International Guitar Month
April 9
The oldest guitars came from Persia (modern day Iran), about 3,500 years ago, and were called “Tanbur”. The word “guitar” was adopted into English from the Spanish word “guitarra” in the 1600s. The design and dimensions of the modern guitar were established by Spanish guitarist Antonio Torres Jurado. The Fender factory makes over 90,000 guitar strings a day, that amounts to over 20,000 miles of string per year, enough to circle the Earth. The most expensive guitar ever sold was Fender’s “Reach Out to Asia” Stratocaster that raised funds for the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami & Earthquake, and was signed by 19 professional musicians like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, and David Gilmour. The guitar sold for $2.7 million at auction.
National Unicorn Day
April 9
According to the Mental Floss website, the earliest record of unicorns in Western literature belongs to Greek historian Ctesias. In the 5th century BCE, he wrote that the beast had a white body, purple head, blue eyes, and a multicolored horn—red at the tip, black in the middle, and white at the base. In his travels, Marco Polo believed he stumbled across unicorns. He wrote, “They are very ugly brutes to look at. That may have been because they were rhinoceroses.
Today’s Birthdays of Note….
Lil Nas X – Rapper – born in Lithia Springs, Georgia
Hugh Hefner – Playboy Magazine – born in Chicago, Illinois
