1452 – Leonardo da Vinci was born in Vinci, Italy.
1794 – Courrier Francais became the first French daily newspaper to be published in the U.S.
1843 – Author Henry James (The Turn of the Screw, The Wings of the Dove, The Portrait of a Lady) was born in New York City.
1865 – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America, died at 7:22 A.M. He’d been shot in the back of the head the previous evening at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. by John Wilkes Booth.
1894 – Singer Bessie Smith (St. Louis Blues, My Man’s Blues, Dixie Flyer Blues, I Ain’t Got Nobody, A Good Man is Hard to Find) was born in Chattanooga, TN.
1912 – At 2:20 A.M., the R.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, killing 1,517 people.
1923 – Insulin, first discovered in 1922, became available for general use.
1955 – Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, IL.
1956 – The worlds’ first all-color TV station, WNBQ-TV, was dedicated in Chicago, IL. It’s now WMAQ-TV.
1959 – Four months after leading a successful rebellion in Cuba, Fidel Castro visited the U.S.
1971 – George C. Scott refused the Best Actor Oscar for Patton at the 43rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony.
1973 – Mickey Wright won the $25,000 first prize in the Colgate-Dinah Shore Golf Classic in Palm Springs, CA, then the richest women’s golf tournament.
Chief Writing Wolf 