1621 – Hugo Grotius arrives in France after escaping prison in a book chest
1817 – 1st American school for the deaf opens (Hartford, Connecticut)
1865 – Abraham Lincoln dies nine hours after he is shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington
1896 – I (modern) Summer Olympic Games close at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, Greece; USA wins gold medal count, 11; Greece wins total medal count, 46; IOC has retroactively assigned gold, silver and bronze medals to 3 best placed athletes in each event
1912 – RMS Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people
1920 – Sacco and Vanzetti Trial: paymaster shot and killed along with his guard
1924 – WHO-AM in Des Moines Iowa begins radio transmissions
1963 – 67th Boston Marathon won by Aurèle Vandendriessche of Belgium in race record 2:18:58
1997 – Baseball honors Jackie Robinson by retiring #42 for all teams
2020 – US’s deadliest day during COVID-19 pandemic with 2,752 deaths reported