President Abraham Lincoln was shot while attending a performance of the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 14, 1865

. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor familiar with the play, timed the shot to coincide with a particularly funny line to mask the sound of the gunshot

. After being shot in the head in the presidential box at Ford's Theatre, Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen House, where he died the following morning