On This Day: 14 April

Foundation stone of Nantes Cathedral laid		1434
Battle of Barnet: Yorkists under Edward IV defeat the Lancastrians under the Earl of Warwick (the Kingmaker); Warwick is killed, and Henry VI deposed		1471
Residents of Nuremberg see what they described as an aerial battle, followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and then a large crash outside of the city. Witnesses observe hundreds of spheres, cylinders, crosses, globes, two lunar crescents, a black spear and tubular objects from which several smaller, round objects emerged and darted around the sky at dawn		1561
Battle of Chemnitz: vitcory for the Swedes over the Holy Roman Empire prolongs the Thirty Years' War and enables them to advance into Bohemia		1639
The Sikh religion is formalised as the Khalsa – the Brotherhood of Warrior–saints – by Guru Gobind Singh		1699
USA repeals its embargo on trade with Britain		1814
Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language		1828
Hungary declares itself independent of Austria, with Lajos Kossuth as its leader		1849
Confederate army captures fort Sumter		1861
US President Abraham Lincoln shot by actor John Wilkes Booth in Ford's Theatre, Washington DC		1865
Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days published in Paris		1872
Pan–American Union established by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, DC		1890
Edison's Kinetoscope, in New York – the world's first motion picture house – shows moving pictures in a public booth for the first time		1894
Dr. Harry Plotz of New York discovers the Typhus vaccine		1903
White Star passenger liner SS Titanic, on her maiden voyage, strikes an iceberg (at 11:40pm) in the North Atlantic and sinks within three hours, with the loss of 1,503 lives		1912
Revolutionary provisional government set up in Spain after King Alfonso XIII abdicates (or is deposed) and flees to Rome		1931
Britain's Highway Code first published Britain's Highway Code first published		1931
John Cockroft and Ernest Walton, working under Lord Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, split the nucleus of a lithium atom into two helium nuclei		1932
The Stresa Conference –; between Britain, France and Italy – ended		1935
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, published		1939
Soviet diplomat Vladimir Patrov requests political asylum in Australia		1954
The first videotape demonstrated in Chicago		1956
Andy Capp appears in the national edition of the Daily Mirror for the first time		1958
Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika, falls from orbit after 162 days (Laika probably died within a few hours of launch)		1958
Mrs. Linda Bostock, of Armadale, West Lothian, gives birth to Scotland's first quintuplets		1972
Space shuttle Columbia lands safely after its two–day maiden flight		1981
The first cordless telephones introduced in Britain		1983
Mikhail Gorbachev proposes to remove all Soviet short–range missiles from Eastern Europe		1987
Mikhail Gorbachev announces the phased withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan		1988
Nick Faldo turns Greg Norman's 6–stroke lead into a 5–stroke lead for himself in the last round, to win his third US Masters title		1996
Up to 75 die when a NATO bomb hits a convoy of Albanian refugees in Kosovo		1999
Millionaire criminal Kenneth Noye, once named Public Enemy No. 1, jailed for life for the 'road rage' murder of Stephen Common, 21, on the M25 in 1996		2000
The last vestige of Saddam Hussein's power appears to disappear as US troops enter his home town of Tikrit unopposed		2003
The Human Genome Project is declared complete, with 99% of the huiman genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%		2003
Ariel Sharon wins pivotal backing from President George Bush for his plan to disengage from Gaza and the West Bank		2004
Twin bomb blasts in Abuja kill at least 75 people and injure 141; Boko Haram abducts 276 schoolgirls in Chibok		2004
Tiger Woods wins the Masters for the fifth time – his fifteenth major (putting him three behind Nicklaus) and his first since 2008		2019

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On This Day: 14 April