Paradise Driver

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Today is Friday, April 9th.

The 100th day of 2004.

There are 266 days left in the year.

This is Good Friday



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Today's Highlight in History:



On April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.



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On this date:



In 837, Halley's Comet makes its closest known passage to Earth: 5 million kilometers (3 million miles).



In 1682, French explorer Robert La Salle reached the Mississippi River.



In 1747, The last beheading took place in England; Lord Lovat Simon Fraser, the 12th baron Lovat Jacobite, was a peer who was the last to be beheaded in England; for "high treeason".



In 1770, Captain James Cook discovers Botany Bay on the Australian continent.



In 1869, The Hudson's Bay Company agreed to cede its territorial rights to Canada.



In 1872, Samuel R Percy patents dried milk



In 1909, In Pentecostal history, the first group outbreak of the charismatic gift of tongues occurred in Los Angeles under the leadership of black evangelist William J. Seymour, 38. It marked the beginning of the three-year-long "Azusa Street Revival."



In 1912, 1st exhibition baseball game at Fenway Park (Red Sox vs Harvard)



In 1912, SS Titanic leaves Queenstown Ireland for New York.



In 1928, Mae West's NYC debut in a daring new play "Diamond Lil"



In 1939, Singer Marian Anderson performed a concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after she was denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.



In 1940, During World War II, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.



In 1942, American and Philippine defenders on Bataan capitulated to Japanese forces; the surrender was followed by the notorious Bataan Death March, which claimed nearly 10,000 lives.



In 1947, A series of tornadoes in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas claimed 169 lives.



In 1947, Atomic Energy Commission is formed



In 1950, Bob Hope made his first television appearance on "Star-Spangled Review" on NBC-TV.



In 1959, NASA announced the selection of America's first seven astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.



In 1963, British statesman Winston Churchill was made an honorary U.S. citizen.



In 1965, The newly built Houston Astrodome featured its first baseball game, an exhibition between the Astros and the New York Yankees. (The Astros won, 2-1.)



In 1967, 1st Boeing 737 rolls out



In 1968, Slain American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is buried in Atlanta, Georgia.



In 1969, The supersonic aircraft Concorde made its maiden flight, from Bristol to Fairford in England



In 1970, Paul McCartney announces the official breakup of the Beatles.



In 1974, Janet Jackson, at age 7, appeared on the TV show "The Jacksons" for the first time.



In 1981, The Japanese cargo ship Nisso Maru sank in the East China Sea after it was hit by the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine USS George Washington.



In 1983, The space shuttle Challenger ended its first mission with a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.



In 1986, It was announced that Patrick Duffy's character on the TV show Dallas would be returning after being killed off in the previous season.



In 1987, Responding to charges of bugging at the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Soviet officials displayed microphones and other gadgets they said were found in Soviet missions in the United States.



In 1991, The Soviet republic of Georgia declared its independence.



In 1991, Release date of Microsoft MS DOS 5.0.



In 1992, A U.S. Federal court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of cocaine trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering. It is the first time the former head of state in another nation is convicted under United States law.



In 1995, Women's rights supporters rallied near the U.S. Capitol to protest violence against women.



In 1996, In a dramatic shift of purse-string power, President Clinton signed a line-item veto bill into law. (However, the Supreme Court struck down the veto as unconstitutional in 1998.)



In 1997, The CIA apologized to Gulf War veterans for failing to do a better job in supplying information to U.S. troops who blew up an Iraqi bunker later found to contain chemical weapons.



In 1997, Amid privacy concerns, Social Security officials pulled the plug on an Internet site that provided records of individual earnings and retirements.



In 1998, More than 150 Muslims died in stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on last day of the haj pilgrimage.



In 2001, The parent company of American Airlines acquired the bankrupt Trans World Airlines (TWA); the acquisition made American America's No. 1 air carrier.



In 2002, Former Arthur Andersen auditor David B. Duncan pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston to ordering the shredding of Enron documents, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.



Ten years ago (1994):



Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali ordered U.N. troops to use "all available means" to roll back Serb military gains in the Muslim enclave of Gorazde.



The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off on an 11-day mission that included mapping the Earth's surface in three dimensions.



Five years ago (1999):



Niger's president, Ibrahim Bare Mainassara, was gunned down by members of his own Presidential Guard.



A judge ordered the federal government to pay $909 million to Glendale Federal Bank in California for breach of contract. (The ruling stemmed from a 1996 Supreme Court decision that said the government broke its contract with Glendale and two other thrifts when it changed the rules on how they had to count their assets.)



One year ago (2003):



Jubilant Iraqis celebrated the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, beheading a toppled statue of their longtime ruler in downtown Baghdad and embracing American troops as liberators.



In Afghanistan, a U.S. warplane called in to support allied Afghans under fire mistakenly bombed a house, killing 11 civilians.



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Today's Birthdays:



Playboy magazine founder Hugh Marston Hefner is 78.



Naturalist Jim Fowler is 72.



Actor Jean-Paul Belmondo is 71.



Actress Michael Learned is 65.



Country singer Margo Smith is 62.



Country singer Hal Ketchum is 51.



Actor Dennis Quaid is 50.



Humorist Jimmy Tingle is 49.



Golfer Severiano Ballesteros is 47.



Country musician Dave Innis (Restless Heart) is 45.



Sports reporter Lisa Guerrero is 40.



Actress-model Paulina Porizkova is 39.



Actress Cynthia Nixon is 38.



Rock singer Kevin Martin (Candlebox) is 35.



Singer Rachel Stevens (S Club 7) is 26.



Actress Keshia Knight Pulliam is 25.



Actor Ryan Northcott is 24.



Actress Kristen Stewart is 14.



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Thought for Today:

"It is indeed difficult to define just who the 'modern man' is, and what views he has to hold in order to be modern." -

- Josiah Royce, American philosopher (1855-1916).

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