15 April 1754

A mass shooting at a FedEx Ground facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, killed nine and injured seven.

A fire severely damaged Notre-Dame de Paris, destroying the cathedral's timber spire and much of the roof.

Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev set off two pressure cooker bombs during the running of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

Air China Flight 129 crashed on approach to Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, killing 129 people.

At a GATT ministerial meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, representatives of 123 countries and the European Communities signed an agreement to establish the World Trade Organization.

The Hillsborough disaster, a human crush that caused 97 deaths in the worst disaster in British sporting history, occurred during an FA Cup match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in Sheffield.

The death of former Chinese General Secretary Hu Yaobang triggered a series of events that led to the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

On Walter O'Malley's initiative, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants played the first Major League Baseball game on the U.S. West Coast.

The Indiaman departed Victoria Coach Station, London, as part of the first UK–India bus service.

American restaurateur Ray Kroc opened the ninth McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois, an occasion considered to be the founding of the present corporation.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, a long-range, subsonic, jet-powered, strategic bomber operated by the U.S. Air Force for most of the aircraft's history, made its first flight.

Jackie Robinson, the first African American to break the baseball color line, played his first game in Major League Baseball.

Two Jews were killed near Tulkarm in Mandatory Palestine, an act widely viewed as the beginning of violence within the Arab revolt.

The Great Arab Revolt in the British Mandate for Palestine began when unknown assailants attacked a convoy of trucks and killed two of the Jewish drivers.

Torrential rains caused the Mississippi River to break out of its levee system in at least 145 places, resulting in the worst flooding in the history of the United States.

Ten Japanese-American children were killed in a racially motivated arson attack on a school in Sacramento, California.

U.S. senator John B. Kendrick introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal involving U.S. president Warren G. Harding's administration, leading to the Teapot Dome scandal.

More than 1,500 people on the Titanic died when the passenger liner sank after colliding with an iceberg southeast of Newfoundland.

English poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy encountered a "long belt" of daffodils near Ullswater, inspiring him to pen his best-known work, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud".

A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson was first published, becoming one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of English.

Serse, an opera by Baroque composer George Frideric Handel loosely based on Xerxes I of Persia, premiered in London.

Thirty Years' War: A Swedish–German army defeated the forces of the Catholic League at the Battle of Rain, mortally wounding their commander Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly.

Henry VI, King of Germany (pictured), was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

Byzantine–Norman wars: After a siege of almost three years, Italo-Norman forces conquered the city of Bari, the capital of the Catepanate of Italy, ending more than five centuries of Byzantine presence in the region.

The final session of the Lateran Council, convened to rectify abuses in the papal electoral process that had led to the elevation of the antipopes Constantine II and Philip, was held in Rome.