On this date

1715 — The Yamasee War began as members of the Yamasee tribe attacked English settlers in colonial South Carolina; the colonists were eventually able to defeat the Yamasee and their allies. 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. 1912 — The British luxury liner RMS Titanic foundered in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than 2½ hours after hitting an iceberg; 1,514 people died, while less than half as many survived. 1920 — A paymaster and a guard were shot and killed during a robbery at a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts; 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. 1943 — The Ayn Rand novel “The Fountainhead” was first published by Bobbs-Merrill Co. 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. 1959 — Cuban leader Fidel Castro arrived in Washington to begin a goodwill tour of the United States. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles resigned for health reasons (he was succeeded by Christian A. Herter). 1960 — A three-day conference to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina; the group’s first chairman was Marion Barry. 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). 1986 — The United States launched an air raid against Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5; Libya said 37 people, mostly civilians, were killed. 1989 — Ninety-six 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. 1998 — Pol Pot, the notorious leader of the Khmer Rouge, died at age 72, evading prosecution for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians. 2010 — One home was destroyed and 60 others damaged after an explosion in the Saddle Brook subdivision in Calhoun. Damage was estimated at $6 million. (Investigators determined the blast was caused by arson.)