April 30

This day in sketchtory, the ice cream cone is first introduced, at the St. Louis World's Fair.

April 29

This day in sketchtory, Uma Thurman was born.

April 28

This day in sketchtory, a vaccine for yellow fever was introduced

April 27

This day in sketchtory, Xerox PARC introduced the computer mouse.

April 26

This day in sketchtory, NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashed into the moon.

April 25

This day in sketchtory, DC Comics introduced Batman.

April 24

This day in sketchtory, a team of South Korean scientists created the world's first cloned dog, named "Snuppy."

April 23

This day in sketchtory, Coca Cola released "New Coke."

April 22

This day in sketchtory, Earth Day is celebrated. This immediately made me think of a friend of mine, Dei Gaztelumendi's 4th year film "Earlth and Moonch." I also think of him as Spanish Buzz.

April 21

This day in sketchtory, Mark Twain died.

April 20

This day in sketchtory, Fenway Park in Boston opened.

April 19

This day in sketchtory, Skynet was to become sentient.

April 18

This day in sketchtory, Conan O'Brien was born.

April 17

This day in sketchtory, in 1945, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash commandeers over half a ton of uranium at Strassfut, Germany, in an effort to prevent the Russians from developing an A-bomb. Pash was head of the Alsos Group, organized to search for German scientists in the postwar environment in order to prevent the Russians, previously Allies but now a potential threat, from capturing any scientists and putting them to work at their own atomic research plants. Uranium piles were also rich "catches," as they were necessary to the development of atomic weapons.

April 16

This day in sketchtory, Dr. Albert Hoffman discovered the hallucinogenic abilities of the drug LSD.

April 15

This day in sketchtory, the Titanic sunk.

April 14

This day in sketchtory, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

April 13

This day in sketchtory, the arrival of the first elephant in North America.

April 12

This day in sketchtory, Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Catholic Church, for spreading the truth that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

April 11

This day in sketchtory, US President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur in the midst of the Korean War. MacArthur had almost 50 years of military service and was the main figure in the US involvement with Japan in WWII. During the Korean War he made public statements questioning various actions of Truman.

With no other skills beyond figuring out how to kill people, MacArthur turned to creating his own small business.

April 10

This day in sketchtory, the safety pin was patented by Walter Hunt, who also invented the sewing machine, the Winchester repeating rifle, the knife sharpener and a bunch of other obsolete things. Its my opinion that the injury rate among safety pin use should really exclude it from using the term "safety" in its name.

April 9

This day in sketchtory, Iraq and the Soviets signed a friendship treaty.

April 8

This day in sketchtory, Clint Eastwood was elected mayor in April 1986 of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California (population 4,000), a wealthy small town and artist community on the Monterey Peninsula. He served one term. A focal point of Eastwood's campaign was to overturn a law that banned eating ice cream in public.

In general, Eastwood has favoured less governmental interference in both the private economy and the private lives of individuals. He has disapproved of a reliance on welfare, feeling that the government should help citizens make something of themselves via education and incentives. He has, however, approved of unemployment insurance, bail-outs for homeowners saddled with unaffordable mortgages, a continued American automobile industry, electric and hybrid cars, environmental conservation, land preservation, alternative energy, and gun control measures such as California's Brady Bill. A longtime liberal on civil rights, Eastwood has stated that he has always been pro-choice on abortion. He has endorsed the notion of allowing gays to marry, and he contributed to groups supporting the Equal Rights Amendment for women.

To me it just furthers the proof that moderate, sane republicans can only be elected if they are also movie stars.

April 7

This day in sketchtory, the Toronto Blue Jays played their first ever game, in 1977 at Exhibition Stadium. They beat the visiting Chicago White Sox, in a game that featured a hell of a lot of snow, which helped further the canadian stereotype of a frozen wasteland, by having a blizzard at a baseball game in April.

April 6

This day in sketchtory, the post it note first went on sale.

April 5

This day in sketchtory, Kurt Cobain killed himself. This was, in my opinion, a poor decision.

A fairly interesting conspiracy theory proposed by a private investigator Tom Grant exists, and suggests that Cobain did not in fact kill himself, but instead way murdered. Some aspects of it do actually raise an eyebrow, including the shotgun having no fingerprints on it, a level of heroin in Cobain's bloodstream that would make a person unable to pull a trigger on themselves, and the suicide note showing changing writing patterns and and style. Cobain's lawyer even claimed he was not suicidal and had begun the process to change his will so Courtney Love would be left out, as he was preparing to divorce her. All this leads to a fascinating story, but more than likely, it was as simple as it could be, the dude just killed himself. Which sucks, because he was really good.

April 4

This day in sketchtory, the man who would have been the greatest actor ever, Heath Ledger, was born. I've never seen another actor who gave amazing and completely unique performances every single time out, even if the rest of the movie completely wallowed beneath him.

April 3

This day in sketchtory, the greatest actor of all time, Marlon Brando, was born. No actor has done the quality of work Brando was capable of, especially given such a wide range of characters, and over such a long period. The thing I did not know about him was his tremendous attitude towards helping others, best characterized by his rejecting his Best Actor oscar award for the Godfather, in protest of the injustices towards Native Americans, and even had a real Native give a speech sharing his feelings towards the injustices, as well as the portrayal of Natives in film and television.

April 2

This day in sketchtory, the CN Tower was completed. Construction on the CN Tower began on February 6, 1973 with massive excavations at the tower base for the foundation. By the time the foundation was complete, 56,000 t of dirt and shale were removed to a depth of 15 metres in the centre, and a base incorporating 7,000 cubic metres of concrete with 450 tonnes of rebar and 36 tonnes of steel cable had been built to a thickness of 6.7 metres. This portion of the construction was fairly rapid, with only four months needed between the start and the foundation being ready for construction on top.

To build the main support pillar, a hydraulically-raised slipform was built at the base. This was a fairly impressive engineering feat on its own, consisting of a large metal platform that raised itself on jacks at about 6 metres per day as the concrete below set. Concrete was poured continuously by a team of 1,532 people, during which it had already become the tallest structure in Canada, surpassing the recently built Inco Superstack, which was built using similar methods. In total, the tower contains 40,500 cubic metres of concrete, all of which was mixed on-site in order to ensure batch consistency. Through the pour, the vertical accuracy of the tower was maintained by comparing the slip form's location to massive plumb-bobs hanging from it, observed by small telescopes from the ground.

At the time it was built, it was the tallest freestanding structure in the world. These days, theres a new tallest structure almost every year.

April 1

This day in sketchtory, Apple was founded by the Steves, Jobs and Wozniak.