If you had to pick a bad luck day in history, then April 14th has to make the shortlist.
It was a bad day for sailing, taking in a show or trying to make baseball history.
In 1915, the Philadelphia Armenia
In fact, it really was a bad day to be on the sea.
In 1944, 1,376 were killed when the freighter Fort Stikene exploded in Bombay , India.; and 185 men were lost when the 18-gun sloop Acorn sunk near Halifax
But the greatest marine disaster on this date did not involve war or torpedoes – just an iceberg.
About 11:40 PM on April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic rammed into an iceberg in the north Atlantic . More than 1,500 people died in that disaster.
While the Titanic went to a watery grave, the annual sinking feeling of Boston Fenway Park
Another longstanding baseball tradition began on April 14, in 1910 when William Howard Taft – who once got stuck in the White House bathtub – became the first president to throw out the first pitch of the year.
A year after Taft’s honorary pitch, the game suddenly lost one of its first great pitchers when the Cleveland Broncho’s Addie Joss died of tuberculous meningitis just two days after his 31st birthday. Joss, a member of the Hall of Fame, pitched the fourth perfect game in baseball history and his career 1.89 ERA is the second-lowest all-time.
And, to be sure, there were some positive events that happened on April 14; such as the first public showing of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope (1894), the early motion picture camera, Dr. Harry Plotz’ discovery of a typhoid cure (1903), John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” is published (1934), the first regular-season Cubs game to be broadcast on radio (1925) and the first Volvo car premieres in Sweden (1927).
New York Giants manager Mel Ott inserted himself into a game in 1946 and hit the last if his 511 homeruns. Ott retired first on the National League’s all-time homerun list. (Only Babe Ruth (714) and Jimmie Foxx (534) hit more.
Sometimes, something that started out good, ends badly. On this date in 1994 singer Billy Joel and model Christie Brinkley were divorced. She got a nice settlement, but he got the piano, man.
But it seems that April 14 is day for blood and mayhem.
In his third day on the job, El Paso
On a grander – and much more horrible – scale, April 14, 1944 saw the first Jews from Athens transported to Auschwitz . Three years, to the day, earlier 3,600 Jews were rounded up during a German raid on Paris
Not all atrocities belong to Germany
On this date in 1919 British soldiers in India
The date also stands prominently on any Civil War buffs’ mind.
In 1861, it was the date Union forces surrendered Fort Sumter
The Fort Pillow Union troops surrendered, the Confederates under Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest – founder of the Ku Klux Klan) murdered 229 unarmed black troops.
The U.S. Secret Service started this day in 1865 – and immediately failed in its first assignment.
It happened that night in Ford’s Theater. The president’s guard left his post for a moment and John Wilkes Booth turned a comedic play into a tragedy when he killed Abraham Lincoln.
Ironically, Lincoln
“What has happened?” he asked a soldier.
“The president has been killed,” the soldier replied sadly.