This day in history: April 26

1865 - John Wilkes Booth, American actor and assassin, is killed by Union soldiers.

And he didn't just slay his audiences.

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American actor from Maryland, who fatally shot U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. Lincoln died the next day from a single gunshot wound to the head – the first American President to be assassinated.

Following the shooting at Ford's Theater, Booth fled by horseback to southern Maryland and eventually to a farm in rural northern Virginia, where he was tracked down and killed by Union soldiers two weeks later. Several of the other conspirators were tried and hanged shortly thereafter.