On This Day

15th April

1452 – Leonardo da Vinci was born.

1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London.

1802 – William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy saw a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud".

1892 – The General Electric Company was formed.

1912 – The RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, after hitting an iceberg two and a half hours earlier, killing over 1,500 people.



1923 – Insulin became generally available for use by people with diabetes.

1941 – 200 Luftwaffe bombers attacked Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing over 1,000 people.

1942 – The George Cross was awarded to "to the island fortress of Malta – its people and defenders" by King George VI.

1945 - British troops liberated the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen.

1984 – Tommy Cooper died.

1989 - 96 Liverpool fans died in a crush at the Leppings Lane end of Hillsborough Football Stadium at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on 15 April, 1989. It came to be known as the Hillsborough disaster.

1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang's death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 began in the People's Republic of China.

1998 - Pol Pot died.

2009 – Clement Freud died.

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