International Stay-in-Bed Day

 

  We’re warned to watch our step on Friday the 13th. April 14th also deserves special attention. That day seems to be the Bermuda Triangle of the annual calendar. It was on this day in 1865 that Abraham Lincoln was shot, one of the last casualties of the just ended Civil War.

  John Wilkes Booth had been told by a fortune teller that he would die young, but that he would always be remembered by history. He was hunted down like a dog, flushed from a burning barn, and died on the ground in the light of the flames.

  Also on this unlucky day in 1912, the British passenger liner Titanic hit an iceberg and sank early the next morning. Over 1,500 hundred people died. The Titanic was the largest ship in the world and was on her maiden voyage to New York carrying the rich and the poor.  The most expensive cabin cost $106,000 in today's money. That was for six days, one way.  The ship's owner J.P. Morgan had planned to be on board, but was not feeling well and remained in his villa in Italy. Lucky him.

  A partial list of less famous calamities on this day:

 "The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight" in El Paso, 1881.   

The Hauser Dam on the Missouri River in Montana collapses, 1908.

The Armenian Massacre begins in Adana, Turkey, 1909.

The Black Sunday dust storm sweeps across Oklahoma and Texas, 1935.

Bombay explosion, 1944.

Sputnik 2 falls to earth with dog Laika, 1958.

Boko Haram abducts 276 school girls in Nigeria, 2014.

  The balefulness of this day may have been hinted by a celestial phenomenon that took place over the German city of Nuremberg on April 14, 1561.  Citizens reported seeing black objects coming out of the sun and fighting with each other, finally following to earth in clouds of smoke. A woodcut broadsheet was printed to record the event.

If you're reading this in the morning, I recommend you take a mental health day and stay home. Better to waste a day than to become a statistic.