THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

Sunday, April 14

1775: The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American abolition society, was founded in Philadelphia. The organization reorganized to what is better known as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and had elected Benjamin Franklin as its president in 1785.

1828: Noah Webster’s “An American Dictionary of the English Language” was first published. The dictionary took Webster over two decades to complete and was among the first to include American specific words.

1865: John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in the head by while Lincoln was watching the play “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln succumbed to his injuries the next day.

1902: James Cash Penney opened his dry-goods store named The Golden Rule in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The store sold necessities for the then-burgeoning coal mining town. Penney would later rename the store using his own namesake and the retail giant was born.

1912: Despite receiving six different warnings of dangerous sea ice, the ocean liner RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg at 23:40 ship’s time (11:40 p.m.) in the North Atlantic.

1935: Dubbed “Black Sunday,” one of the most devastating Dust Bowl-era storms in the 1930s swept across Oklahoma and Texas, with winds so high that it kicked up clouds of dirt and dust, darkening the sky.

1939: American literature classic “The Grapes of Wrath” was published. Author Johnathan Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prizewinning epic told the story of a family migrating across the country to California from Oklahoma during the Great Depression.

1975: Operation Baby Lift, which included 2,600 to 3,300 South Vietnamese infants and children flown out of the country, was completed. Many were adopted into families in the U.S. and various countries across the world.

1988: Afghanistan and Pakistan, with representatives from the Soviet Union and the U.S., signed the Geneva Accords. It was an agreement calling for Soviet forces to pledge to leave Afghanistan.

2003: The Human Genome Project was completed. The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium announced that over 90% of the human genome has been sequenced with an accuracy of 99.99%.

2014: Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group, kidnapped more than 276 Christian female students from a secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria. Many of the girls were forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry members of the group. The international community condemned the actions but, as of April 14, 2021, over 100 of the abducted remained missing.

2021: Bernie Madoff, convicted of operating the world’s largest Ponzi scheme, died in federal prison at the age of 82.

Monday, April 15

1452: Italian polymathic genius and artist Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born. Known for “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper” paintings, da Vinci also contributed to the fields of physics, chemistry, zoology, mathematics and engineering.

1817: Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. Originally called The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf, it is the oldest and most permanent school for the deaf in the U.S.

1912: Luxurious British ocean liner RMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than 2 hours after striking an iceberg, leading to the deaths of 1,514 people. Investigations revealed that the lifeboats on the ship were inadequate and too few. Poor emergency planning also contributed to the loss of life. Only 710 people survived. It is one of the deadliest maritime disasters in history.

1865: President Abraham Lincoln succumbed to injuries after he was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth the night before at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Vice President Andrew Johnson became the nation’s 17th president.

1892: General Electric Co. was formed by the merger of the Edison Electric Light Co. with a competing firm in Schenectady, New York.

1923: A racially motivated attack by a serial arsonist, the Nihon Shogakko fire killed 10 children in a dormitory of a Buddhist boarding school in Sacramento, California.

1947: Jackie Robinson made his first official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He is the first Black major league player of the modern era.

1954: Congress changed the date for the federal deadline for filing individual

income tax returns to April 15. Previous Tax Day dates included March 1 and March 15.

1989: Students in Beijing, China, launched a series of pro-democracy protests by mourning the death of General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who many in the country saw as being proreform. These protests culminated in a faceoff in Tiananmen Square months later.

1998: Genocidal leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, died at age 72. Responsible for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians during his reign, Pot died of a heart attack while under house arrest.

2009: Thousands of conservative protesters across the U.S. staged “tea parties” in response to what they perceived as bad government policies and a failing economy.

2013: Brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev planted two homemade pressure-cooker bombs, which exploded near the Boston Marathon finish line. Two women and an 8-year-old boy were killed while over 260 people were injured.

2019: A fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caused a spire collapse and destruction of most of the roof and upper walls.

Tuesday, April 16

1862: The nation’s capital abolished slavery as President Abraham Lincoln signed an act ending slavery in the District of Columbia. It granted immediate emancipation of slaves and compensation for formers owners.

1889: Hollywood legend Charlie Chaplin was born in London, England. With a career spanning over 75 years, Chaplin was a comedic actor, director and producer who rose to fame during the silent film era. His most iconic character, The Tramp, is considered one of the most important creations in the film industry.

1947: An explosion aboard the Frenchregistered vessel SS Grandcamp in Texas City, Texas, caused one of the worst industrial accidents in U.S. history. A fire on the SS Grandcamp detonated its cargo of 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, triggering the explosion and fires across its port. Almost 600 people were killed.

1943: Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman accidentally discovered the potent hallucinogenic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. Hoffman first synthesized LSD as an analeptic in November 1938. He had accidentally absorbed a trace amount of the drug while he was resynthesizing the compound after five years.

1948: Organization for European Economic Co-operation, later known as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, formed with 16 European countries to restore economic stability in Europe after World War II.

1963: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the “Letter from Birmingham

Jail,” aka the “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” or “The Negro is Your Brother.” The open letter was a call to arms for activists to act against unjust laws rather than sit idle hoping for change.

1972: Apollo 16 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the fifth and penultimate NASA mission to land on the moon, with a crew of Commander John W. Young, Command Module Pilot Thomas K. “Ken” Mattingly, and Lunar Module Pilot Charles M. Duke.

2003: Michael Jordan played his last games in the NBA at age 40. Playing for the Washington Wizards, he finished the game with 15 points and a playtime of 28 minutes.

2007: Seung-Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, fatally shot 32 and injured over a dozen others before cowardly killing himself. It has remained the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

2014: South Korean ferry Sewol, which was traveling to Jeju from Incheon, capsized and sank, killing 304 passengers and crew. About 250 of the victims were high schoolers.

2018: Kendrick Lamar was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for music for his “DAMN.” album, becoming the first rapper to win the prestigious award.

Wednesday, April 17

1790: Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Father American, passed away at age 84. A man of many talents, Franklin was a scientist, printer, publisher, author, inventor and diplomat. He helped draft and signed the Declaration of Independence.

1861: The state of Virginia voted to secede from the U.S., becoming the eighth state to join the Confederate States of America.

1961: A group of 1,400 Cuban exiles, financed and trained by the CIA, landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to launch what was a failed attempt at overthrowing Fidel Castro.

1964: Ford Motor Co. Revealed the Mustang to the public at the New York

World’s Fair. The vehicle also debuted on Ford showrooms across the U.S.

With a starting price tag of $2,300, Ford sold almost 400,000 of the Mustang in its first year of production.

1969: Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating Sen. Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968. He was sentenced to death, but it was later commuted to a life sentence in 1972.

1970: The crew of Apollo 13 returned safely in the Pacific Ocean after a ruptured oxygen tank disrupted a planned mission to the Moon.

1972: Women were allowed to compete in the Boston Marathon for the first time. Nina Kuscsik was the officially recognized as the first ever women’s champion with a time of 3:10:26.

1975: The Cambodian Civil War ended as the rebel communist forces of the Khmer Rouge captured the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government surrendered to Rouge leader Pol Pot. Pot immediately implemented his policies, resulting in a genocide that killed close to two million people.

1993: Los Angeles Police Officer Laurence Powell and Sgt. Stacey Koon were convicted of violating Rodney King’s civil rights by a federal jury. They were involved in the brutal beating of King, which sparked civil unrest and riots across the city. Powell and Koon were both sentenced to 30 months in prison.

2013: An ammonium nitrate explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. in West, Texas, led to the deaths of 15 people and injured over 160. While the ATF had reported that the fire which caused the explosion was deliberately set, no one was named or arrested.

2014: Novelist Gabriel García Márquez died of pneumonia at the age of 87 in Mexico City. Widely regarded as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his novels and short stories. His works include “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

Thursday, April 18

1775: As British advancement began against Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts, Paul Revere, William Dawes and other riders raised the alarm bells across the countryside, rousing the Minutemen to meet the British forces. Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock were also warned and departed to Concord before the British arrived.

1783: The first usage of the ThreeFifths Compromise in a resolution of the Congress of the Confederation. The notion was to count three-fifths of a state’s slave population toward that state’s total population for the purpose of determining seats in the House of Representatives and taxes. This concept was later adopted in the 1787 Constitution.

1906: A massive earthquake with a magnitude of a least 7.7 rocked San Francisco, devastating most of the city. It ignited three days of raging fires and destroyed 500 city blocks. An estimated 3,000 people died, more than half the population were left homeless and 28,000 buildings were destroyed. It remains the deadliest earthquake in

U.S. history and one of the worst natural disasters in America.

1955: Scientist Albert Einstein died. A renowned theoretical physicist, Einstein is considered one of the greatest and important scientists of all time. He helped shape the modern understanding of physics and quantum mechanics. His most recognized work is the “Theory of Relativity,” from which his massenergy equivalence formula (E = mc2) derived.

1980: Zimbabwe gained independence from the United Kingdom. Canaan Banana was the country’s first president.

1989: Chinese students held their biggest protest in the capital city of Beijing as thousands marched through Tiananmen Square calling for a more democratic government.

1999: Wayne Gretzky, dubbed “The Great One” and considered one of ice hockey’s best, played his last NHL game. Gretzky played for the New York Rangers against the Pittsburgh Penguins in a 2-1 overtime loss.

2016: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. “Hamilton” was a Broadway phenomenon, infusing modern music and hip hop with a historical narrative about the rise and fall of Alexander Hamilton.

Friday, April 19

1775: “The shot heard around the world.” The American Revolution began as British troops and colonial militiamen collided in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

1897: John McDermott was crowned winner of the first Boston Marathon after running the 24.5-mile course in 2:55:10.

1943: In German-occupied Poland, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rose against German troops moving to liquidate the area. The uprising lasted a month and tragically cost the lives of 13,000 Jews.

1971: Charles Manson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the Tate-LaBianca murders. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison. While Manson was not physically involved in the killings, the court found him guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy along with three others from his cult.

1987: “The Simpsons” debuted on “The Tracey Ullman Show” as an animated short “Good Night.” The cartoon family would eventually have their own show on the Fox Broadcasting Co. in 1989.

1989: A woman was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted while jogging at night in New York City’s Central Park. Her assault led to the wrongful conviction of five youths known as the Central Park Five: Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise.

1993: The 51-day Texas standoff between David Koresh’s Waco Branch Davidian and the FBI ended in tragedy as a fire broke out during an FBI tank and gas assault. A total of 76 Davidians, including 18 children under age 10, died in the fire.

1995: At 9:02 a.m. CST, a truck containing a homemade bomb exploded at the entrance of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of six. The bombing was the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil until the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were arrested as the primary perpetrators, both of whom held extreme antigovernment views.

2013: Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed after a shootout with police. He was also run over and dragged by a car driven by his brother, Dzhokhar. Dzhokhar was eventually captured while hiding in a boat.

Saturday, April 20

1836: Congress voted to create the Wisconsin Territory. It went into effect on July 3 and lasted into May 1848. The territory encompassed present-day Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and parts of the Dakotas.

1841: Widely considered the first detective story, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was published in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. The story revolved around Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin using his “ratiocination” to solve the murder of two women.

1871: President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act into law after Congress passed it. It was used to combat the KKK and various emerging terrorist organizations that were threatening and murdering Black people and their sympathizers.

1889: Future Nazi dictator and war criminal Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria.

1902: Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, successfully refined and isolated radioactive radium. Their groundbreaking work was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in Physics 1903.

1946: The League of Nations officially dissolved, ceasing operations and transferring most of its powers and assets to the United Nations.

1971: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Swann v. CharlotteMecklenburg Board of Education that busing students for the purposes of school desegregation is constitutional.

1972: The Apollo 16 Lunar crew landed safely on the moon. It was the second to last U.S. lunar landing mission. Commander John Young and Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke would spend 71 hours on the moon.

1999: Students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured 20 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. It was the worst high school shooting at that time and ignited discussions about gun control and school safety across the nation.

2010: One of the largest and worst environmental disasters in history, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing 11 deaths and an oil spill that took six months to contain. A surge of methane gas erupted from an exploratory well, causing a series of explosions and fires that destroyed the rig and released 134 million gallons of oil into the ocean. BP, the operator of the rig, had to pay billions in fines.

2021: Derek Chauvin was found guilty of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the death of George Floyd. Floyd was arrested for suspicion of using a counterfeit bill. Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was on the ground lying face down. Floyd was heard yelling that he could not breathe but Chauvin did not relent. He was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.