This Day in History for April 14

1865 - President Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth while attending the comedy "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington. (Lincoln died the following morning.)

1759 - composer George Frideric Handel died in London.

1828 - the first edition of Noah Webster's "American Dictionary of the English Language" was published.

1902 - J.C. Penney opened his first store, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1912 - the British liner "Titanic" collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and began sinking.

1931 - King Alfonso the 13th of Spain went into exile, and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.

1939 - the John Steinbeck novel "The Grapes of Wrath" was first published.

1956 - Ampex Corporation demonstrated its first commercial videotape recorder.

1981 - the first test flight of America's first operational space shuttle, the "Columbia," ended successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1986 - Americans got first word of a US air raid on Libya (because of the time difference, it was the early morning of April 15th where the attack occurred.)

1994 - the chiefs of the nation's seven largest tobacco companies spent more than six hours being grilled by the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee about the effects of smoking.