1632 – Battle of Rain: Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeated the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years’ War.

1715 – The Pocotaligo Massacre triggered the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina.

1755 – Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London.

1817 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf, the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut.

1861 – President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 Volunteers to quell the insurrection that became the American Civil War.

1865 – President Abraham Lincoln died after being shot the previous evening by actor John Wilkes Booth. Vice President Andrew Johnson became President upon Lincoln’s death.

1892 – The General Electric Company was formed.

1896 – Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad, the first international Olympic games held in modern history, in Athens, Greece.

1900 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas launched a surprise attack on U.S. infantry and began a four-day siege of Catubig, Philippines.

1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,224 passengers and crew on board survived.

1920 – Two security guards were murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of and executed for the crime, amid much controversy.

1922 – U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduced a resolution which called for an investigation of a secret land deal, which led to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal.

1923 – Insulin became generally available for use by people with diabetes.

1945 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated.

1947 – Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers, which broke baseball’s color line.

1952 – First flight of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress.

1955 – McDonald’s restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois.

1957 – Saturday mail delivery was restored in the US after Congress gave the Post Office $41 million.

1960 – At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker led a conference that resulted in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

1966 – The Rolling Stones released “Aftermath”, their fourth studio album in UK (6th in US).

1969 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shot down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.

1972 – Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Carole King, and Quincy Jones performed at a benefit for George McGovern for President.

1986 – The United States launched Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a discotheque bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen.

2013 – Two bombs exploded near the finish line at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

2019 – The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in France was seriously damaged by a large fire.

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