Today in History: April 14

2004: Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox church, formally accepted the apology offered by Pope John Paul II in 2001 for the sacking of Constantinople (now Istanbul) by Crusader armies in the early 13th century.

1986: A force of U.S. warplanes based in Britain bombed several sites in Libya, killing or wounding several of Muammar al-Qaddafi's children and narrowly missing Qaddafi himself.

1981: America's first space shuttle, Columbia, returns to Earth.

1969: The first major league baseball game is played in Montreal, Canada.

1961: The first live broadcast is televised from the Soviet Union.

1959: The Taft Memorial Bell Tower is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1953: The Viet Minh invade Laos with 40,00 troops in their war against French colonial forces.

1945: American B-29 bombers's damage the Imperial Palace during firebombing raid over Tokyo.

1931: King Alfonso XIII of Spain is overthrown.

1924: American architect Louis Sullivan, the father of modern American architecture, died in Chicago.

1912: The passenger liner Titanic–deemed unsinkable–strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage and begins to sink. The ship will go under the next day with a loss of 1,500 lives.

1904: Sir John Gielgud, an English actor, producer, and director considered one of the greatest performers of his generation on stage and screen, particularly as a Shakespearean actor, was born.

1902: American businessman J.C. Penney opened his first dry-goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1900: The World Exposition opens in Paris.

1894: Thomas Edison's kinetoscope is shown to the public for the first time.

1866: Anne Sullivan Macy, Helen Keller's teacher, was born near Springfield, Massachusetts.

1865: On this day in 1865, just after the American Civil War ended, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending a production at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., and died the next morning.

1860: The first Pony Express rider arrives in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, Missouri.

1828: The first edition of Noah Webster's dictionary is published.

1793: A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo is crushed by French republican troops.

1775: The first abolitionist society in United States is organized in Philadelphia.

1543: Bartoleme Ferrelo returns to Spain after discovering a large bay in the New World (San Francisco).

1471: The deposed and exiled king of England, Edward IV, defeated King Henry VI's forces at the Battle of Barnet, near London, enabling him to retake the throne.