On this date
In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died nine hours after being shot the night before by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington; Andrew Johnson became the nation’s 17th president.
In 1912, the British luxury liner RMS Titanic foundered in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than 21⁄2 hours after hitting an iceberg; 1,514 people died, while less than half as many survived. In 1920, a paymaster and a guard were shot and killed during a robbery at a shoe company in South Braintree, Mass.; Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were accused of the crime, convicted and executed amid worldwide protests that they hadn’t received a fair trial. In 1945, during World War II, British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp BergenBelsen.
In 1974, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army held up a branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco; a member of the group was SLA kidnap victim Patricia Hearst, who by this time was going by the name “Tania” (Hearst later said she’d been forced to participate).
In 1989, students in Beijing launched a series of prodemocracy protests; the demonstrations culminated in a government crackdown at Tiananmen Square.
In 2013, two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260. (Suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police; his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.) Ten years ago: Riot police beat and detained dozens of anti-Kremlin demonstrators in St. Petersburg, Russia, on a second day of protests against the government of President Vladimir Putin.
Five years ago: North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un, gave his first public speech since taking power upon death of his father, Kim Jong Il, the previous December.
One year ago: House Republicans departed Washington, having missed a deadline to pass their long-stalled budget.