What does April 19th mean to you?

A paid day off :) I work for the state

It’s just another day. Something absolutely horrid happens everyday on this planet. I guarantee you that something heinous will happen on that day, as well.

Those who fail to evolve will always feel threatened. If they choose to use one day to focus their anger, that’s just a handy way for the sane to know it’s a possibility.

An empty wallet temporarily.Four days previous was my wife’s birthday.Shit that’s eight days from now,better get my thinking cap on. As for any terrorist activity, i think, or should that be hope not.

The day before 4–20.

I don’t smoke it. I just know the funny

@filmfann That was my immediate thought. In Humboldt County, sometimes 4–19 is just as bad, too.

@dverhey There was an article in the paper last week that said that if the state legalized pot, it would ruin the economy in Humboldt County. Their solution was to make the Humboldt County name a kind of quality standard, like Napa Valley is for wine. I found that very amusing.

You know, that’s actually a distinct possibility. However, it is for the best. The economy will tank for a little while, many hydroponic stores will go out of business, but eventually people will start to go back to their real jobs, no longer able to make all their money off of pot and go to Hawaii for a few months of the year.

But yeah, the whole industry is pretty hilarious. As far as making it a quality standard, that’s just silly, but I digress.

April 19th = 11 days before my birthday. Thats all it means to me.

Just a shame that I’ve stopped caring about my birthday, at least the extent of when I was below 18.

That date didn’t ring a bell with me and until you told about the events that happened on that day, I couldn’t have guessed.
As for any new acts of violence, I suppose it’s possible that some lunatic could again pick that date to do something awful.
Whether or not they are “right wing” I wouldn’t begin to guess. I leave that “labeling” up to all the biased media and others who use idiotic acts of terrorism against innocent people, to advance their own political agenda.

A lot of bad things seem to happen in April. Timothy McVeigh, Waco, Columbine, Hitler’s birthday, if historical estimates are correct, Jesus was crucified and tortured in April of 33. (But then of course the most holy day of his resurrection also occurred in April).

Also, it’s the month my cat died in 2007. I think T. S. Eliot was right in saying “April is the cruelest month”.

I doubt we’ll see any right-wing terrorism. I think we should all just chill and focus on the fact that it’s 4–20 Eve.

Patriot’s Day! The Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775. The beginning of the American Revolution. The morning after the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Emerson’s verse, ‘Concord Hymn’ :

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Where I grew up in Massachusetts, it was (and is) a legal holiday.

@Jeruba You learn something new everyday. How nice to get a history lesson in response to my depressing question. Thanks.

Thank you @Jeruba! Something to be thankful for.

Yes, don’t forget 4/20 was Hitler’s birthday, and that’s the date of the Columbine shooting, and I think others have done bad things in “celebration” of Hitler’s birthday. The 19th is also 12 days before my birthday. No I don’t expect anything bad to happen, after all, how many April 19ths have come and gone throughout history which didn’t come with a nasty surprise? Same w/ the 20th. Next year will be the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 as well. Wasn’t April 12 the day the Titanic sank? April 15 is tax day. April 8 was the date of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, or at least the day they found his body. April 22 I believe was the day they found Layne Staley’s body, but he’d been dead since about April 8. April 1 everyone plays pranks on each other. But good things happen in April too. April 30 was the last day of college I ever had. April 8 was the date I got my first job offer in my field. By April where I live it starts to get warmer after a long, punishing winter. Today, April 7, my wife just had an intereview for her dream job and just called me to say it went very well, and just this morning I got a call asking me if I was still interested in a position I thought I’d lost out on, and when I said I was they said they’d be back to me shortly with a finalized offer. April 16 was the day I quit the worst job I ever had. I answered my now wife’s personal ad in April. April 1 is my oldest cat’s birthday.

My point is, I remember dates, but I ascribe no overall large significance to them, they’re just markers of an artificial construct of man to denote the passage of time.

April 19th. the day before the 20th and the day after the 18th. thats all.

It means my Birthday ended 9 days earlier.

That’s funny, @Snarp, because when I saw the question I actually thought it meant the same thing as “What does Patriot’s Day mean to you?”—just as much as if you had asked about July 4th and I read it as meaning Independence Day. I was genuinely surprised to be the first to answer with this association. Don’t kids in the U.S. learn American history any more?

It means a monday this year. and 14 days after my birthday

I live in OKC. So we all know what it means to me :(

The day (oddly enough) two of my best friends got their first period, also the day of a Taking Back Sunday concert I went to years ago.

For every date which exists, there’s some atrocity to account to it. Would be pretty depressing if we had to make an attribution every single day about some pedophile, psycho murderer or terrorist.

The day right after my birthday and right before 4/20 =)

Blunt eve?

I’m three days late on my taxes.

It’s my girlfriend’s birthday, and two days before my birthday. We always celebrate together.

(looking at calender) @dpworkin So, do you celebrate on her birthday, your birthday, or Hilter’s birthday?

Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, if you must know.

@Jeruba In my defense, you can learn history without memorizing dates. Besides, the declaration of independence was signed on July 2nd, I think.

I had a history professor in college who told us we only had to memorize one date: December 2nd, 1804.

I failed to mention that McVeigh apparently chose the April 19th date because of the Waco events, which is supposedly where the militia movement association with the date begins. But I wonder, since some of these people view themselves as patriots, whether they aren’t aware of Patriot’s Day as well, or at least whether McVeigh might have been.

Like most of you though, before I read a recent article about the guys in Michigan who were threatening to kill cops, the date meant little to me. I do wonder if there aren’t groups planning something this year, and whether the Michigan arrests headed off an April 19th event.

FWIW, I recall that when we were approaching the 1st anniversary of 9/11, a lot of people were very nervous…I think even on the 6 month anniversary people were a bit concerned. But nothing happened, and even before those dates, there were a number of people who studied Al Qaeda and said that it was very unlikely that they would choose a date of significance for two reasons. One of course is the element of surprise…people are on heightened awareness on these “marquee” dates, making it harder to get away with something, any real intelligent, organized terrorist wants to strike when you’re least expecting it. Second though is that dates of infamy are really a concept that we place far more emphasis on in the Western world. Al Qaeda just by and large doesn’t really attach the same kind of significance to anniversaries that Americans do. So generally when you get an event that is planned on a certain day as sort of a reference or “homage” to something that happened on a particular date, that’s likely going to be a domestic act of terrorism, and it’s also more likely to be something that is the idea of one or two people, and not some highly organized strike, and even though we hear more often about the McVeighs and the Columbines than we do the thwarted efforts, I suspect that people are stopped in their tracks far more often than they get away with it. Case in point, just this week at a high school about 20 miles from where I live, some kid brought a gun to school to intimidate some other kids he had a problem with. Doesn’t seem like he was going to shoot anyone, but he did plan to discharge the gun to scare some people…only problem…he had a 22 caliber pistol, and he brought bullets that were made for a rifle.

So, I don’t tend to worry too much about the disorganized crazies out there, they exist, and rarely they will manage to pull something off, but in the grand scheme of things it’s just too random to worry that a certain date will bring about something awful.