1912: Sinking of the Titanic
On this day in 1912, the British luxury passenger liner Titanic sank en route to New York City from Southampton, Hampshire, England, after striking an iceberg during its maiden voyage; some 1,500 people died.
1923: The first sound films shown to a paying audience are exhibited at the Rialto Theater in New York City.
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1935: The Eastman Kodak Company launches Kodachrome.
Photographic film is one of the most popular media used by professional and hobby photographers around the world. The product was discontinued in 2009 because of the advent of digital photography.
1945: The German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen is liberated. British and Canadian troops found about 53,000 prisoners inside the camp. Tens of thousands died before and after the liberation.
1948: Arab forces are defeated in battle with Israeli forces.
1959: Four months after leading a successful revolution in Cuba, Fidel Castro visits the United States. The visit was marked by tensions between Castro and the American government. On January 1, 1959, Castro’s revolutionary forces overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. From the beginning of the new regime in Cuba, U.S. officials worried about the bearded revolutionary. Castro’s anti-American rhetoric, his stated plans to nationalize foreign properties in Cuba, and his association with several suspected leftists (including his second-in-command, Che Guevara) prompted American diplomats to keep a wary eye on him.
1973: Libya’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi double crosses other authorities in the Revolutionary Command Council by promising them he will announce his resignation in a speech he gives today in Zuwara. Instead, he calls for a Cultural Revolution, modeled after China’s Cultural Revolution that purge China’s Government of rivals to Mao Zedong, Libya’s Cultural Revolution ends with Gadhafi in total control of the country.
1986: The United States launches retaliatory air strikes against Libya.
Around 40 Libyans died in Operation El Dorado Canyon, including an infant girl. The attack was the United States’ response to the bombing of a Berlin discotheque on April 5, in which some Americans and several other persons were killed.
1989: A small group of students initiates pro-democracy protest on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The death of reformer Hu Yaobang triggered the demonstrations, which grew in size and were brutally dispersed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4.
1994: The World Trade Organization is founded. The WTO coordinates and strives to liberalize international trade. It has been criticized for ignoring and escalating the negative social and environmental side effects of globalization.
2003: U.S. President George W. Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq had fallen as a result of the Iraq War and the following day asked the United Nations to lift sanctions against Iraq.
2013: Three people killed, hundreds injured in Boston Marathon bombing. On April 15, 2013, two bombs go off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people in attendance. Four days later, after an intense manhunt that shut down the Boston area, police captured one of the bombing suspects, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; his older brother and fellow suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died following a shootout with law enforcement earlier that same day.
Births on This Day, April 15
Yayale Ahmed, 72 years
Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, CFR is a Nigerian civil servant and politician who served as Secretary to the Government of the Federation of Nigeria (2008–2011).
George Finidi, 53 years
Finidi George is a Nigerian professional football coach and former player who was born in Port Harcourt in 1971. He is currently the head coach of the Nigeria Professional Football League club Enyimba F.C. As a player, he played as a right winger.
Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519)
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. He died at the age of 67.
