April 15: Holidays, Historical Events, Famous Birthdays & Zodiac Sign

April 15 wears many faces. In the United States, it's the day tax returns come due — a civic ritual baked so deeply into American life that it shares the calendar with Jackie Robinson Day, honoring the moment in 1947 when Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers and shattered professional baseball's racial color line. Hawaiians remember Father Damien, the priest who gave his life serving leprosy patients on Molokai. Liverpool fans mourn the 97 who died at Hillsborough Stadium in 1989, while Bengalis celebrate Pohela Boishakh, ringing in a vibrant new year.

The date has seen civilizations pivot. In 1450, French forces nearly annihilated the English at the Battle of Formigny, effectively ending English dominance in northern France during the Hundred Years' War. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his monumental Dictionary of the English Language in London, a feat that took nearly nine years and stand as a cornerstone of English lexicography. Insulin became widely available to diabetes patients in 1923, transforming a death sentence into a manageable condition. And in 1955, Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois — the seed of a global empire.

But April 15 also carries sorrow. The RMS Titanic slipped beneath the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m. in 1912, claiming more than 1,500 souls. Abraham Lincoln died from an assassin's bullet in 1865, just as the Civil War he fought to end was drawing to a close. Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated in 1945, exposing horrors that still stagger the conscience. And in 2019, the world watched in grief as Notre-Dame de Paris, the cathedral that had stood for over eight centuries, was engulfed in flames.