(Courtesy: NY Times) On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth while attending the comedy “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. He died the next day.
| 1808 | A law prohibiting the importation of slaves into the United States went into effect. |
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| 1892 | The Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York opened. |
| 1898 | New York City was consolidated into five buroughs. |
| 1901 | The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed. |
| 1919 | J.D. Salinger, author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” was born in New York City. |
| 1953 | Country singer Hank Williams Sr., 29, died of a drug and alcohol overdose. |
| 1958 | Treaties establishing the European Economic Community went into effect. |
| 1959 | Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista. |
| 1979 | The United States and China established diplomatic relations. |
| 1984 | AT&T was divested of its 22 Bell System companies under terms of an antitrust agreement. |
| 1990 | David Dinkins was sworn in as New York City’s first African-American mayor. |
| 1993 | Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. |
| 1994 | The North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. |
| 1999 | The euro became the official currency of 11 European countries. |
Ryan R. Sanderson 