1260 Kublai Khan succeeded at the age of 44 his older brother, Möngke as the Great Khan of the Mongol empire. He was proclaimed Kublai Great Khan, on April 15, 1260. Kublai was treated like a god; no noise was permitted within half a mile of where the Khan was. He was renowned all over the world as he was the first Chinese emperor to be known in the west, due to the visit of Marco Polo.
1446 The Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi died on April 15, 1446. Brunelleschi won the commission to engineer the dome of Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral after winning a competition in which architects attempted to stand an egg upright on a piece of marble. He used over 4 million bricks in the dome's construction and invented a new hoisting machine for raising the masonry needed. Its success resulted in Brunelleschi becoming the world's first superstar architect.
1469 Poet and mystic Guru Nanak was born on April 15, 1469 In Punjab, north India. At the age of 30, Guru Nanak experienced two days of mystical ecstasy. He was inspired to start a movement, which sought to combine Hindu and Muslim elements in a single religious creed. He called his followers Sikhs - the Punjabi for disciples.
1542 Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in in a farmhouse about 1.9 miles (3 km) from the small Tuscan hill town of Vinci. He was the illegitimate son of Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine provincial lawyer and Caterina, a peasant woman. As he was born before modern naming conventions developed in Europe, his full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, son of Mister Piero, from Vinci".
1755 Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London on April 15, 1755. Johnson’s dictionary was the first work to try to include all English words with definitions and examples. Although his dictionary was widely praised and enormously influential, Johnson did not profit from it much financially, He thought his dictionary would take three years to complete, bit it eventually took nine years.and he had to bear the expenses of its long composition.
1802 English poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came upon a "long belt" of daffodils on April 15, 1802, inspiring him to pen his most famous work, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." The poem is known for its vivid imagery and use of natural elements to convey a sense of wonder and joy. It remains one of Wordsworth's most famous and beloved works.
1841 The Royal Pharmaceutical Society was established in Great Britain on April 15, 1841 for the purpose of advancing chemistry and pharmacy. It conducts examinations for those wishing to qualify as pharmaceutical chemists. The first official headquarters of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society was at 17 Bloomsbury Square in London.
1856 The Watermelon War was a riot in Panama City on April 15, 1856, then the capital of Panama State in the Republic of New Granada. It started because a drunken American wouldn't pay five cents for a slice of watermelon. It led to the death of 15 Americans and two Panamanians.
1889 For twelve years Father Joseph Damien, a Flemish member of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, served selflessly as priest and doctor on the island of Molokai, Hawaii, where there was a leper colony, in which the people had to fight to survive in a lawless, morally deprived environment. He even stayed on when he discovered that he had caught leprosy himself. Damien died of leprosy at 8:00 a.m. on April 15, 1889, at the age of 49 at the leper colony, a true Saint.
1892 The General Electric Company was founded on April 15, 1892. In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average. It is the only one of the original companies still listed on the Dow index, and it has remained a major player in the technology, energy, and healthcare industries throughout its history.
1901 Joe Davis was born on April 15, 1901. He won every snooker world championship from 1926 until 1946 when he retired. In 1955 Joe Davis became the first man to compile an officially recognized maximum snooker break of 147. He achieved the feat in an exhibition match at Leicester Square Hall.
1912 At 12:50 a.m. EST on April 15, 1912, junior wireless operators at Cape Race, Newfoundland, received a report from the Virginian that they were trying to reach the Titanic ocean liner, but had lost communication. Titanic's last signals at 12:27 a.m. were "blurred and ended abruptly." There were an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, and an estimated 1,517 died - only 306 bodies were recovered.
1918 The novelist C.S. Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford in 1916. Within months, the British Army shipped him to France to fight in World War 1. Lewis arrived on his nineteenth birthday at the front line in the Somme Valley in France, where he experienced trench warfare. He was wounded on April 15, 1918 by a British shell falling short of its target. Lewis was demobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies.
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| Kublai Khan |
1446 The Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi died on April 15, 1446. Brunelleschi won the commission to engineer the dome of Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral after winning a competition in which architects attempted to stand an egg upright on a piece of marble. He used over 4 million bricks in the dome's construction and invented a new hoisting machine for raising the masonry needed. Its success resulted in Brunelleschi becoming the world's first superstar architect.
1469 Poet and mystic Guru Nanak was born on April 15, 1469 In Punjab, north India. At the age of 30, Guru Nanak experienced two days of mystical ecstasy. He was inspired to start a movement, which sought to combine Hindu and Muslim elements in a single religious creed. He called his followers Sikhs - the Punjabi for disciples.
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| Guru Nanak with Bhai Bala, Bhai Mardana and Sikh Gurus |
1542 Leonardo Da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in in a farmhouse about 1.9 miles (3 km) from the small Tuscan hill town of Vinci. He was the illegitimate son of Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine provincial lawyer and Caterina, a peasant woman. As he was born before modern naming conventions developed in Europe, his full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, son of Mister Piero, from Vinci".
1755 Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London on April 15, 1755. Johnson’s dictionary was the first work to try to include all English words with definitions and examples. Although his dictionary was widely praised and enormously influential, Johnson did not profit from it much financially, He thought his dictionary would take three years to complete, bit it eventually took nine years.and he had to bear the expenses of its long composition.
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| Title page of 2nd edition |
1802 English poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came upon a "long belt" of daffodils on April 15, 1802, inspiring him to pen his most famous work, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." The poem is known for its vivid imagery and use of natural elements to convey a sense of wonder and joy. It remains one of Wordsworth's most famous and beloved works.
1841 The Royal Pharmaceutical Society was established in Great Britain on April 15, 1841 for the purpose of advancing chemistry and pharmacy. It conducts examinations for those wishing to qualify as pharmaceutical chemists. The first official headquarters of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society was at 17 Bloomsbury Square in London.
1856 The Watermelon War was a riot in Panama City on April 15, 1856, then the capital of Panama State in the Republic of New Granada. It started because a drunken American wouldn't pay five cents for a slice of watermelon. It led to the death of 15 Americans and two Panamanians.
1889 For twelve years Father Joseph Damien, a Flemish member of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, served selflessly as priest and doctor on the island of Molokai, Hawaii, where there was a leper colony, in which the people had to fight to survive in a lawless, morally deprived environment. He even stayed on when he discovered that he had caught leprosy himself. Damien died of leprosy at 8:00 a.m. on April 15, 1889, at the age of 49 at the leper colony, a true Saint.
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| Father Damien on his deathbed |
1892 The General Electric Company was founded on April 15, 1892. In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average. It is the only one of the original companies still listed on the Dow index, and it has remained a major player in the technology, energy, and healthcare industries throughout its history.
1901 Joe Davis was born on April 15, 1901. He won every snooker world championship from 1926 until 1946 when he retired. In 1955 Joe Davis became the first man to compile an officially recognized maximum snooker break of 147. He achieved the feat in an exhibition match at Leicester Square Hall.
1912 At 12:50 a.m. EST on April 15, 1912, junior wireless operators at Cape Race, Newfoundland, received a report from the Virginian that they were trying to reach the Titanic ocean liner, but had lost communication. Titanic's last signals at 12:27 a.m. were "blurred and ended abruptly." There were an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, and an estimated 1,517 died - only 306 bodies were recovered.
1918 The novelist C.S. Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford in 1916. Within months, the British Army shipped him to France to fight in World War 1. Lewis arrived on his nineteenth birthday at the front line in the Somme Valley in France, where he experienced trench warfare. He was wounded on April 15, 1918 by a British shell falling short of its target. Lewis was demobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies.
1921 The record for the most snow ever recorded in a single day goes to Silver Lake, Colorado, where a whopping 75.8 inches (or 6.3 feet) blanketed the area between April 14th and 15th, 1921. This incredible snowfall happened high in the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of over 10,200 feet, creating a truly historic winter wonderland – or nightmare, depending on how you look at it!
1940 English author and politician Jeffrey Archer was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital on April 15, 1940. His father, William (died 1956), was 64-years-old at the time. Jeffrey was two weeks old when his family moved to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he spent most of his early life.
1947 18 months after Jackie Robinson signed a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier, he made his major league debut on April 15, 1947, at the relatively advanced age of 28 at Ebbets Field before a crowd of 26,623 spectators, more than 14,000 of whom were black. Jackie Robinson was the first black player in a major-league baseball game since brothers Moses and Welday Walker played for Toledo in 1884.
1955 Eight years after Dick and Mac McDonald opened their first hamburger restaurant, they introduced the "Speedee Service System," establishing the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. American Ray Kroc, a mixer salesman, recognized the idea's potential and partnered with the brothers. Kroc opened his first McDonald's franchise in Illinois on April 15, 1955, an occasion considered to be the founding of the present corporation. He later bought out the McDonald brothers.
1956 The world's first all-color TV station debuted in Chicago on April 15, 1956, when WMAQ-TV (also known as NBC Channel 5) became the world's first TV station to broadcast exclusively in color. The first color telecast from the station on that date was Wide, Wide World, which was transmitted to 110 NBC stations across the country.
1964 The first Ford Mustang rolled off the show room floor on April 15, 1964, two days before it was set to go on sale nationwide. With a price of $2,368, the estimated annual sales were 100,000. First year sales were over 400,000 units and Ford Motor Company celebrated the production of its one millionth Mustang, a white convertible, within two years.
1980 After leaving Hollywood in 1941, the Swedish actress Greta Garbo was recruited to work for MI6 during World War II. She secretly identified influential Nazi sympathizers in Stockholm for British Intelligence. In 1953 she bought a seven-room apartment at 450 East 52nd Street in Manhattan, New York City where she lived as a semi recluse for the rest of her life. Garbo died in New York from renal failure and pneumonia on April 15, 1990. Her ashes were buried in Sweden.
2017 Born on November 29, 1899, Emma Morano was an Italian supercentenarian who held the distinction of being the last living person verified to have been born in the 1800s, until her passing on April 15, 2017. Morano attributed her long life to her healthy habits, including abstaining from drugs, consuming three eggs daily, sipping a glass of homemade brandy, and occasionally indulging in chocolate. Additionally, she credited her optimistic outlook towards the future for her longevity.
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