April 15

• 1775--Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published
• 1817--Gallaudet and Clerc found the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, CT
• 1865--Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by John Wilkes Booth
• 1892--The General Electric Company is formed
• 1912--The RMS Titanic sinks at 2:20 A.M., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg.  Only 710 of 2,227 passengers and crew on board survive.
• 1923--Insulin becomes generally available
• 1924--Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas.
• 1927--The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, begins
• 1945--The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated
• 1955--McDonalds opens its first franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc in Des Plaines, Illinois
• 1964--Chesapeake Bay Bridge opens (world's longest)
• 1969--North Korea shoots down a U.S. Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board
• 1973--Walt Disney Store opens
• 1983--Tokyo Disneyland opens
• 1989--The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the People's Republic of China
• 1992--Leona Helmsly is sent to jail for tax evasion
• 2010--Volcanic ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland leads to the closure of airspace over most of Europe
• Births: Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine the Great, Henry James, Corrie Ten Boom, Nikita Kruschev, Sir Neville Marriner, Roy Clark, Elizabeth Montgomery, Heloise, Dodi Al-Fayed, Emma Thompson, Emma Watson
• Deaths: Jean-Paul Sartre, Corrie Ten Boom, Greta Garbo, John Jacob Astor