TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Sunday, April 14, the 105th day of 2024. There are 261 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

On this date:

In 1828, the first edition of Noah Webster’s “American Dictionary of the English Language” was published.

In 1912, the British liner RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40 p.m. ship’s time and began sinking. (The ship went under two hours and 40 minutes later with the loss of 1,514 lives.)

In 1935, the “Black Sunday” dust storm descended upon the central Plains, turning a sunny afternoon into total darkness.

In 1981, the first test flight of America’s first operational space shuttle, the Columbia, ended successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

In 1994, two U.S. Air Force F-15 warplanes mistakenly shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 26 people, including 15 Americans.

In 2021, A white former suburban Minneapolis police officer, Kim Potter, was charged with second-degree manslaughter for killing 20-year-old Black motorist Daunte Wright in a shooting that ignited days of unrest.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Julie Christie is 84. Retired MLB All-Star Pete Rose is 83. Actor-turned-race car driver Brian Forster is 64. Actor Robert Clendenin is 60. Baseball Hall of Famer Greg Maddux is 58. Actor Anthony Michael Hall is 56. Actor Adrien Brody is 51. Actor Sarah Michelle Gellar, actor-producer Rob McElhenney and Roots singer JD McPherson are 47.