April 14

966 – Following his marriage to the Christian Doubravka of Bohemia, the pagan ruler of the Polans, Mieszko I, converts to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.

1775 – British General, and Massachusetts provincial governor Thomas Gage receives orders from London authorizing action against colonial militia that are known to be stockpiling weapons at Concord, and orders British troops from the Boston garrison to march there on the night of 18 April to confiscate them.

1865 – While Secretary of State William Seward and his family are attacked at home by Lewis Powell, President Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth as part of a wider assassination conspiracy.

1881 – 2 days after taking the position of City Marshal, Dallas Stoudenmire and Country Constable Gus Krempkau are engaged in a running gunfight in El Paso, Texas, where in the space of 5 seconds, Stoudenmire kills 3 men,  including the one who had just shot and killed Constable Krempkau; known as “The 4 Dead In 5 Seconds Gunfight”.

1890 – The Pan-American Union is founded by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, D.C.

1894 – The first ever commercial motion picture house opens in New York City, using 10 Kinetoscopes for viewing movies.

1906 – The Azusa Street Revival opens in Los Angeles, California, launching Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement.

1909 – A massacre is organized by the moslem Ottoman Empire against the Christian Armenian population of Adana Vilayet, in Cilicia, eventually killing 25,000 people.

1912 – The White Star Line passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg off the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic Ocean at 23:40 hours ship’s time.

1935 – The Black Sunday dust storm, considered one of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl, sweeps across the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring areas.

1981 – STS-1, the first operational flight of a shuttle and of Shuttle Columbia is completed, landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

1988 – The Oliver Perry Class Guided Missile Frigate, FFG-58- USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine and is severely damaged in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will.

1994 – In a friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, a US Air Force crewman aboard a E-3 AWACS aircraft  misidentifies 2 US Army Black Hawk helicopters as Iraqi Mi-24 Hind helicopters and directs 2 US F-15 fighters to intercept. The pilots of the F-15s also misidentify the helicopters and shoot them down, killing all 26 passengers and crews aboard both craft.

2003 – U.S. troops in Baghdad capture Muhammad Zaidan, known as Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner the MS Achille Lauro in 1985.

2005 – The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies marriage licenses issued to same sex couples a year earlier by Multnomah County.