April Bloody April

You've no doubt heard most of this already in the past week, but you haven't heard it from me. With the tragic events at Virginia Tech that started this week off, and the history of tragedies that seems to plague the month of April, it's enough to make one wonder exactly what it is about the start of spring that brings such disaster to us. Consider these other great tragedies of history:

April 19, 1993: Seventy-nine members of the Branch Davidian religious cult, including twenty-one children, perished in defense of their compound in Waco, Texas. While the compound burned to the ground during a government siege, autopsies later revealed that many of the cult's members, including leader David Koresh, died of single gunshot wounds to the heads.

April 19, 1995: The Alfred P. Murrah federal building was bombed by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, killing at least 168 people.

April 20, 1999: At Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado, twelve students and a teacher were killed during the shooting rampage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

April 16, 2007: Thirty-two people were killed by Cho Seung-Hui in the worst such massacre in modern history.

Other April tragedies:

• The San Francisco earthquake in 1906
• The sinking of the Titanic in 1912
• The assassinations of both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King
• The Rodney King riots
• A record number of tornadoes in one day in 1974
• The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986

And, lest we forget, Adolph Hitler was born 108 years ago today.

So what is it about the month of April? Email me with your thoughts, or call 206-600-4JOE.

Joe