April 14th: the first day in American history to live in infamy
Yesterday, April 14, 2013, is two years shy of the sesquicentennial of the terrible day John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Lincoln at Fords Theater in Washington. Every bit as much a day to live in infamy as December 7, 1941, about which President Roosevelt coined the phrase in his immortal speech to Congress requesting a declaration of war against Japan for its sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, the assassination of Lincoln on April 14, 1865 reset American history as much as Pearl Harbor did. Just a Lincolns assassination preceded Pearl Harbor as a day of infamy in America, there were those that came later, notably Nov. 22, 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated and Sept. 11, 2001 when New York was attacked by terrorists.
Just hours before he shot Lincoln and escaped across the stage at Fords Theater, Booth, a 26 year old actor, was told by an entertainer colleague that he would never be as talented an actor as his father, to which Booth is said to have replied: When I leave the stage, I shall be the most talked about man in America. True enough, he was.
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