15-04-2025
Today in History: April 15, the Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic
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In 1912, the British luxury liner RMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland just over two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Over 1,500 people died; 710 survived.
In 1920, two gunmen killed a paymaster and his guard at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree, seized the $16,000 payroll, and escaped. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who were anarchists, were eventually arrested, tried, convicted, and executed for the crime. Fifty years after their execution, Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation declaring a review of the case determined the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was unfair and colored by prejudices.
In 1947, Jackie Robinson, baseball's first Black major league player of the modern era, made his official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day at Ebbets Field. (The Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves, 5-3.)
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In 1955, Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Ill.
In 1965, 'Havlicek stole the ball.'' Celtics' guard John Havlicek tipped away a last-second pass and sealed the NBA title for Boston over the Philadelphia 76ers, a moment forever captured in one of the most iconic calls in sports history by radio announcer Johnny Most.
In 1974, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army held up a branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. A member of the group was SLA kidnap victim Patricia Hearst. (Hearst later said she had been forced to participate in the robbery.)
In 1975, the first whale-watching trip on the Eastern Seaboard took place, courtesy of Al Avellar, a charter boat captain who took a boatload of school children out of Provincetown harbor.
In 1989, a crush of soccer fans at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, caused 97 deaths and over 760 injuries.
In 2013, two bombs made from pressure cookers exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260.
In 2017, former Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, already serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder, was acquitted in Boston in a 2012 double slaying that prosecutors said was fueled by his anger over a drink spilled at a nightclub. (Five days later, Hernandez hanged himself in his prison cell.)
In 2019, fire swept across the top of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral during renovation work on the landmark structure. The blaze collapsed the cathedral's spire and spread to one of its iconic rectangular towers. (The cathedral was restored and reopened to the public in December 2024.)
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