14-04-2025
Today in History: April 14, Abraham Lincoln fatally shot at Ford's Theatre
In 1772, American colonists in Weare, N.H., attacked and beat Sheriff Benjamin Whiting and Deputy John Quigley after they had arrested, then released, a saw mill operator for violating royal rules governing the harvesting of pine trees. Those rules stated the biggest trees must be used only to build warships for Britain. The attack, one of the first direct confrontations leading to the American Revolution, would become known as the Pine Tree Riot.
In 1775, 250 years ago, General Thomas Gage received order from Lord Dartmouth, commanding him 'to arrest and imprison the principal actors & abettors in the Provincial Congress' in Massachusetts, a group Dartmouth called 'a rude Rabble without plan.' Five days later, his army left their barracks en toute to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock and seize arms in Concord. Also on this day, the Provincial Congress issued a recommendation to citizens of Boston to leave for the country. Delegates also called for the training of militia units in artillery.
Advertisement
In 1828, the first edition of Noah Webster's 'American Dictionary of the English Language' was published.
Advertisement
In 1865, President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of the play 'Our American Cousin' at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to a boarding house across the street and died the following dayat 7:22 a.m.
In 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. (The ship went under two and a half hours later, killing over 1,500 people.)
In 1910, William Howard Taft became the first US president to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, as the Washington Senators beat the Philadelphia Athletics 3-0.
In 1935, the devastating 'Black Sunday' dust storm descended upon the central Plains, as hundreds of thousands of tons of airborne topsoil turned a sunny afternoon into total darkness.
In 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.
In 2021, A white former suburban Minneapolis police officer, Kim Potter, was charged with second-degree manslaughter for killing 20-year-old Black motorist Daunte Wright in a shooting that ignited days of unrest. (Potter would be found guilty and serve 16 months in prison.)
