TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Monday, April 15, the 106th day of 2024. There are 260 days left in the year.
On this date in:
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.
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 pro-reform. 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.