On this day in conspiracies

Booth kills Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. Surratt maintains for the rest of his life that he was in Elmira, New York, scouting a prisoner-of-war camp for a Confederate officer, not in Washington. His alibi for that specific night has never been conclusively broken.

Mary rides to Surrattsville, driven by Weichmann, on what her defenders call a routine debt errand. She carries a package from Booth, and, by Lloyd's later testimony, tells him to have the shooting irons, two carbines hidden earlier, ready that night. Hours after Booth kills Lincoln, he and Herold stop at the tavern and collect one.

Booth shoots Lincoln at Ford's Theatre; Lewis Powell nearly kills Secretary of State Seward the same night; George Atzerodt fails to attack Vice President Johnson.

After Lee's surrender at Appomattox on 9 April ends the war in Virginia, Booth turns from abduction to assassination. He assigns Lewis Powell to kill Secretary of State Seward and George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Johnson, while he himself will kill Lincoln, aiming to decapitate the Union government in a single night.

At a final meeting Booth divides the night's work: he will kill Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Powell will kill Seward at his home, and Atzerodt will kill Vice President Johnson at the Kirkwood House. David Herold is to guide Powell, a stranger to the city, to the Seward mansion and lead him out afterward.

Before Representative Henry Waxman's House subcommittee, the chief executives of the seven largest U.S. tobacco companies testify under oath that they do not believe nicotine is addictive. The televised hearing becomes an enduring emblem of the industry's public posture colliding with its private knowledge.

At the coroner's inquest the cause of death is recorded as natural: acute cardiac failure linked to ischaemic heart disease. There is no evidence of drowning (the lungs are found to be dry), no sign of violence, and no indication of foul play.

New Shepard's 31st mission, NS-31, lifts off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site at about 8:30 am local time. The flight lasts roughly 10 minutes and 21 seconds, reaches an apogee of about 106 kilometers, past the internationally recognized Karman line at 100 kilometers, gives the crew a few minutes of weightlessness, and lands: the booster upright on its pad, the capsule under parachutes.