April 15 - Events

Events

• 1450 – Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilateEnglish forces, ending English domination in Northern France.
• 1632 – Battle of Rain; Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War.
• 1715 – Pocotaligo Massacre triggers the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina.
• 1738 – Premiere in London of Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel.
• 1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London.
• 1783 – Preliminary articles of peace ending the Revolutionary War are ratified.
• 1802 – William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy see a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.
• 1865 – Abraham Lincoln dies without regaining consciousness after being shot the previous evening by actorJohn Wilkes Booth.
• 1892 – The General Electric Company is formed.

Titanic disaster.

• 1912 – The British passenger liner, the RMS Titanic, sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg. 1,517 people are killed.
• 1920 – Two security guards are murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. AnarchistsSacco and Vanzetti would be convicted of and executed for the crime, amid much controversy.
• 1921 – Black Friday: mine owners announce more wage and price cuts, leading to the threat of a strike all across England.
• 1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes.
• 1924 – Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas.
• 1935 – Roerich Pact signed in Washington D.C.
• 1940 – The Allies begin their attack on the Norwegian town of Narvik which is occupied by Nazi Germany.
• 1941 – In the Belfast Blitz, two-hundred bombers of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) attackBelfast, Northern Ireland killing one thousand people.
• 1942 – The George Cross is awarded to "to the island fortress of Malta – its people and defenders" by King George VI.
• 1945 – The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated.
• 1947 – Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line.
• 1952 – The maiden flight of the B-52 Stratofortress
• 1955 – McDonald's restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant byRay Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois
• 1957 – White Rock, British Columbia officially separates from Surrey, British Columbia and is incorporated as a new city.
• 1958 – Walter O'Malley's Los Angeles Dodgers host the first Major League Baseball game played on the West Coast of the United States.
• 1969 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.
• 1970 – During the Cambodian Civil War, massacres of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong River intoSouth Vietnam.
• 1979 – A disastrous earthquake (of M 7.1) occurs on Montenegro coast.
• 1986 – The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen.
• 1989 – Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi Final, resulting in the deaths of 96 Liverpool F.C. fans.
• 1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang's death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the People's Republic of China.
• 1992 – The National Assembly of Vietnam adopts the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
• 1994 – Representatives of 124 countries and the European Communities sign the Marrakesh Agreements revising the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and initiating the World Trade Organization (effective January 1, 1995).
• 2002 – An Air China Boeing 767-200, flight CA129 crashes into a hillside during heavy rain and fog near Busan, South Korea, killing 128.
• 2010 – Volcanic ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland leads to the closure of airspace over most of Europe.