April 4, 1968

Just after 6 p.m., Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony of his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine in Memphis, Tenn. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner. He was 39 years old.

Source: www.historychannel.com

April 6, 1917

The United States formally declares war against Germany and enters the World War I conflict in Europe.

Source: Library of Congress

April 12, 1937

The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act. First introduced in 1935, the legislation was designed to codify and administer rights for the nation's workers. Along with protecting workers' freedom to strike, boycott and choose their own unions, it also laid down a list of employers' unfair labor practices that were now deemed punishable offenses.

Source: www.historychannel.com

April 14, 1865

Shortly after 10 p.m., actor John Wilkes Booth enters the presidential box at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., and fatally shoots President Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln slumps forward in his seat, Booth leaps onto the stage and escapes out the back door.

Source: Library of Congress

April 14, 1912

The R.M.S. Titanic strikes an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and eventually sinks to the bottom of the sea, taking the lives of more than 1,500 people.

Source: Library of Congress

April 18, 1906

At 5:12 a.m., an 8.3 magnitude earthquake strikes San Francisco. With thousands of unreinforced brick buildings and closely spaced wooden Victorian dwellings, the city was poorly prepared for the quake. More than 3,000 people were estimated to have died as a result of the disaster.

Source: Library of Congress

April 25, 1859

At Port Said, Egypt, ground is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 101 miles across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Labor disputes and a cholera epidemic slowed construction, and the canal wasn't completed until 1869, four years behind schedule.

Source: www.historychannel.com

April 26, 2005

The Waukesha County Board votes 21-11 to reject Aurora Health Care's $85 million hospital proposal for Pabst Farms in the town of Summit. The vote ended a year of debate surrounding Aurora's plan, but the issue remains alive following Aurora's decision to sue the county.

April 26, 1822

Frederick Law Olmsted, 19th century America's foremost landscape architect, is born. Olmsted designed Central Park in New York as well as many other parks throughout the country.

Source: Library of Congress

April 28, 2005

Frozen pizza producer Palermo Villa Inc. announces plans to build an estimated 100,000-square-foot headquarters in a city-owned business park in Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley.