Today in History

America’s first space shuttle, Columbia, returns to Earth.

The first major league baseball game in Montreal, Canada is played.

The first live broadcast is televised from the Soviet Union.

The Taft Memorial Bell Tower is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

The Viet Minh invade Laos with 40,00 troops in their war against French colonial forces.

American B-29 bombers damage the Imperial Palace during firebombing raid over Tokyo.

King Alfonso XIII of Spain is overthrown.

The passenger liner Titanic–deemed unsinkable–strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage and begins to sink. The ship will go under the next day with a loss of 1,500 lives.

Sir John Gielgud, British actor.

The World Exposition opens in Paris.

Harold Black, electrical engineer.

Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope is shown to the public for the first time.

Arnold Toynbee, English historian.

Anne Mansfield Sullivan, teacher who educated Helen Keller.

President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth.

The first Pony Express rider arrives in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, Missouri.

The first edition of Noah Webster’s dictionary is published.

A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo is crushed by French republican troops.

The first abolitionist society in United States is organized in Philadelphia.

Christiaan Huygens, Dutch astronomer.

Philip III, king of Spain and Portugal (1598-1621).

Bartolome Ferrelo returns to Spain after discovering a large bay in the New World (San Francisco).

The Earl of Warwick, who fought on both sides in the War of the Roses, is killed at the Battle of Barnet with the defeat of the Lancastrians.