April 14 - Definition and Overview

April 14 is the 104th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (105th in leap years). There are 261 days remaining.

Events

up to 19th century

• 43 BC - Battle of Forum Gallorum. Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar's assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in Mutina, defeats the forces of the consul Pansa, who is killed.
• AD 69 - Vitellius, commander of the Rhine armies, defeats Emperor Otho in the Battle of Bedriacum and seizes the throne.
• 1205 - Battle of Adrianople between Bulgars and Crusaders.
• 1450 - Battle of Formigny. French attack and nearly annihilate English, ending English domination in northern France.
• 1632 - Battle of Rain, Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War.
• 1828 - Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary
• 1860 - The first Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California
• 1864 - Battle at the 'Düppeler Schanzen'. The Prussian Army defeats the Danish and finally separates Schleswig from Danmark, Schleswig becomes a part of Germany
• 1865 - Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth; he dies the next day
• 1894 - Thomas Edison demonstrates the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to movies

20th century

• 1910 - President William Howard Taft begins the tradition of throwing out the first baseball on opening day
• 1912 - RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg on its maiden voyage - it finishes sinking at about 2:20 am the next day.
• 1914 - The town of Irving, Texas is incorporated.
• 1931 - Spanish Cortes deposes King Alfonso XIII and proclaims the 2nd Spanish Republic
• 1935 -Black Sunday, the worst dust storm of the Dust Bowl
• 1940 - Royal Marines land in Namsos, Norway, occupying key points, preparatory to a larger force arriving two days later
• 1944 - Huge explosion rocks the Bombay harbour killing 300 and causing a loss of 20 million pounds at that time.
• 1962 - Georges Pompidou becomes Prime Minister of France
• 1969 - At the Academy Awards, a tie between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand results in the two sharing the Best Actress Oscar; Hepburn also becomes the only actress to win three Best Actress Oscars.
• 1981 - The Space Shuttle Columbia passes its first test flight
• 1986 - In retaliation for the bombing of a West Berlin night club where a U.S. serviceman was killed, Ronald Reagan ordered major bombing raids against Tripoli and Benghazi, in Libya, that killed 60 people.
• 1986 - 2.2 lb (1kg) hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
• 1988 - USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will. U.S. retaliates against Iran on April 18 with Operation Praying Mantis, the world's largest naval battle since World War II.

21st century

• 2003 - Jean Charest's Parti libéral du Québec defeats Bernard Landry and the Parti Québécois in Quebec's general elections
• 2004 - Sikhs celebrate the 305th anniversary of the creation of the Khalsa.

Births

up to 19th century

• 1629 - Christiaan Huygens, mathematician (d. 1695)
• 1788 - David G. Burnet, interim president of the Republic of Texas (d. 1870)
• 1827 - Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, archaeologist (d. 1900)
• 1831 - Gerhard Rohlfs, scientist (d. 1896)
• 1842 - Catherine Eddowes, fourth confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper (d. 1888)
• 1868 - Peter Behrens, German architect and designer (d. 1940)
• 1886 - Ernst Robert Curtis, romanist (d. 1956)
• 1891/1892 - Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, politician (d. 1956)

20th century

• 1904 - Sir John Gielgud, actor (d. 2000)
• 1908 - Hermann Stahl, writer
• 1925 - Rod Steiger, actor (d. 2002)
• 1933 - Morton Subotnick, composer
• 1935 - Erich von Däniken, writer
• 1936 - Kenneth Mars, actor (The Little Mermaid, Tale Spin, Malcolm in the Middle)
• 1940 - Loretta Lynn, country music singer
• 1941 - Julie Christie, actress
• 1941 - Pete Rose, baseball player
• 1942 - Valeri Brumel, athlete (d. 2003)
• 1942 - Valentin Lebedev, cosmonaut
• 1945 - Ritchie Blackmore, rock music guitarist
• 1951 - Julian Lloyd Webber, musician
• 1960 - Brad Garrett, actor (Everybody Loves Raymond)
• 1965 - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, suspected military head of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda (his birth date is also reported to be March 1, 1964)
• 1966 - Greg Maddux, baseball player
• 1968 - Anthony Michael Hall, actor
• 1973 - Adrien Brody, actor
• 1974 - Da Brat, rap musician
• 1977 - Sarah Michelle Gellar, actress

Deaths

• 1759 - Georg Friedrich Handel, composer (b. 1685)
• 1914 - Hubert Bland, co-founder of Fabian Society (b. 1855)
• 1917 - Ludovich Lazarus Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto (b. 1859)
• 1925 - John Singer Sargent, artist (b. 1856)
• 1930 - Vladimir Mayakovsky, writer (b. 1893)
• 1935 - Amalie Emmy Noether, mathematician (b. 1882)
• 1964 - Rachel Carson, writer, ecologist (b. 1907)
• 1968 - Al Benton, Major League Baseball player (b. 1911)
• 1975 - Fredric March, actor (b. 1897)
• 1978 - Sophia Lyon Fahs, educator and religious theorist, dies at 101
• 1986 - Simone de Beauvoir, feminist philosopher (b. 1908)
• 1995 - Burl Ives, folk singer, actor (b. 1909)
• 1999 - Anthony Newley, actor, singer (b. 1931)
• 2001 - Hiroshi Teshigahara, director (b. 1927)

Holidays and Observances

• New Year Celeberations in parts of Northern India, South India.
• Baisakhi - [Celeberations in Punjab, India]
• Poila Baisakh - [Celeberations in Bengal, India]
• Vishu - [Harvest festival in Kerala, India]

April 13 - April 15 - March 14 - May 14 -- listing of all days