Today’s Ephemeris: What Happened on April 15 | Facts…

In April 15 ephemeris These events that happened on a day like today in Argentina and around the world stand out.

● 1865. First assassination of a President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by actor John Wilkes Booth, during a theatrical performance, on the night of April 14. His agony lasts until the morning of the 15th. A week earlier, the forces of the North had imposed themselves on those of the segregationist South in the civil war, which bled the country for four years. Lincoln had been elected president at the start of the war and re-elected for a second term starting a month before the assassination. Its greatest legacy was the abolition of slavery.

● 1938. Birth of Claudia Cardinale. The Italian actress has worked under some of the greatest filmmakers: Federico Fellini (Eight and a half), Luchino Visconti (Rocco and his brothers, The Gatopardo), Sergio Leone (Once upon a Time in the West), Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo). He is considered one of the most beautiful figures in the history of the seventh art.

● 1953. Attack in Buenos Aires. As President Juan Perón speaks in Plaza de Mayo, a bomb explodes at the entrance to the metro. 7 people die and there are 90 injured. Perón waved the crowd, who asked for “firewood” and proclaimed: “This firewood you advise me, why don’t you start giving it?” Immediately afterwards, pro-government groups attacked the headquarters of the UCR, the Socialist Party and the Jockey Club. The buildings were set on fire in the face of the authorities’ reluctance. Roque Carranza, future minister of Raúl Alfonsín, admits responsibility for the attack on the metro with twelve other radicals. All were imprisoned until 1955, when Perón ordered their release shortly before the military coup.

● 1980. Jean Paul Sartre dies at the age of 74. The father of existentialism left novels like Nausea; theatrical works like Flies Yes Behind closed doors; and tests like Being and nothingness Yes existentialism is humanism. For his political positions he rejected the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964: it is claimed that a decade later he tried to recover the prize money. Partner of Simone de Beauvoir, he joins left-wing causes. He supported the Cuban revolution and wrote the prologue to The damned of the earth, by Frantz Fanon.

● 1987. Major Ernesto Barreiro, one of the most notorious torturers in La Perla, the largest underground detention center in Cordoba province during the dictatorship, refuses to testify in court. The soldier could not escape judicial persecution despite the Punto Final law and took refuge in a regiment, which declared itself in solidarity. It’s Wednesday and the business weekend ends: the next day will be Maundy Thursday. Barreiro talks about the regiment to The new province, who does a complacent interview while Campo de Mayo revolts. This is the start of the first painted uprising against democracy.

● 1998. Pol Pot dies at 72. Dictator of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, he perpetrated a frightening genocide. It is estimated that up to three million people may have died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime. The population was forced to live in rural conditions of extreme poverty, with forced labor. The war with Vietnam and the invasion of the Vietnamese that followed put an end to the massacres and led to the fall of the regime. After Pol Pot’s death in the jungle, the trials of those responsible for the genocide began.

● 2019. Notre-Dame Cathedral is on fire. One of the West’s greatest monuments burns down in Paris. The images under the flames of the temple erected in the 12th century move the world. Since the possibility of arson was excluded, the disaster was attributed to a short circuit. President Emmanuel Macron wants the reconstruction to be completed before the Paris Olympics in 2024, although experts stress that the work could take much longer.

It is also World Art Day.