April 15

April 15 is the 105th day of the year (106th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 260 days remain until the end of the year.

Historical events

• 1450 – Hundred Years' War: The French defeat the English at the Battle of Formelles.
• 1817 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, the first permanent school for the deaf in North America.
• 1865 – United States President Abraham Lincoln dies at 7:22 am, 16 hours after being shot by John Wilkes Booth.
• 1912 – At 2:20 a.m., the British ocean liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 people.
• 1945 – Holocaust: British forces liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
• 1989 – Hillsborough disaster: 97 football fans are fatally crushed at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, in one of the deadliest sporting disasters in history.
• 2013 – Two Chechen-born Islamist terrorists detonate two pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds.
• 2019 – A massive fire breaks out at the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, destroying its spire and the majority of its roof.

Births

• 1452 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian polymath, artist, and engineer (d. 1519)
• 1707 – Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (d. 1783)
• 1907 – Nikolaas Tinbergen, Dutch biologist and ornithologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988)
• 1912 – Kim Il-sung, North Korean politician, first Supreme Leader of North Korea (d. 1994)
• 1938 – Claudia Cardinale, Italian-French actress
• 1973 – Seth MacFarlane, American actor, animator, and producer

Deaths

• 1865 – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (b. 1809)
• 1986 – Jean Genet, French novelist, playwright, and political activist (b. 1910)
• 2001 – Joey Ramone, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1951)
• 2019 – Bibi Andersson, Swedish actress and director (b. 1935)

Holidays and observances

• Tax Day in the United States (the traditional deadline for filing individual income tax returns, though it shifts if it falls on a weekend or a local holiday such as Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C.)
• Jackie Robinson Day (Major League Baseball)
• Kimilsungia Day (North Korea)
• World Art Day (UNESCO)
• Christian feast day: Anicetus, Damascene, Paternus, and others