John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, then leapt onto the stage shouting a Latin motto

On April 14, 1865, five days after the Confederacy's surrender at Appomattox, actor John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Booth leapt from the presidential box onto the stage, breaking his leg, and shouted 'Sic semper tyrannis' before fleeing. Lincoln died the next morning, the first US president assassinated in office; Booth was killed twelve days later in Virginia.

— James L. Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer — 2006
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