Month: April 2013

April 14: On this date in 1865, actress Laura Keene was on stage at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

April 13: The McGovern-Weir Greenhouse (purchased by Green-Wood in 2012) was designated a NYC landmark on this date in 1982.

April 12: On this date in 1913, John Brooks Henderson, who insisted on co-sponsoring the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery as a U.S. Senator from Missouri, and was never elected to office again, died.

April 11: Mary White Ovington, suffragist, journalist, and a founder of the NAACP, was born on this date in 1865.

April 10: In 1866, on this date, the ASPCA, the first humane organization in the Americas, was founded by Henry Bergh.

April 9: On this date in 1913, Ebbets Field, then the new home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who were owned by Charlie Ebbets, opened.

April 7: Fred Ebb, lyricist of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb, who wrote “New York, New York,” Caberet, and Chicago, was born on this date in 1928.

April 7: On this day in 1972, mobster Joey Gallo celebrated his 43rd birthday at Umberto’s Restaurant in Little Italy; before the dinner was over, he was shot and killed.

April 6: James Kirke Paulding, who coined the tongue-twister “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickles peppers,” and rose to be Secretary of the Navy, died on this date in 1860.

April 5: Famed painter Eastman Johnson, whose gravestone describes him simply as “ARTIST” and states “HIS WORKS ARE HIS MONUMENT,” died on this date in 1906.