On April 14 in the year 966, pagan ruler Mieszko I of the Polans tribe converts to Christianity after marrying princess Dobrawa of Bohemia, a Christian. This event is considered to be the founding of the Polish state.
On this day in 1816, a slave named Bussa leads a Spartacist rebellion in Barbados and is killed for his efforts. Bussa is now commemorated as the first national hero of Barbados.
On this day in 1846, the Donner Party loads up its wagons in Springfield, Illinois, and begins the long trek west, for California. In Colorado, they get caught in a box canyon during a freak early winter storm. Cannibalism ensues.
On this day in 1865, at roughly 10 PM, President Abraham Lincoln is shot once in the back of the head by popular stage actor, ardent secessionist and Confederate Secret Service agent John Wilkes Booth. Booth was part of a conspiracy of Confederate sympathizers who plotted the simultaneous assassinations of President Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Booth was the sole co-conspirator to succeed in carrying out his part in the plot. Although Seward was brutally slashed by Lewis Powell, he survived. George Atzerodt, VP Johnson's would-be assassin, lost his nerve and didn't even try. After shooting Lincoln, Booth beat a hasty retreat, but authorities caught up with him just before dawn on April 26. After a brief stand-off, the barn in which Booth was hiding was set on fire, then he was shot in the neck by Sergeant Boston Corbett, contrary to explicit orders that Booth be taken alive. Rumors persist to this day that the man Corbett shot was not Booth. Some believe Lincoln's assassin lived to a ripe old age under an assumed identity in Mexico. By mid-summer of 1865, 8 of Booth's co-conspirators were found guilty of taking part in the assassination plot, and 4 were hanged by the neck until dead.
On this day in 1909, Armenians living under Ottoman rule in Cilicia experience a small foretaste of what history holds in store for them when Islamic counter-revolutionary forces go on a rampage, massacring between 15 and 30 thousand Armenians for the crime of supporting the region's secular, progressive Young Turk revolutionary movement. Before half a decade would pass, violence against the Christian minority Armenians would become so deadly and ferocious that historians would have to coin a new word to describe it: Genocide.
On this day in 1912, at 11:40 PM, the RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The ship sinks the following morning, killing 1,517.
On this day in 1986, President Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Moammar Gadafi's Libya in response to a West Berlin disco bombing that killed two American servicemen. 60 Libyans are killed in the raids, including one of Gadafi's adopted infant sons.
On this day in 1988, roughly a decade after being tricked into an incredibly costly and morale-sapping invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew "Alphabits" Brzezinski, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan during a United Nations ceremony held in Geneva, Switzerland.
On this day in 2002, two days after a CIA-backed businessman's coup is overturned by an outraged citizenry, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez makes a triumphant and bloodless return to office.
On this day in 2003, the Human Genome Project announces that it has completed sequencing 99% of the human genome to an accuracy of 99.99%. Let the custom-built New World Order Genocide Pandemics begin!