Celebrations Today – April 14

Holidays and observances

• Ambedkar Jayanti (India)
• Black Day (South Korea)
• Christian feast day:
  • Bénézet
  • Henry Beard Delany (Episcopal Church (USA))
  • Domnina of Terni
  • Lidwina
  • Peter González
  • Tiburtius, Valerian, and Maximus
  • April 14 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
• Commemoration of Anfal Genocide Against the Kurds (Iraqi Kurdistan)
• Dhivehi Language Day (Maldives)
• Day of Mologa (Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia)
• Day of the Georgian language (Georgia)
• N’Ko Alphabet Day (Mande speakers)
• New Year festivals in South and Southeast Asian cultures, celebrated on the sidereal vernal equinox. (see April 13):
  • Assamese New Year, or Bohag Bihu (India’s Assam Valley)
  • Bengali New Year, or Pohela Boishakh (Bangladesh and India’s West Bengal state)
  • Burmese New Year, or Thingyan (Burma)
  • Hindu and Sikh New Year, or Vaisakhi (Punjab region)
  • Khmer New Year, or Chol Chnam Thmey (Cambodia)
  • Lao New Year, or Songkan / Pi Mai Lao (Laos)
  • Mahl New Year, or Alathu Aharudhuvas (Maldives and India’s Lakshadweep and Kerala state)
  • Maithili New Year, or Jude Sheetal (Mithila region)
  • Malayali New Year, or Vishu (India’s Kerala state)
  • Nepali New Year, or Navabarsha / Vaishak Ek (Nepal)
  • Oriya/Odia New Year, or Pana Sankranti (India’s Odisha state)
  • Sinhalese New Year, or Aluth Avurudhu (Sri Lanka)
  • Tamil New Year, or Puthandu (India’s Tamil Nadu state)
  • Thai New Year, or Songkran, celebrated from 13 to 15 April (Thailand)
  • Tuluva New Year, or Bisu (India’s Karnataka state)
• Pan American Day (several countries in The Americas)
• The first day of Takayama Spring Festival (Takayama, Gifu, Japan)
• Youth Day (Angola)

Celebrations Today – USA: April 14

National Dolphin Day
National Ex Spouse Day
National Pan American Day
National Pecan Day
National Reach as High as You Can Day

Today in US History: April 14

Lincoln Shot at Ford’s Theater

[D]ying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate…but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.Oration by Frederick Douglass, delivered at the unveiling of the Lincoln monument, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1876.
African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907

The Assassination of President Lincoln, Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C.,
lithograph, Currier & Ives, 1865.
By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present

Shortly after 10:00 p.m. on April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln slumped forward in his seat, Booth leapt onto the stage and escaped out the back door. The paralyzed president was immediately examined by a doctor in the audience and then carried across the street to Petersen’s Boarding House where he died early the next morning.

Lincoln’s assassination was the first presidential assassination in U.S. history. Booth carried out the attack five days after General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. He thought that his action would aid the South. The suspicion that Booth had acted as part of a conspiracy of Southern sympathizers increased Northern rancor. Whether Lincoln would have been able to temper the Reconstruction policies enacted by the Radical Republicans in Congress is left to historical speculation because of his untimely death as the United States transitioned from civil war to reunification and peace.

Wanted Poster, issued by the War Department, Washington, D.C., April 20, 1865.
An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera

Within days of the assassination, the War Department issued wanted posters for the arrest of Booth and his accomplices John Surratt and David Herold. Booth and Herold eluded capture until April 26, when federal troops discovered them hiding in a tobacco barn near Bowling Green, Virginia. Herold surrendered, but Booth stayed under cover and was shot as the barn burned to the ground. He died later that day.

Booth’s co-conspirators Lewis Paine—who had attempted to murder Secretary of State William Henry Seward—George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt, all were executed for their part in the assassination conspiracy. Several other conspirators were sentenced to imprisonment.

The death of President Lincoln resulted in an outpouring of grief nationwide. After a funeral at the White House and lying in state at the U.S. Capitol, Lincoln’s body was transported to the railway station where it began a 1,700-mile journey back to the president’s native Springfield, Illinois.  On May 4, Lincoln was finally laid to rest in a tomb at the Oak RidgeCemetery.

Many monuments were built to honor Abraham Lincoln over the years, across the nation and around the world. On April 14, 1876, Frederick Douglass delivered an oration at the unveiling of a monument to Lincoln located in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park. Better known to the nation is another memorial to Lincoln, also located in Washington, D.C.  Featuring a monumental sculpture by Daniel Chester French, the Lincoln Memorial stands at the foot of the nation’s Mall and was dedicated on May 30, 1922.

Contents of Abraham Lincoln’s Pockets, and Newspaper Recounting the Assassination, April 14, 1865.
American Treasures of the Library of Congress

• To learn more about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, visit the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, which includes a timeline of the events and a gallery of related images. This collection also contains a digital presentation on the Emancipation Proclamation and a list of Lincoln Resources available in American Memory and elsewhere.
• Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division’s First 100 Years also features several Lincoln artifacts, from his student sum book to a letter about an early courtship. For more documents related to the sixteenth president, search this collection on Lincoln.
• Some people believed Booth was not the man killed in Virginia on April 26, 1865. In American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940 a “Mrs. J.D. Rylee” tells of an educated gentleman who stayed with her family when she was a child. She is certain it was John Wilkes Booth. See also the interview with Virginian “Robert Carter” — he too believed Booth escaped capture.
• Don’t miss the Today in History features on the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and Lincoln’s First Inauguration.
• Search on the term Lincoln Memorial in The Capitol and The Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925 to find The Development of Washington with Special Reference to the Lincoln Memorial. This address, delivered in 1910 by Glenn Brown, secretary, American Institute of Architects, to the Washington [D.C.] Chamber of Commerce, discusses the future location of the Lincoln Memorial on the national Mall.
• Visit the Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site, maintained by the National Park Service, to learn more about the fateful event that occurred there.

R.M.S. Titanic

“The Band Played ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ as the Ship Went Down,”
Harold Jones, composer, 1912.
Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920

Also on this day, at about 11:40 PM, April 14,  1912, the R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and sank to the bottom of the sea at about 2:20 a.m. the next morning, taking the lives of more than 1,500 people.

The Titanic was on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York when the tragedy occurred. A later investigation showed that the ship had failed to follow all safety procedures. Besides traveling through dangerous waters at high speed (after receiving repeated warnings concerning the presence of icebergs), the Titanic also had aboard an insufficient number of lifeboats for the passengers and crew.

• To see contemporary coverage of the disaster, visit the Maryland Newspaper Project’s exhibition Images of the Titanic From Maryland Newspapers.
• To see various views of the statue erected in Washington, D.C.’s East Potomac Park to the memory of the victims of the Titanic, search on the term Titanic in the collections Washington as It Was: Photographs by Theodor Horydczak, 1923-1959 and America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945, (the Black-and-White Photographs).
• Search on the keyword voyage in Westward by Sea: A Maritime Perspective on American Expansion, 1820-1890 to see items from the Library at Mystic Seaport which illustrate major themes in the history of maritime westward expansion. See, for example, a watercolor painting of the ship Great Republic which foundered in 1872, and a plan of the bark Bowhead which was lost in 1884. (This collection was digitized in conjunction with the Library of Congress and Ameritech.)
• A guide to research materials concerning the R.M.S. Titanic, at the Library of Congress and elsewhere, can be found at http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/titanic/Titanic.html.

Today in History – April 14-External Links

Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia