On this day, April 15
1865 President Abraham Lincoln died nine hours after being shot the night before by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington; Andrew Johnson became the nation’s 17th president.
1892 General Electric Co., formed by the merger of the Edison Electric Light Co. and other firms, was incorporated in Schenectady, N.Y.
1912 The British luxury liner RMS Titanic foundered in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than two hours after hitting an iceberg; 1,514 people died, while less than half as many survived.
1945 During World War II, British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died on April 12, was buried at the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park, New York.
1947 Jackie Robinson, baseball’s first Black major league player of the modern era, made his official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day at Ebbets Field. (The Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves, 5-3.)
1955 Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Ill.
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).
1989 96 people died in a crush of soccer fans at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England. Students in Beijing launched a series of pro-democracy protests; the demonstrations culminated in a government crackdown at Tiananmen Square.
2009 Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers, tens of thousands of protesters staged “tea parties” around the country three months into the presidency of Barack Obama to tap into the collective angst stirred up by a bad economy, government spending and bailouts.
2012 Passengers and crew of the cruise ship MS Balmoral said prayers at the spot in the North Atlantic where the Titanic sank 100 years earlier.
2013 Two bombs made from pressure cookers exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260.
2019 Fire swept across the top of the
Notre Dame Cathedral as the soaring Paris landmark underwent renovations; the blaze collapsed the cathedral’s spire and spread to one of its landmark rectangular towers, but fire officials said the church’s structure had been saved. 2020 The government reported that the nation’s industrial output in March registered its biggest decline since the U.S. demobilized at the end of World War II as factories shut down amid the coronavirus epidemic.
Today’s birthdays: Actor Claudia Cardinale, 86. Author and politician Jeffrey Archer, 84. Rock singer-guitarist Dave Edmunds, 81. Actor Michael Tucci, 78. Actor Lois Chiles, 77. Writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, 77. Actor Amy Wright, 74. Actor Sam McMurray, 72. Actor-screenwriter Emma Thompson, 65. Singer Samantha Fox, 58. Olympic gold, silver and bronze medal swimmer Dara Torres, 57. Actor Luke Evans, 45. Actorwriter Seth Rogen, 42. Actor Alice Braga, 41. Americana singer-songwriter Margo Price, 41. Rock musician De’Mar Hamilton (Plain White T’s), 40. Actor Samira Wiley, 37. Actor Leonie Elliott, 36. Actor Emma Watson, 34. Actor Maisie Williams, 27.