There’s sort of a bad confluence of events for History on April 19 and April 20.

For April 19.

1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.

1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168. That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh, is executed in Arkansas.

So it is, the New York Times published this essay yesterday:  Can You Have a Happy Birthday on April 19?

To be sure, other events of note occurred on April 19, some good, some bad — the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1775, Lincoln’s blockade of Confederate ports in 1861, Captain Cook’s sighting of Australia in 1770, the destruction of Toronto by fire in 1904, the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the Warsaw Ghetto revolt in 1943, the marriage of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, the sentencing of Charles Manson in 1971, the installation as Pope Benedict XVI of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2005 (good or bad; hard to tell), the Broadway opening of my favorite musical, “Carousel” (1945), the birthdays of Ashley Judd (1968), Murray Perahia (1947), Dudley Moore (1935), Jayne Mansfield (1933), Eliot Ness (1903), and the deaths of C.S. Pierce (1914), Charles Darwin (1882), Benjamin Disraeli (1881), Lord Byron (1824) and Paolo Veronese (1588).

I think the “beginning of the Revolutionary War” figured into a connection for McVeigh.  Uber-Patriot Timothy McVeigh went out to avenge the Government’s killings at Waco by a terrorist act aimed at the government in Oklahoma City.

And you know what else?
For the government, April 19 is a day to worry about. When F.B.I. agents arrested nine members of the Christian militia known as the Hutaree in late March, they acted because of information indicating that the group was planning an attack on police officers sometime in April. The betting is that the date they had in mind was April 19.

On edge.

Meanwhile, April 20 brings us —

Birth:  1889 – Adolf Hitler, German Nazi dictator (d. 1945)

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.

Are these things related?  The answer is no, except in the early news reporting which I guess was based on some rather flaky unreliable student interviews and conjecture.  Perhaps too an internet posting that day from a screwy neo-nazi citing the unleashing of “Sleeper cell” in Suburban Colorado.  But this fell by the wayside in due time, I suppose.  But I guess that was only slightly less relevant to what happened than the Columbine High School clique group that had mostly graduated out in 1998, which the “Trenchcoat Mafia” has long become a short quick-hand reference.  Or to Marilyn Manson, for that matter.  These all sort out to become the equivalent of the siting of an Arab near the premises — something still today you get as evidence of a further conspiracy.

Our popular awareness of the Oklahoma City bombing is pretty much accurate, and our popular awareness of Columbine is not particularly accurate.  The latter gets infused with conceptions of adolescence and high school, and a Moral Panic of “What is happening with our children?”  Meaning needs to be found.
Well, I think public and private schools are a bit on alert for today.  If it works to distract anyone, 4:20 and its attendant Stoner Isle of a Stoner Holiday is right around the corner.

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