April 10
1866: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in New York by Henry Bergh.
1919: Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was assassinated by forces loyal to President Venustiano Carranza.
1963: The nuclear submarine USS Thresher (SSN-593) sank during deep-diving tests east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, killing all 129 aboard.
April 11
1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor of the French and was banished to the island of Elba.
1945: During World War II, U.S. Army troops liberated the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.
1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
April 12
1861: The U.S. Civil War began as Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, at age 63.
1955: The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk was declared safe and effective following nearly a year of field trials undertaken by about 1.8 million American child volunteers dubbed “polio pioneers.”
April 13
1743: Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was born in Shadwell in the Virginia Colony.
1861: Fort Sumter in South Carolina fell to Confederate forces in the first battle of the Civil War.
1964: Sidney Poitier became the first Black performer to win an Academy Award for acting in a leading role for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.”
April 14
1828: The first edition of Noah Webster’s “American Dictionary of the English Language” was published.
1865: President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of the play “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
1997: 21-year-old Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.
April 15
1912: The British luxury liner RMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland just over two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Over 1,500 people died. 710 survived.
1947: Jackie Robinson, baseball’s first Black major league player of the modern era, made his official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day at Ebbets Field.
1955: Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois.
2013: Two bombs made from pressure cookers exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260.
April 16
1945: A Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoed the ship MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport civilian refugees and wounded soldiers. As many as 7,000 people died as the ship broke apart and sank minutes after being struck.
1963: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response to a group of local clergymen who had criticized him for leading street protests.
