TODAY IN HISTORY

THURSDAY APR 14, 2022

1865

President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

1828

The first edition of Noah Webster’s “American Dictionary of the English Language” was published.

1902

James Cash Penney opened his first store, The Golden Rule, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1912

The British liner RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40 p.m. ship’s time and began sinking.

1910

President William Howard Taft became the first U.S. chief executive to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game as the Washington Senators beat the Philadelphia Athletics 3-0.

1935

The “Black Sunday” dust storm descended upon the central Plains, turning a sunny afternoon into total darkness.

1949

The “Wilhelmstrasse Trial” in Nuremberg ended with 19 former Nazi Foreign Office officials sentenced by an American tribunal to prison terms ranging from four to 25 years.

1960

Tamla Records and Motown Records, founded by Berry Gordy Jr., were incorporated as Motown Record Corp.

1981

The first test flight of America’s first operational space shuttle, the Columbia, ended successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1994

Two U.S. Air Force F-15 warplanes mistakenly shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters over northern Iraq, killing 26 people, including 15 Americans.

1999

NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees; Yugoslav officials said 75 people were killed.

2007

Riot police beat and detained protesters as thousands defied an official ban and attempted to stage a rally in Moscow against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.

2020

President Donald Trump announced that he was cutting off U.S. payments to the U.N. health agency, the World Health Organization; Trump said it had not done enough to stop the coronavirus from spreading.