Puffed Rice

April 30, 1904 - Puffed Rice, developed by a worker at Akron's Quaker Oats, makes its world debut at the World's Fair in St. Louis where it was shot from cannons.
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Donald Mills

April 29, 1915 – Donald Mills is born in Piqua. As a member of the Mills Brothers, he became the first African American performer to have his own radio show. He was awarded a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1998, a year before his death.
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DAILY DOUBLE

DAILY DOUBLE April 28, 1979: British rock star Ian Hunter’s new album, “You’re Never Alone With a Schizophrenic,” hits the charts and contains a tune that would become Ohio’s greatest rock anthem – “Cleveland Rocks.” The song becomes the theme of “The Drew Carey Show.” April 28, 1990 – Willis D. Nicholes of Quaker City catches a state record bluegill at 3.28 pounds and 12 ¾ inches from Salt Fork Reservoir.
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Sydney Nathan

April 27, 1904: Sydney Nathan, not yet wearing his trademark bottleneck eyeglasses, is born in Cincinnati. After trying various jobs, including running a record store, he started King Records in 1943. For more than 20 years, the Cincinnati company released R&B, blues, country and bluegrass hits by Hank Williams, Hank Ballard, Little Willie John, Ralph Stanley, Moon Mullican and funk hits from his biggest star, James Brown.
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DAILY DOUBLE

DAILY DOUBLE
April 26, 1900 - Charles Richter born in Hamilton, Ohio, moves to Southern California and develops a scale to measure earthquake strength.
April 26, 1971 – Stanley Wayne DeMarcus Jr. is born in Columbus. He would move to Nashville and become the bassist, harmony vocalist and songwriter for the immensely popular country music trio Rascal Flatts.
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Kyle Rock

April 25, 1995 – Kyle Rock of Zanesville is fishing in a nearby private pond when he catches a 3.9-pound, 18 1/8 inch white crappie, a state record.
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Frogtown Film Festival

The annual Frogtown Film Festival features budding high school directors in a contest at the Maumee Valley Country Day School. The event is named for Toledo’s reputation by settlers as being a town full of frogs thanks to its proximity to Ohio’s Black Swamp.
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Luigi’s in Akron

Nothing says pizza like Luigi’s in Akron on North Main Street above the gorge. And nothing says strange like the restaurant’s whirring music box: Mechanical Barbie and the Band of Many Kens.
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Jerry Rubin

April 22, 1969: Jerry Rubin, Cincinnati native and co-founder of the radically countercultural, anti-Vietnam group the Yippies, returns to his alma mater, the University of Cincinnati, to speak to 2,000 students and faculty members. He championed LSD use and said people in the U.S. “super-rationalize and accept their (disappointing lives) because they have been trained to accept it.”
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National prison reforms

April 21, 1930- A terrible fire at the Ohio State Penitentiary kills 322 inmates as cell doors had to be opened individually, an impossible task in a raging fire. The tragedy leads to national prison reforms, and the old building has supposedly been haunted ever since.
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Lake Trout record

April 20, 2000 – Tom Harbison of Natrona, Pa., heads for a day on the water on Lake Erie and catches a 20.49 pound, 34-inch-long Lake Trout for a state record.
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Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum

Take a springtime jaunt to the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum in Pickerington. In 2007, Rush drummer Neil Pert was one of the drop-ins.
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Clarence Darrow

April 18, 1857 – Clarence Darrow is born near Kinsman. Though it took seven tries to pass the bar exam, Darrow finds a career in law. A former secretary of state and presidential candidate, Darrow, an authority on the Bible, defends a teacher who taught evolution. He loses the Scopes Monkey Trial to William Jennings Bryan but wins on appeal and shows a nation that Christian beliefs are matters of faith - not science.
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Charles Thomas

April 17, 1984 – Charles Thomas of Lorain catches a state-record yellow perch at 2.75 pounds and 14 ½ inches long while fishing in Lake Erie.
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Wilbur Wright

April 16, 1867 – Wilbur Wright is born in Indiana but moves with his family to Dayton, Ohio, where he figures out that men can fly after all.
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Bear-laden boat

Maybe it was today in 1801 when a bear swims the Ohio river in Monroe County. Two boys, William Henthorn and John Hilmore, row out to halter it with a chain. The bear has other ideas and climbs into the boat, which the boys abandon. Two locals use a raft to pursue the bear-laden boat and end the episode with a rifle shot. For years, whenever the boys took to bragging, friends suggest that maybe it was time to go capture another bear.
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Clarence “Satch” Satchel

April 14, 1940 – Clarence “Satch” Satchel is born in Cleveland. His musical leanings lead to work as a saxophonist with the Ohio Untouchables, which becomes a preeminent funk band of the era under the name The Ohio Players.
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Pete Rose

April 13, 1963 – Scrappy Pete Rose, told his whole life that he was too small to play sports, gets his first hit in the big leagues - a triple for the Reds off the Pirates’ Bob Friend. Too slow? Pete would show 'em. Rose becomes baseball’s all-time hit leader but a pariah for betting on games (and probably throwing a few, while managing, to wipe out debts to a NYC mobster named Bruno, aka Jocko).
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55.13 pound Muskellunge

April 12, 1972 – Joe D. Lykins of Piedmont heads out onto Piedmont Lake and catches a titanic, 55.13 pound Muskellunge that is 50 ¼ inches long and a state record.
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Richie Furay

April 11, 1966 – Buffalo Springfield debuts as an alt-country-folk-pop band at The Troubadour in Hollywood and eventually becomes the house band. Yellow Springs native Richie Furay is lead vocalist and would play and sing on the 60’s anthem For What It’s Worth. He would also become a founding member of Poco. Buffalo Springfield was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
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Johnson’s Island

April 10, 1862: The first prisoners-of-war arrive at Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie near Sandusky, the only Union camp exclusively for internment of Confederates. All told, some 15,000 Confederates would be kept there during the Civil War, the most at any one time reaching 2,800. In 1864, Confederates hatched a plot to capture a gunboat and initiate a mass escape, but it failed.
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Toledo Mud Hens

April 9, 2002: The Toledo Mud Hens minor-league baseball team plays its first game at the new, 10,300-capacity Fifth Third Field in downtown. Because of the team’s quality and long history (playing as the Mud Hens since 1896), and because of the urban setting, it consistently draws over 500,000 fans in a season – a fantastic amount for the minors. Newsweek named Fifth Third Field the best minor-league park
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Tony Packo’s Café

Tony Packo’s Café at 1902 Front Street in Toledo has one of the stranger decor touches in all of restaurant history: a wall with hundreds of hot dog buns signed by fans and visiting celebrities.
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Bobby Bare

April 7, 1935 – Bobby Bare is born in Portsmouth. His Detroit City would win a Grammy Award as Song of the Year in 1963, and in the next four decades he would make great country music with Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Reed and Mel Tillis.
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Lowell Jackson Thomas

April 6, 1892 – Lowell Jackson Thomas, adventurer, writer, journalist, broadcaster and known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia (T.E. Lawrence) a household name, is born in Woodington in Darke County. He wrote 56 books in his time and earned $1.5 million from a stage show based on the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia.
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Judith Arlene Resnik

April 5, 1949 - Judith Arlene Resnik is born in Akron. A graduate of Firestone High School, she became an engineer and NASA astronaut. She died during lift-off of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986
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DAILY DOUBLE

DAILY DOUBLE April 4, 1841 – President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia. He talked too long at his own inauguration. His original mill/distillery is the waterway on the 15th hole at Aston Oaks Golf Course on the west side of Cincinnati. The office/launch pad for his presidency? Hamilton County Clerk of Courts. April 4, 2009 - Cleveland native Bobby Womack inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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Wayne Gleason

April 3, 1977 – Wayne Gleason may have been fishing for giant muskie at Leesville Lake south of Canton but instead he lands a 9.25 pound, 27 ½ inch sucker. The Wellsville resident goes into the record books for catching the largest sucker in Ohio history.
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Tenor Herbert Mills

April 2, 1912 – Tenor Herbert Mills is born in Piqua. He grows up singing at the Cyrene African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Park Avenue Baptist Church with brothers John Jr., Harry and Donald. The Mills Brothers also hone their routine by performing with a kazoo outside their father’s barber shop. Discovered in Cincinnati by Duke Ellington, they record 2,000 songs, including Get a Job and Paper Doll, and sell 50 million records.
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First paid firefighters

April 1, 1853 – Cincinnati is first city to pay firefighters a regular salary, thereby ending a sometime American firefighter tradition of arson to get wages.
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