As always, courtesy of Wikipedia:
On this date in:
1828 - Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary. The first speech quoting it in the first paragraph is made not long after.
1910 - President Taft throws out the first first pitch for an opening day baseball game.
1912 - The RMS Titanic smacks into an iceberg, something for which it was designed. It sinks early on April 15th.
1981 - Space Shuttle Columbia completes its first test flight.
Births/Deaths:
1759 - Georg Freidrich Handel dies.
1941 - Pete Rose is born. He begins to lie about running his own birth pool not minutes later.
1966 - Greg Maddux is born. The Cubs already begin planning on how they can release him just as his career gets promising, and acquire him when he’s a washed-up has-been.
1968 - Anthony Michael Hall is born. The fate of anyone who will go to a movie in the 80’s is sealed by Satan himself.
1995 - Burl Ives dies. An entire generation now has no idea who that talking snowman was in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
There’s not a single holiday or observance taking place, anywhere in the world, on April 14th, 2004.