This day in history
Today is Monday, April 15, the 106th day of 2024. There are 260 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Rock singer-guitarist Dave Edmunds is 81. Actor Michael Tucci is 78. Writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason is 77. Actor Emma Thompson is 65. Olympic gold medal swimmer Dara Torres is 57. Rock guitarist Ed O’Brien of Radiohead is 56. Actor Danny Pino is 50. Actor Douglas Spain is 50. Country singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton is 46. Actor Luke Evans is 45.Rock musician Patrick Carney of The Black Keys is 44. Actor-writer Seth Rogen is 42. Actor Emma Watson is 34. Actor Maisie Williams is 27.
▸ In 1865, President Lincoln died nine hours after being shot the night before by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington; Andrew Johnson became the 17 th president.
▸ In 1892, General Electric Co., formed by the merger of the Edison Electric Light Co. and other firms, was incorporated in Schenectady, N.Y.
▸ In 1912, the British luxury liner RMS Titanic foundered in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than 2 1/2 hours after hitting an iceberg; 1,514 people died, while less than half as many survived.
▸ In 1920, two gunmen killed a paymaster and his guard at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree, seized the $16,000 payroll, and escaped. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who were anarchists, were eventually arrested, tried, convicted, and executed for the crime. Fifty years after their execution, Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation declaring a review of the case determined the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was unfair and colored by prejudices.
▸ In 1945, during World War II, British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.
▸ In 1947, Jackie Robinson, baseball’s first Black major league player of the modern era, made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on Opening Day at Ebbets Field. (The Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves, 5-3.)
▸ In 1955, Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Ill.
▸ In 1965, “Havlicek stole the ball.’’ Celtics’ guard John Havlicek tipped away a last-second pass and sealed the NBA title for Boston over the Philadelphia 76ers, a moment forever captured in one of the most iconic calls in sports history by radio announcer Johnny Most.
▸ In 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.
▸ In 2017, former NFL star Aaron Hernandez, already serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder, was acquitted in Boston in a 2012 double slaying prosecutors said was fueled by his anger over a drink spilled at a nightclub. (Five days later, Hernandez hanged himself in his prison cell.)
▸ In 2019, fire swept across the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral as the Paris landmark underwent renovations; the blaze collapsed the cathedral’s spire, but officials said the church’s structure had been saved.