President Abraham Lincoln died in Washington, D.C., on this
day in history, April 15, 1865, one day after he was shot by
actor John Wilkes Booth. He was 56.

Lincoln, who was elected president in 1860, was the first U.S.
president to be assassinated. 

This engraving depicts John Wilkes Booth escaping after shooting President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. 

The Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall and is dedicated
to the memory of President Abraham Lincoln.

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.

SANDY KOZEL

Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was
fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-
story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation
workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet
struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was
pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He
was only 39 years old.

James Earl Ray (March 10, 1928 – April 23, 1998)

Ray was convicted of the Assassination of Martin Luther
King, Jr.

The Lorraine Motel, now known as the National Civil Rights Museum, where King was assassinated.

SANDY KOZEL