TIM MAGUIRE

Comedy legend Mel Brooks (Melvyn Kaminsky) is 94 years old
today. He became one of the most successful film directors of 
the 1970s.

1974

James Earl Ray, suspect in the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.
is arrested.

James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in London,
England, and charged with the assassination of African American civil
rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s
bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at
the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was
found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the
Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness
reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect:
escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a
Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In
May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually
determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false
identity, which at the time was relatively easy.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004)

SANDY KOZEL

At 7:22 a.m., Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States 
died from a bullet wound inflicted the night before by John Wilkes 
Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer. The president’s death came only six days after the surrender of Confederate General Robert
E. Lee and his massive army, effectively ending the American Civil
War.

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865)