Today is Saturday, April 15, the 105th day of 2017. There are 260 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight: On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson, baseball’s first black major league player, made his official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day at Ebbets Field. (The Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves, 5-3.)
On this date:
In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died nine hours after being shot the night before by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington; Andrew Johnson became the nation’s 17th president.
In 1892, General Electric Co., formed by the merger of the Edison Electric Light Co. and other firms, was incorporated in Schenectady, New York.
In 1912, the British luxury liner RMS Titanic foundered in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than 2½ hours after hitting an iceberg; 1,514 people died, while less than half as many survived.
In 1997, Jackie Robinson’s number 42 was retired 50 years after he became the first black player in major league baseball.
In 2013, two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260. (Suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police; his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.)
Today’s birthdays: Country singer Roy Clark is 84. Rock singer-guitarist Dave Edmunds is 74. Columnist Heloise is 66. Actress-screenwriter Emma Thompson is 58. Actor-writer Seth Rogen is 35. Actress Emma Watson is 27.
Thought for today: “History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.” — Leo Tolstoy, Russian author (1828-1910).
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