1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
Federal News Network presents a daily update of important moments in the history of the U.S. government.
John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer originally plotted with six others to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln and take him to Richmond, but the scheme failed and two weeks later Richmond fell to the Union. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy. They instead decided to simultaneously kill Lincoln at the April 14 performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.; Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. Conspirator Lewis Powell managed to wound Seward at his home while George Atzerodt, lost his nerve to kill Johnson and fled. At the theater, Booth entered Lincoln’s private theater box unnoticed, and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. He jumped from the box, breaking his left leg and escaped the city but was apprehended and shot on April 26.
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