U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth; Lincoln dies the following day.

On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., one month into his second term and towards the conclusion of the American Civil War. Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd, Major Henry Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancé Clara Harris when John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot him in the head. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street, where he died the following morning.