April 2023: The Strange Files Newsletter
April 2023: The Strange Files Newsletter
Welcome to April --
Don't be a Fool
Is there anything more lame than an April Fool's joke?
I spent some time preparing this newsletter by Googling April fools jokes and pranks. My takeaway is:
Just don't. Most aren't funny, and some are outright dangerous.
Here was one suggestion I found: Unscrew the shower head in your bathroom and insert a chicken bouillon cube. When your significant other takes their shower, they'll end up smelling like poultry all day.
This is supposed to be funny? I live in Florida. You can shoot people here for less. Not that my significant other would shoot me. All of our firearms have been melted down and molded into yard flamingos. But I don't fancy sleeping on the couch.
So, take this as a helpful reminder. People will be trying to trick you all day. But if they smell fowl, you'll know somebody already got the best of them.
BIG APRIL EVENTS:
It's April, so naturally we're still following college basketball's March Madness.
Really? Couldn't they have wrapped this up last month? But, no.
The men's Final Four games are today, April 1, starting at 6:09 p.m. (EDT) when San Diego State squares off against Florida Atlantic. Immediately following that game, UConn will face Miami.
The men's championship game will tip off at 9:20 p.m. (EDT) Monday, April 3. All the games are broadcast on CBS.
The women's championship game will be sandwiched between the two men's bouts. Instead of Houston, this contest will be in Dallas.
The contestants will be the winners of the Virginia Teach vs. LSU, and South Carolina vs. Iowa games that were still underway as this newsletter went to press.
Mark your calendar for Sunday, April 2 at 3:30 p.m. (EDT) on ABC.
The Jewish holiday of Passover (or Pesach in Hebrew) begins on April 5 and extends through April 13. It celebrates the Biblical story of the Israelites' escape from Egyptian slavery. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, God commanded the Israelites to use lamb's blood to put a mark above their doors so the Angel of Death would pass over them.
Easter always falls on a Sunday, and this year the date is April 9. When you wake up in the morning, the Easter Bunny will have completed her rounds delivering eggs (and candy) all over the world.
Everybody makes a big deal out of Santa, but the Easter Bunny does this solo, no help from a team of reindeer to haul all the goodies around. That's some bunny!
Easter, of course, is more than Easter egg hunts. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Christian faith. But the holiday's date varies from year to year because it is set to coincide with the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (the first day of calendar Spring). And why is that? Because early Christians wanted the celebration to coincide with Passover, and the Jewish calendar is linked to solar and lunar cycles and it changes from year to year.
Palm Sunday is always a week before Easter, so this year it falls on April 2. It marks the start of the Christian Holy Week. Good Friday is April 7. If you're wondering about Lent, too late. That began in February.
Some Easter trivia you can use to impress your friends:
In Sweden, children don't dress up as bunnies but as Easter Wizards.
The average U.S. household spends $131 on Easter.
The Easter bunny originated in Germany. Schnapps may have been involved.
The first Easter egg roll at the While House took place in 1878.
Benedict Cumberbatch was made into a chocolate bunny in 2015
The deadline to file your income tax return this year is April 18. Why not April 15 as it usually is? Because the 15th falls on a Saturday, and the next weekday, April 17, is Emancipation Day, a holiday. So, you are emancipated from paying your taxes for an extra day.
Earth Day is April 22. It commemorates the modern environmental movement. Here are some interesting facts you can share:
U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin is credited as the founder of Earth Day. He was deeply concerned about the deterioration of the country's environment including the high levels of lead in the atmosphere from gasoline.
The date to celebrate Earth Day was chosen, not by any specific event, but because it generally falls between two events on college campuses -- spring break and final exams.
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, before Global Warming was a thing.
Many events led to the creation of the environmental movement, but one watershed moment was the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the bestselling book that foretold the dangers to the environment caused by pesticides.
When the first Earth Day was celebrated in Union Square in New York City, the headline speakers were the actors Paul Newman and Ali MacGraw.
We think a lot about Mother Nature in April. First there's Earth Day, then on April 28 we celebrate Arbor Day, a national holiday for trees. The first Arbor Day was celebrated in the Nebraska Territory in 1872, and by 1920 over 45 states observed the holiday. On that first Arbor Day in Nebraska, more than one million trees were planted. But we didn't invent the holiday. The first documented Arbor Day was held in Spain in 1594.
Mark Your Calendar
The Country Music Television Awards will be broadcast from Austin on April 2, hosted by Kelsea Ballerini and Kane Brown. Watch it live on CBS.
The 2023 Master's Tournament begins April 6 at the Augusta National Golf Club. It will be broadcast on ESPN and CBS.
The 127th Boston Marathon will be run on April 17 featuring nearly 30,000 contestants from more than 100 countries.
Major League Baseball, the oldest professional sports organization in the world, has resumed play. It was founded in 1876 in Cincinnati, home of The Big Red Machine.
Famous Historic April Events
On April 2, 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce De Leon sighted Florida and claimed it for Spain. On a subsequent trip, native Calusa warriors, not interested in being claimed, shot Ponce with a poisoned arrow. He fled to Cuba to die before he could reveal the location of the Fountain of Youth.
On April 3, 1860, the first Pony Express rider departed from St. Joseph, Missouri. It took ten days for a letter to reach California. It was a clever idea that lasted only two years and was replaced by the telegraph.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis. His killer, James Earl Ray, died in prison.
On April 6, 1896, the modern Olympics were born when, after a hiatus of 1,500 years, athletes gathered in Athens to resume the games.
On April 9, 1865, the Civil War ended. Hopefully for good.
On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, one week after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Also on April 11 -- this time in the year 1970 -- Apollo 13 took off for the moon, but just over two days later NASA received a message from the astronauts: "Houston, we've had a problem here." An oxygen tank had exploded. Thus started one of the most harrowing trips in space exploration history as the astronauts transferred into the lunar module to begin an emergency trip home. They almost didn't make it.
April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln, watching a play at Washington's Ford Theater, was killed by an assassin's bullet. The play was a farce: Our American Cousin. It has never been performed at Ford's again.
On April 17, 1961, a CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba designed to oust the Communist dictator Fidel Castro failed disastrously at the Bay of Pigs. While the attempt took place under President John F. Kennedy's watch, and he's the one who got a black eye for it, it actually had been authorized previously by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
On April 18, 1774, Paul Revere and William Dawes rode out of Boston to warn patriots at Lexington and Concord that Tom Brady was retiring. No, wait, it was that the British were coming.
On April 21, 1836, Texicans led by Sam Houston defeated the forces of Mexican leader Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, an event that eventually gave us Willie Nelson, Tito's vodka, and free trips for immigrants to Martha's Vineyard.
Now You Know...
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned health care providers to stop using a popular brand of eye drops in the wake of infections that have led to at least three deaths.
By mid-March, 68 patients in 16 states have been diagnosed with infections caused by a rare drug-resistant strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
In addition to the deaths, eight people have been reported to have lost their vision. One factor most of those had in common was their use the preservative-free brand of eye drops, EzriCare Artificial Tears.
Feeling blue? Get some exercise. That's the recommendation from a major study regarding the relationship between depression and exercise. It's been known that working out can improve people's mood. Now, a new paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at data from 41 studies that tracked 2,264 people with depression to see how exercise would affect their symptoms. The researchers found that the effects of exercise on depression were substantial enough that it should be offered as "an evidence-based treatment option" for the disease.
Mystery writers are always looking for new ways to kill off characters. So, I was fascinated to discover this story.
An unnamed Australian woman was bitten multiple times by a blue-ringed octopus and lived to tell about it. Which, apparently, is a big deal because the toxin released by the tiny cephalopod -- tetrodotoxin -- frequently leads to respiratory arrest and death.
Scientists have no idea why she survived the ordeal.
The blue-ringed octopus is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand (not advised), and gets its name because of the tiny rings on its surface that flash iridescent blue when the critter is frightened.
I'm using this in my next book.
So much for Stonehenge. A new paper suggests the famous British pile of stones wasn't a prehistoric calendar after all, just a memorial to the dead.
The study, published in the journal Antiquity disputes claims made earlier that the stones are arranged to function as a 356-day calendar. As we all know, it takes Earth 365 days to orbit the Sun, so this new study says, nope, can't be a calendar. Wouldn't work.
Chinese researchers claim they have discovered billions of tons of water on the moon inside strange glass sphere's scattered on our nearest neighbor in space. The tiny spheres were found in soil samples. They suggest that in the future they could be a source of life-sustaining water and oxygen for moon bases.
APRIL BY THE NUMBERS:
International Pillow Fight Day
National Ferret Day
World Party Day
Hug a Newsman Day
National Dandelion Day
Plan Your Epitaph Day
International Beaver Day
Draw a Picture of a Bird Day
National Siblings Day
Safety Pin Day
Be Kind to Lawyers Day
Anniversary of the polio vaccine
Scrabble Day
Reach as High as You Can Day
Titanic Remembrance Day
National Librarian Day
Bat Appreciation Day
Newspaper Columnists Day
Garlic Day
Volunteer Recognition Day
Kindergarten Day
Jelly Bean Day
National English Muffin Day
Buy a Book Day (Preferably one of mine)
World Penguin Day
Administrative Professionals Day
Take Your Daughter to Work Day
International Astronomy Day
National Zipper Day
International Jazz Day
Reading, Watching, Listening
Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom. At 270 pages (not counting the extensive index) it's an easy and fascinating read conjoining the lives of two men who, in very different ways, helped shape the 20th century. Honestly, I thought the connection was a bit strained, but they are so fascinating in their own rights that it didn't much matter. Two takeaways that fail to give the book justice (and I do recommend it): Orwell sucked as a writer early in his career (something that should give hope to all aspiring scribblers). And Churchill weeped a lot. And I mean a lot. He could compete for the John Boehner Crying Out Loud Award.
The Oscars. If they gave an Oscar for best Academy Awards host, it would have to go to Jimmy Kimmel. Guy was hilarious and kept the bitch-slapping and fist-fighting to zero, a big improvement over last year. Sweeping the awards was the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once. Hadn't seen it before the Oscars show, but streamed it the next day. Lamest movie to win best picture since Crash.
Picard. If you were a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you'll love this season of Picard. The first two tries to get it right were just okay, but this season brings Jean-Luc and the gang back together, and it is boffo. Five dilithium crystals. Streaming on Paramount Plus.
They Said It ...
"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself."
--Potter Stewart
"I dislike censorship. Like the appendix, it is useless when inert and dangerous when active."
--Gerald Maurice Edelman
"I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it."
--May West
Readers Write...
Dear J.C.
I've been viewing your TikTok account (@j.c.bruce) and you've done a bunch of stuff lately on the danger of asteroids striking the Earth. Is this a real concern?
C. Sagan
My biggest concern, naturally, is growing my number of followers on TikTok, and the topic of asteroids obliterating all life on Earth really moves the needle. (So does Trump flushing classified documents down the toilet.) That confessed, yes, it is a genuine concern, which is why NASA recently sent that satellite out to the Asteroid Belt to collide with a space rock. (It worked!) BTW, got over 761,000 views on that one.
Dear J.C.
In your newsletter section on what you're reading, you seem to have an eclectic selection of books you enjoy. How does one develop such varied tastes?
S. Sontag
You join a book club with a lot of eggheads who make you read out of your comfort zone. Left to my own devices, I'd never read anything but pulp fiction.
Dear J.C.
We have a mutual friend -- and I'm not going to name her -- but she tells me you recently consulted with her on how to conduct a seance. Is there going to be some paranormal stuff in your next book?
Karnak
I did, indeed, consult with an expert on that subject to fact check some of the notes Alexander Strange has given me from which I am writing the next book in the Strange Files series. And, yes, the spirit world is consulted.
Dear J.C.
Are any of your books banned yet in Florida where you live?
Ron D.
No. And I am very embarrassed about that.
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Parting Shot
J.C. Bruce is the author of The Strange Files series of mystery and adventure novels (available on Amazon and other fine online booksellers). He also writes this free monthly newsletter. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida, where books go to be banned.