April 14 historic events
1775 The first abolition society in North America is established. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
Slavery was a highly contentious issue when the U.S. was founded. Southern states insisted on retaining slavery and refused to join the U.S. if it was abolished. Because no agreement was reached, the issue was punted down the road. It was finally resolved by the Civil War.
1828 Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary.
1831 Soldiers marching on a bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse.
The cause of this collapse, as well as the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse over 100 years later, are taught in high-school physics.
1860 The first Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California.
1865 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in his home by Lewis Powell.
Thereby replacing one of the greatest presidents with one of the worst (Andrew Johnson). Seward was wounded but recovered.
1894 Thomas Edison demonstrates the kinetoscope, a device using photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to movies.
Hey, I remember those!
1910 William Howard Taft became the first U.S. president to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game at the Washington Senators’ home opener.
1912 The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm. The ship sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,517 lives.
The last Titanic survivor just died this past year.
1915 The Turks invade Armenia.
1956 In Chicago, Illinois, Ampex Corp. demonstrated its first commercial videotape recorder.
1958 The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
This satellite carried the first living creature into space, namely the dog Laika.
1986 In retaliation for the April 5 bombing in West Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen, U.S. president Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Libya, killing 60 people.
1986 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1988 In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
1994 In a U.S. friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two United States Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down two United States Army helicopters, killing 26 people.
2002 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country’s military.
2003 The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
Amazing.
2003 U.S. troops in Baghdad capture Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner the MS Achille Lauro in 1985.