinley.
On the evening of Monday, April 2nd, 1917,
President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany and “the
Central Powers of Europe” so that “...the world might be made safe for
democracy.”
Monday, April 17th, 1961 was the date on which
Cuban patriots, under the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency and in
the face of the withdrawal of planned air support by President Kennedy,
attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro without success.
April is the birth month of three presidents: Thomas
Jefferson on Tuesday, April 13th, 1743, James Buchanan on Saturday
April 23rd, 1791, and Ulysses S. Grant (his actual birth name was
Hiram Ulysses Grant) on Saturday, April 27th, 1822.
Other celebrities born in April include: actress/singer
Debbie Reynolds (birth name Mary Francis Reynolds) on Friday, April 1st,
1932 in El Paso, Texas.; actor Eddie Murphy (born Edward Regan Murphy) on
Monday, April 3rd, 1961 in Brooklyn, New York.; Actress, poet,
playwrite and civil rights worker Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson) on
Wednesday, April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri.; and Elizabeth
Alexandra Mary House of Windsor (born Wednesday, April 21st, 1926 in
London, England). Who is more of a celebrity than Queen Elizabeth II?!
BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS --
Thursday, April 12th, 1945:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s crippled, exhausted and
diseased-ravaged body and indomitable spirit were conquered as he died of a
cerebral hemorrhage while posing for his portrait at Warm Springs, Georgia (his
little White House) at 3:36 p.m. FDR’s
sudden death sent Hitler into spasms of delirious but short-lived joy. Adolf Hitler’s life both began and ended in
April. He was born at Braunau am Inn,
Austria on Saturday, April 20th, 1889 and committed suicide in his
bunker below the German Chancery on Monday, April 30th, 1945 as the
Russians closed in on Berlin. Hitler’s
closest partner in the World War II Axis Powers partnership, Benito Mussolini,
had met his end two days earlier. A
cadre of Communist troops in Northern Italy stopped Mussolini on Friday, April
27th as he headed for Switzerland to go into exile in Spain.
Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci along with a number of other Fascist
officials were shot by Colonnello Valerio in the little village of Giulino di
Mezzegra shortly after 3 p.m. on April 28th. His body was hung upside down in the Piazzale
Loreto in Milan at an Esso gas station (of all places!).
So, you may well ask, what does all this mean? What does it say about the gifts of
April? What does it say about the
potential of babies, actors, actresses, about presidents or dictators or
queens?
It doesn’t say much, I suppose, that is very substantial,
but it’s a way of chopping history into bite-sized morsels that are fun to
research, read and write about.
Aren’t these historical morsels delicious!
RESPECTFULLY
SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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