A Momentous Weekend

This has been a momentous weekend.

First, radio broadcasting pioneer Art Bell, died at age 72 on Friday, April 13, 2018.  Bell was the premier broadcaster of the paranormal.  His late-night radio program, Coast to Coast AM, covered the US on more than 600 radio stations for decades.  On his program, he interviewed common people from the full spectrum of unusual subjects, from UFOs to ghosts, to unsolved disappearances.   In 2013, he broadcast on Sirius XM satellite radio for a short time, following his retirement on July 1, 2007.  Repeats of his Coast to Coast AM broadcasts can still be heard on the Internet in the Somewhere In Time shows.

Sunday, April 15, 2018, marks the 153rd anniversary of the death of the 16th President of the United States, President Abraham Lincoln.  President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, the previous evening, while he and Mrs. Lincoln and guests watched a performance of the comedy, Our American Cousin.  His assassin was a Southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth, who shot the President in the back of the head with a small Derringer pistol.  Following the fatal shot, Lincoln was carried across the street to a boarding house, where he died at 7:22 a.m. Saturday, April 15, 1865.   Booth died in a barn about two weeks later as he was surrounded by Union troops.

The British luxury ocean liner, RMS Titantic, sank in early morning hours of April 15, 1912, 106 years ago today, after colliding with an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, New York.  More than 1,500 men, women, and children of the 2,224 passengers and crew aboard the liner died in the tragedy.  Titanic struck an iceberg at about 11:40 p.m. the night before, four days after leaving Southampton on April 10, 1912.  The luxury ship went to the bottom of the Atlantic early the next morning on April 15.  Titanic was the largest ocean liner of its kind when launched, and was thought to be “unsinkable.”  One of those lost in the disaster was Thomas Andrews, the architect of the ship.

Today, April 15, 2018, is the 14th birthday of my grandson, Logan Auld.  Logan is a home-schooled bright young man with polite manners and a sweet disposition.  He is a joy to be around and I love and miss him, his mom and dad, his brothers and sisters, his cousins, and his uncles and aunts very much.  He makes me very proud to be his Granddaddy.