The Lamarckian Chronicles: April 2011

1303 – The University of Rome La Sapienza is instituted by Pope Boniface VIII.
1453 – The last naval battle in Byzantine history occurs, as three Genoese galleys escorting a Byzantine transport fight their way through the huge Ottoman blockade fleet and into the Golden Horn.
1526 – The last ruler of the Lodi Dynasty, Ibrahim Lodi was defeated and killed by Babur in the First Battle of Panipat.
1534 – Jacques Cartier begins the voyage during which he discovers Canada and Labrador.
1535 – The Sun dog phenomenon observed over Stockholm and depicted in the famous painting "Vädersolstavlan".
1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.
1657 – Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).
1689 – The former King James II of England, now deposed, lays siege to Derry.
1770 – The Georgian king Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.
1792 – France declares war on Austria, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.
1809 – Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four day campaign that ended in a French victory.
1810 – The Governor of Caracas declares independence from Spain.
1818 – The case of Ashford v Thornton ends, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for murder, after his demand for trial by battle was upheld.
1828 – René Caillié becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbouctou.
1836 – U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.
1861 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.
1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the first pasteurization tests.
1865 – Astronomer Pietro Angelo Secchi demonstrates the Secchi disk, which measures water clarity, aboard Pope Pius IX's yacht, the L’Immaculata Concezion.
1871 – The Civil Rights Act of 1871 becomes law.
1876 – The April Uprising - a key point in modern Bulgarian history, leading to the Russo-Turkish War and the liberation of Bulgaria from ottoman slavery, as an independent part of the Ottoman Empire.
1884 – Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Humanum Genus.
1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.
1908 – Opening day of competition in the New South Wales Rugby League.
1912 – Opening day for baseball's Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, and Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts.
1914 – 19 men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner's strike.
1916 – The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (currently Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 in 11 innings
1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.
1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.
1926 – Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.
1939 – Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany
1939 – Billie Holiday records the first Civil Rights song "Strange Fruit".
1945 – World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.
1945 – World War II: Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler makes his last trip to the surface to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth.
1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed troops against Cuba.
1964 – BBC Two launches with a power cut because of the fire at Battersea Power Station.
1968 – English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.
1972 – Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon .
1978 – Korean Air Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.
1980 – Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.
1984 – The Good Friday Massacre, an extremely violent ice hockey playoff game, is played in Montreal, Canada.
1985 – The ATF raids The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas.
1986 – Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performs in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years.
1998 – German terrorist group the Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.
1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado.
2007 – Johnson Space Center Shooting: A man with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.
2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.
2010 – The Deepwater Horizon oil well explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last five months.

Eddie Jessup: What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth.
Emily Jessup: What the hell is not religious about that? You've simply replaced God with the Original Self.
Eddie Jessup: Yes, but we've localized it. Now I know where the Self is. It's in our own minds. It's a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We've got six billion years of memory in our minds.
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Eddie Jessup: Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear - it's still in there. There's a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I'm telling you it's in the goddamned limbic system.
Mason Parrish: You're a whacko!
Eddie Jessup: What's whacko about it, Mason? I'm a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? We're all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life.

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