The Ides of April Eve

The Ides of March with Caesar's assassination has nothing on April 15th, but the events of the 15th were staged on the 14th. Within fifty years of each other, two major events happened that still reverberate now, a century or more later. One was the death of a single person, the other the deaths of more than 1500, but each still echo. So let's walk through history for a little while today.

Our first event that occurred on April 14th was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln while he was sitting in a box at the Ford Theater watching a play with his wife. Although it is fairly universally supported that John Wilkes Booth actually pulled the trigger on the gun, the various conspiracy theories, bankroll theories, and other plausible points of view have made this a fascinating topic for writers for years. Lincoln died later, but the bullet happened today (many years ago, of course - LOL).

The second event that happened on the 14th of April was the sinking of the RMS Titanic. The iceberg hit the ship at 11:40 pm on the 14th of April, and less than three hours later the ship was beneath the waves with less than 800 people saved, less than the total number of the crew assigned to the ship. Why does Titanic hit the imaginations of people world-wide even now, 100 years later? Although there are many reasons, I think it was the combination of the fact that it was so highly touted as being unsinkable, the notable people who were on board, the fact that it was her maiden voyage and sank only four days into that voyage. So many reasons. But underlying all of them is the fact that more than 1500 people, many of them almost unknown and poor, lost their lives that night. Don't forget them when you think about that magnificent ship. What will you do today that may echo through the years to come? It could be something as simple as helping a child or painting a picture that will be given or sold to someone and become an heirloom. It could just be one small act that will have ripples you could never imagine. Act kindly today, and remember the dead.