Mysterious Days: 30 April

1949. The movie D.O.A. opens. It stars Edmond O'Brien as Frank Bigelow, a man dosed with a slow-acting poison who has only 24 hours to find his killer. It was inspired by a 1931 German film, Der Mann, der seinen Morder sucht, which was directed by Robert Siodmak-who later emigrated to America to direct several classic noir films.

Anthony Boucher
1968. Critic, editor, scholar and novelist (Nine Times Nine, 1940) Anthony Boucher (real name William Anthony Parker White) dies. He also used the pseudonym H.H. Holmes - a famous murder of the 19th century.

Mysterious Days: 28 April

1874. Sydney Toler, the second most famous actor to play Charlie Chan on film (after WArner Oland) is born in Warrensburg, Missouri.

Mysterious Days: 27 April

1863.
Cleveland Moffett, "king of the promotional gimmick", is born in Boonville, New York. He is best known for The Mysterious Card (1896) which contained this special feature when first published: the final chapter was glued shut, and the purchaser was promised a refund if the book was returned with the seal unbroken.

C. Day Lewis
1904.
Poet laureate of Great Britain and mystery writer C[ecil] Day Lewis is born in Ireland. As Nicholas Blake, he is the author of the Nigel Strangeways series (The Beast Must Die, 1938; The Corpse in the Snowman 1941)

1907.
James Holding is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a prolific short story writer whose unusual detective, Hal Johnson the Library fuzz, comes across murders while tracking down overdue library books.

Mysterious Days: 26 April

1980.
After more than a decade as America's most popular Hawaiian TV series, Hawaii Five-O airs its final episode.