Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Monday, April 15, the 107th day of 2002 with 260 to follow. The moon is waxing, moving toward its first quarter. Advertisement There are no morning stars. The evening stars are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include Italian painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci in 1452; British polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross in 1800; author Henry James in 1843; painter Thomas Hart Benton in 1889; radio actress Marian Jordan, who played "Molly McGee," in 1897; Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, in 1922; country singer Roy Clark in 1933 (age 69); actresses Elizabeth Montgomery in 1933, Claudia Cardinale in 1939 (age 63), and Amy Wright in 1950 (age 52); newspaper columnist Heloise Cruse Evans ("Hints from Heloise") in 1951 (age 51); and actress Emma Thompson in 1959 (age 43). On this date in history: In 1817, the first U.S. public school for the deaf, Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons (now the American School for the Deaf), was founded at Hartford, Conn. Advertisement In 1861, President Lincoln sent Congress a message recognizing a state of war with the Southern states and calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers. In 1865, President Lincoln died of an assassin's bullet. Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as chief executive. In 1912, the luxury liner "Titanic" sank in the northern Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland after striking an iceberg the night before. Some 1500 lives were lost. In 1955, the first franchised McDonald's was opened in Des Plaines, Ill., by Ray Kroc, who'd gotten the idea from a hamburger joint in San Bernardino, Calif., run by the McDonald brothers. In 1985, U.S. officials in Seattle indicted 23 members of a neo-Nazi group for robbery and murder. 10 gang members later were convicted and sentenced to 40 to 100 years in prison. In 1991, the European Community lifted its remaining economic sanctions against South Africa -- allowing the import of gold coins, iron and steel -- despite pleas by the African National Congress to continue the sanctions. In 1993, Joey Buttafuoco, the alleged lover of teenage "Long Island Lolita" Amy Fisher, was arraigned in Mineola, N.Y., on charges of statutory rape and sodomy. Advertisement In 1996, Tokyo and Washington agreed on a gradual return of U.S. military bases on Okinawa to Japan. In 1998, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who presided over a reign of terror in Cambodia in the late 1970s, died at a jungle outpost near the Cambodian-Thailand border. In 1999, astronomers announced they had discovered evidence of a solar system in the constellation Andromeda. It was the only known solar system other than our own. A thought for the day: "The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything." Walter Bagehot said that.
