APRIL 15 — 1865 NY Times headlines: “Awful Event – President Lincoln Shot By an Assassin”; 1947 Jackie Robinson’s 1st game with Dodgers; 1912 Unsinkable Molly Brown
APRIL 15
1865 – Here are the headlines on the New York Times: Awful Event: President Lincoln shot by an Assassin. New York Herald: Important: Assassination of President Lincoln; the President shot at the theatre last evening. Indeed I covered the reasons why on yesterday’s ep, so to continue from there, A couple doctors from the theater assisted Lincoln throughout the night. The bullet was in in the head, and this one would be mortal. Yet the president was still breathing so rather than jostle him on a bumpy ride across town to the White House, he was rushed across the street to William Petersen’s house. His pockets that contained his belongings, including an embroidered handkerchief, Confederate and US money, newspaper clippings, and ivory pocket knife, and a pair of now-busted gold-rimmed glasses.
The police began their investigation: actor James Wilkes Booth clearly shot Lincoln in front of a crowd at the theater, a co-conspirator attacked Secretary of State William Seward in bed, and Vice President Andrew Johnson’s assassin couldn’t go through with it. George Atzerod, who lost his cool in trying to stab Johnson, kept barhopping and getting drunk throughout the night, and spent the night in the Pennsylvania House hotel, where he’d share a room with Police Lieutenant W.R. Kiem, acting sad that the president was shot. Kiem never suspected Atzerod to be a part of the plot. Azerod would continue to make his escape up to Maryland, hoping to avoid Booth, while at the same time detectives broke into the room Atzerod was renting at the Kirkwood House and found a link to JW Booth, as well as a loaded revolver and a Bowie knife, and other evidence linking him with Booth.
Meanwhile, down the street at Secretary Seward’s home, detectives and police were gathering information hopefully to arrest everyone in the conspiracy within the next few days. One of his attackers, Lewis Powell, was currently holed up a t a cemetery with a broken angle after getting thrown off his horse. Booth and fellow rider David Herold were trying to get into Maryland for their escape, and Booth made their way to another conspirator who would bandage his leg since Booth broke it while jumping off the balcony at Ford’s theater onto the state. That friend was Dr. Mudd, and he would go to prison as well as Samuel Arnold, Ned Spangler, and Michael O’Laughlen. When sentence, four conspirators hanged: Powell, Herold, Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt who harbored the fugitives. Now, as morning barely breaks, both Seward and Johnson by now were aware of Lincoln’s condition, and wife Mary Todd wasn’t allowed in her husband’s room due to her hysterical bouts.
At 0721, the president drew in his final breath. Secretary Stanton quietly said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
1947-Jackie Robinson plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers,
…thereby becoming the first African American to play in the Major Leagues. He was signed on April 10 by Branch Rickey, president of the Dodgers, made the announcement. As the first African American to play in the major leagues, he was the target of vicious racial abuse.
In his first season with the Dodgers, Jackie described how he played the best baseball he could despite the tons of racial abuse he endured, and the entire nation focused its attention on his game. Having established a reputation as a black man who never tolerated affronts to his dignity, he now found it in himself to resist the urge to strike bac. In the ballpark, he answered the people he called haters with the perfect eloquence of a base hit.
In 4949, his best year, Robinson was named the league’s MVP and in 1962 became the first African American to be elected to the Baseball hall of fame. Upon his retirement, he continued to be an activist fo civil rights. In fact there’s a letter he sent to President Eisenhower you just have to read. I’d read it, but I couldn’t do it justice. The letter is in response to the President sending US troops to enforce desegregation at Little Rock AR’s Central High School. It will send shivers down your spine.
And as important as it is to appreciate what Jackie has done for America, I think it’s important to give credit to Branch Rickey for breaking the all-white major league baseball unwritten law.
Truly a great day in American history.
1912-Molly Brown becomes unsinkable.
As legend has it in the old west, Molly Brown was pretty obnoxious, so no doubt she and I would have been great friends. Her friends called her Maggie. She grew up poor in Hannibal, Missouri; who left when she was young with her brother to Ladeville, CO. Once she was there she got involved with a mining engineer named JJ Brown, and shortly thereafter they got married. He struck gold and overnight the Browns became millionaires and moved to Denver.
According to her website, mollybrown.org, she was a progressive reformer who ran for state senate, a feat that was unheard of at the time. As her very own husband stated, a woman’s name should only show up in the paper three times: at her birth, her marriage, and her death. So she pulled out of the race. They traveled the world, visiting countries like Ireland, France, Russia, India and Japan, but after 23 years of marriage the Browns separated. He gave her a nice settlement, and she continued traveling.
She was with some friends and her daughter in Paris when she received news about an ill grandson, and she had to cut her vacation short. She grabbed the first ride home available, and THAT, my friends, is how Molly Brown wound up on the Titanic.
They said it couldn’t sink.
She was in her bed reading during the crash, and it knocked her out of her bed and onto the floor. She went out in the hallway, and next thing she knew she was in lifeboat #6 and lowered to the water with 21 other women, men, and a a twelve year old boy. Her lifeboat was found by the Carpathathia and she was rescued.
Realizing all the other women were headed to a country without their husbands, children, clothes, money and valuables, she rallied the first class passengers to donate money to help less fortunate passengers. By the time she reached New York, she raised $10,000. She grew on to fight progressive causes, but ultimately is known as the Unsinkable Mollly Brown.
1967- Nancy and Frank Sinatra had the #1 song
…on the Billboard Hot 100, the Cashbox Best Sellers List and Britain’s New Musical Express record chart with “Something Stupid”. To this day, they are the only father and daughter team to have a US chart topping single. Unforgettable reached #14 in 1991.