| (1865) President Lincoln is shot
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Five days after Confederate forces surrender at Appomattox, handing Abraham Lincoln his long-fought victory in the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth enters the Presidential Box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, and shoots Lincoln once in the back of the head. The president will die the following day.. |
| (1912) RMS Titanic hits an iceberg
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| Steaming through the icy waters of the North Atlantic, the state-of-the-art luxury British ocean liner RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg just before midnight. The damage proves catastrophic, and the vessel will sink in the early hours of April 15, killing over 1,500.. |
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| (1935) American Dust Bowl’s most massive storm strikes
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High winds kick up roughly 300 million tons of topsoil loosened by an eight-year drought and swirl the dust into churning black walls of clouds, blotting out the sun and devastating parts of Texas and Oklahoma. . |
| (1952) Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel, ‘Invisible Man,’ published
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| Equal parts poetic and scathing, ‘Invisible Man’ explores an unnamed black man’s search for identity in a society largely hostile to the presence of African Americans or unaware of the black experience. The only novel Ellison will publish in his lifetime, ‘Invisible Man’ will win the National Book Award.. |
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