Today in History, April 15th
The Titanic sank in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg. Plus Jackie Robinson's debut and the Notre-Dame fire.
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April 15 is best known for 1912, when the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg, with more than 1,500 lives lost. The date also saw Jackie Robinson break Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 and fire tear through Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019.
The big story: The Titanic goes down (1912)
The Titanic left Southampton on April 10, 1912, on its maiden voyage, bound for New York with about 2,200 people aboard after a last stop in Ireland. At about 11:40 p.m. on April 14, some 400 nautical miles south of Newfoundland, the great liner struck an iceberg. The damage was fatal, just not instant. For more than two and a half hours, the crew worked to get people into lifeboats while the ship settled into the sea. At about 2:20 a.m. on April 15, the Titanic went under. More than 1,500 people died. The Cunard liner Carpathia picked up the distress signals and arrived around 3:30 a.m. Its crew took on every survivor, 705 people who had escaped in lifeboats, and reached New York on April 18. A brand-new ship had been lost on its very first crossing, and the shock of it has never quite worn off.
More events on April 15
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1865 | President Abraham Lincoln died the morning after John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford’s Theatre. |
| 1920 | Two men were murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, the crime behind the Sacco-Vanzetti case. |
| 1924 | Rand McNally released its first road atlas, the Auto Chum. |
| 1926 | Charles Lindbergh piloted Robertson Aircraft’s first airmail run, from Chicago to St. Louis. The company was a forerunner of American Airlines. |
| 1947 | Jackie Robinson played his first major league game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American player in Major League Baseball. |
| 1955 | Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s franchise, in Des Plaines, Illinois. |
| 1959 | Fidel Castro arrived for a visit to the U.S., four months after his revolution in Cuba. |
| 1980 | French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, a leading existentialist, died at 74. |
| 1997 | Major League Baseball retired Jackie Robinson’s No. 42 across every team. |
| 1998 | Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, died. |
| 2013 | Two bombs exploded near the Boston Marathon finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260. |
| 2019 | Fire broke out at Notre-Dame de Paris during restoration work, destroying most of the cathedral’s roof and its spire. |
Born on April 15
- 1707: Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist, one of the founders of pure mathematics, born in Basel.
- 1843: Henry James, American-born novelist who became a naturalized British citizen in 1915, born in New York City.
- 1959: Emma Thompson, British actress and screenwriter, born in London.
Sources
- Titanic, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- This Day in History: April 15, History.com
- What happened on April 15, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Leonhard Euler, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Henry James, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Emma Thompson, Encyclopaedia Britannica
