The tragedies in history that have occurred on April 15
By Tom Gillespie
APRIL 15 has just passed us. Looking back on history, it has been a notorious date that has seen some of the world’s worst tragedies.
On April 15, 1865, US President Abraham Lincoln died after being assassinated.
On April 15, 1912, the Titanic sank with the death of over 1,500 passengers.
On April 15, 2013, five people were killed in the Boston marathon bombing.
On April 15, 2019, Notre Dame Cathedral burned down in Paris and restoration work could take 20 years.
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of America, was shot by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre.
Booth was a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland. Though he never joined the Confederate army, he had contacts with the Confederate secret service.
After attending an April 11, 1865, speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks, Booth decided to assassinate the President.
Learning of Lincoln's intent to attend the play, Booth and his co-conspirators planned to assassinate him.
Booth crept up from behind and, at about 10.13 p.m., fired at the back of Lincoln's head, mortally wounding him.
Lincoln was taken across the street to Petersen House. After remaining in a coma for nine hours, he died at 7.22 a.m. on April 15.
Booth was tracked to a farm in Virginia. Refusing to surrender, he was shot on April 26.
The RMS Titanic sank in the early morning of April 15, 1912, in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into the ship's maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.
The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at around 23.40 (ship's time) on Sunday, April 14, 1912.
Her sinking, two-hours-and-forty-minutes later at 02.20 (ship's time; 05:18 GMT) on Monday, April 15, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, making it one of history's deadliest marine disasters during peacetime.
Titanic received six warnings of sea ice on April 14 but was travelling near her maximum speed when her lookouts sighted the iceberg.
Unable to turn quickly enough, the ship suffered a glancing blow that buckled her starboard side and opened six of her 16 compartments to the sea (the forepeak, all three holds, and boiler rooms 5 and 6).
Titanic had been designed to stay afloat with four of her forward compartments flooded but no more, and the crew soon realised that the ship would sink. They used distress flares and radio messages to attract help as the passengers were put into lifeboats.
In accordance with existing practice, Titanic's lifeboat system was designed to ferry passengers to nearby rescue vessels, not to hold everyone on board simultaneously. Therefore, with the ship sinking rapidly and help still hours away, there was no safe refuge for many of the passengers and crew.
Compounding this, poor management of the evacuation meant many boats were launched before they were completely full.
As a result, when Titanic sank, over a thousand passengers and crew were still on board. Almost all those who jumped or fell into the water either drowned or died within minutes due to the effects of cold shock and incapacitation.
RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene about an hour-and-a-half after the sinking and rescued the last of the survivors by 9.15 on April 15, some nine-and-a-half-hours after the collision.
The disaster shocked the world and caused widespread outrage over the lack of lifeboats, lax regulations, and the unequal treatment of the three passenger classes during the evacuation.
Subsequent inquiries recommended sweeping changes to maritime regulations, leading to the establishment in 1914 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.
During the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, two home-made pressure cooker bombs detonated 14 seconds and 210 yards apart at 2.49 p.m., near the finish line of the race, killing three people and injuring several hundred others, including 16 who lost limbs.
Three days later, the FBI released images of two suspects, who were later identified as Chechen Kyrgyzstani-American brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlian Tsarnaev.
They killed an MIT policeman, kidnapped a man in his car, and had a shoot-out with the police in nearby Watertown, during which two officers were severely injured, one of whom died a year later. Tamerlan was shot several times, and his brother ran him over while escaping in the stolen car. Tamerlan died soon after.
An unprecedented manhunt for Dzhokhar ensued on April 19, with thousands of law enforcement officers searching a 20-block area of Watertown. Residents of Watertown and surrounding communities were asked to stay indoors, and the transportation system and most businesses and public places closed.
Around 6 p.m., a Watertown resident discovered Dzhokhar hiding in a boat in his backyard. He was shot and wounded by police before being taken into custody.
During questioning, Dzhokhar said that he and his brother were motivated by extremist Islamist beliefs and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that they were self-radicalised and unconnected to any outside terrorist groups, and that he was following his brother's lead. He said they learned to build explosive devices from an online magazine of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. He also said they had intended to travel to New York City to bomb Times Square.
On April 8, 2015, he was convicted of 30 charges, including use of a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death. Two months later, he was sentenced to death.
On April 15, 2019, just before 6.20 p.m., a structure fire broke out beneath the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
By the time it was extinguished, the building's spire and most of its roof had been destroyed and its upper walls severely damaged.
Extensive damage to the interior was prevented by its stone vaulted ceiling, which largely contained the burning roof as it collapsed.
Many works of art and religious relics were moved to safety early in the emergency, but others suffered some smoke damage and some exterior art was damaged or destroyed.
The cathedral's two pipe organs, and its three 13th-century rose windows, suffered little to no damage. Three people suffered injuries related to the fire.
President Emmanuel Macron said that the cathedral would be restored, and launched a fundraising campaign which brought in pledges of over €1 billion as of April 22, 2019. It has been estimated that the restoration could require 20 years or more.