April 14, Abraham Lincoln fatally shot at Ford’s Theatre

Today is Monday, April 14, the 104th day of 2025. There are 261 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham 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 morning at 7:22 am.

Also on this date:

In 1828, the first edition of Noah Webster’s “American Dictionary of the English Language” was published.

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 U.S. 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.)