Opening Day welcomes the new spring baseball season each
year, a uniquely American tradition steeped in history and
fanfare.       

On this day in history, April 14, 1910, President William Howard 
Taft (above) became the first U.S. president to throw out the 
first pitch at a Major League Baseball game.       

William Howard Taft (1857 – 1930)

President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head at Ford’s
Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. The assassin,
actor John Wilkes Booth, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!
(Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged,” as he jumped
onto the stage and fled on horseback. Lincoln died the next
morning.

The Presidential Box today at Ford’s Theatre, Washington DC.