On April 14th...

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1434 The foundation stone of Cathedral St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes, France, was laid.

1471 Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians and killed Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, at the Battle of Barnet.

1578 King Philip III of Spain was born.

1629 Physicist Christian Huygens was born.

1759 Composer George Frideric Handel died.

1775 The first abolitionist society in the United States was organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1777 New York adopted a new constitution as an independent state.

1788 David G. Burnet, the first President of the Republic of Texas, was born.

1792 France declared war on Austria.

1818 The U. S. Medical Corps was formed.

1821 Inventor Linus Yale, Jr. was born.

1825 Illustrator Henry Worrall was born.

1828 Noah Webster copyrighted the first edition of his dictionary.

1836 The Territory of Wisconsin was organized.

1840 Art patron and collector Isabella Stewart Gardner was born.

1841 Edgar Allen Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue was published.

1849 Hungary declared itself independent of Austria, with Louis Kossuth as its leader.

1852 Businessman Maximilian Berlitz was born.

1859 Businessman and philanthropist Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy died.

1860 The first Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco, California.

1863 William Bullock patented a continuous-roll printing press.

1865 U. S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.
1865 The U. S. Secret Service was created.

1866 Anne Sullivan, teacher of Helen Keller, was born.

1879 Author James Branch Cabell was born.

1889 Architect Peter Behrens was born.

1896 Brothers Will Keith and John Harvey Kellogg received a patent for "flaked cereals and process of preparing same."

1903 Dr. Harry Plotz discovered a vaccine against typhoid.

1907 François Duvalier, President of Haiti, was born.

1910 William Howard Taft became the first U. S. President to throw out the "First Ball" of the Major League season.

1912 RMS Titanic hit an iceberg off Newfoundland.

1914 Stacy G. Carkhuff patented a non-skid tire pattern.

1925 Actor Rod Steiger was born.

1927 The first Volvo car premiered in Gothenburg, Sweden.

1929 Chadli Benjedid, President of Algeria, was born.

1931 Spain became a republic with the overthrow of King Alfonso XIII.

1932 Singer Loretta Lynn was born.

1935 The U.S. Midwest was ravaged by the worst sandstorm in recorded history.

1939 John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published.

1940 RCA demonstrated its electron microscope in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1941 Baseball player Pete Rose was born.

1945 American planes bombed Tokyo, Japan.

1948 The United States conducted an atmospheric nuclear test at Enwetak Atoll in the Pacific.

1955 Elston Howard became the first black to wear a New York Yankees uniform.

1958 Sputnik II burned up in the atmosphere.

1959 The (Robert) Taft Memorial Bell Tower was deciated in Washington, D.C.

1960 A Polaris missile was launched from under water for the first time.
1960 Actor Brad Garrett was born.

1961 The first live television broadcast from the Soviet Union was made.

1961 Lawrencium, the 103rd element, was discovered.
1961 Actor Robert Carlyle was born.

1962 Georges Pompidou became Prime Minister of France.

1963 Television journalist Steve Hartman was born.

1964 Environmentalist Rachel Carson died.

1965 Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were executed for murdering four members of the Clutter Family.

1966 Baseball player Greg Maddux was born.

1967 Étienne Eyadéma declared himself President of Togo.

1968 Actor Anthony Michael Hall was born.

1969 The first Major League Baseball game outside of the United States was played in Montral, Canada.

1971 U.S. President Richard Nixon ended the blockade against the People's Republic of China.
1971 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld busing as a means of achieving racial desegregation.

1973 Actor Adrien Brody was born.

1975 Actor Frederic March died.

1977 Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar was born.

1978 A Korean Air Lines Boeing 707 that had been fired on by the Soviet Union crashed in Russia.

1981 The first Space Shuttle, Columbia 1, returned to Earth.

1995 Singer Burl Ives died.

2003 The Human Genome Project was deemed completed, with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
2003 U.S. troops in Baghdad, Iraq, captured Abu Abbas, suspected leader of a Palestinian group that hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985.

2007 Singer Don Ho died.

2011 Chemist William Lipscomb died.

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This page was last updated on April 15, 2018.