April 2008 was the fourth month of the leap year. It began on a Tuesday and ended after 30 days on a Wednesday.

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Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer in September 2006, and in August 2007 he was given a terminal diagnosis: "3 to 6 months of good health left". He gave an upbeat lecture titled "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video and led to other media appearances. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lecture on the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller.

Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.

Pausch was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Columbia, Maryland. After graduating from Oakland Mills High School in Columbia, Pausch received his bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University in May 1982 and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in August 1988.^{[not in citation given]} While completing his doctoral studies, Pausch was briefly employed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Adobe Systems.

Steve Spangler is an author, professional speaker, Emmy Award winner, listed in the public Time 100 poll, science teacher, founder of two companies, toy maker and a trained magician. He is most famous for the hugely popular experiment of dropping a Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, with the end result being a huge geyser of Diet Coke.

Since starting his television career, Steve Spangler has appeared in over 240 television shows, featuring as an "authority on inquiry-based learning". Every week he is watched by over a million viewers on KUSA-TV (9News) as their "science guy". He also appeared frequently on Weather + Plus University NBC Weather Plus. Spangler was also the science host on the nationally syndicated show News for Kids. And, in 1997, Spangler won an Emmy Award for his role in the show.

Spangler was nominated for a position in the Time 100, however he didn't attain a final placing in the magazine. In a public poll on Time's website Spangler secured the 18th position, edging out over Brad Pitt and Barack Obama (19th and 20th respectively), but losing to Howard Stern at 17th. The main reason for him being nominated was for popularizing the Mentos eruption (see below). Spangler has never been on the cover of Time magazine, nor in a Time 100 list.