John Wilkes Booth

This theater opened on Monroe Street in 1860 and John Wilkes Booth, sometimes called the "handsomest man of his day" and someone with a very bright future, was an actor in several of the Shakespearian plays.

The theater closed its doors in 1907, but its connection to one of the world's most famous murderers was sealed by then.

Booth snuck into the presidential box during a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington DC and murdered Abraham Lincoln by shooting him behind the left ear.

Ironically, one of Booth's favorite parts to play was that of Brutus, whose role was to slay a tyrant.

He had also played the role of William Wallace, who also had to overthrow an unjust leader.

Clearly, Booth saw himself as a then modern-day freedom fighter whose duty it was to overthrow Lincoln.

But what were the reasons that brought him to the conclusion that killing Lincoln was the only way forward?

After all, as well as being a handsome man, athletic and muscular, Booth was also becoming very wealthy with his acting.

He was earning $20,000 a year in 1850 (that's equivalent to more than $500,000 a year in 2009).

The fact was, Booth was outraged by the South's defeat in the American Civil War and he was vehemently against the abolition of slavery in the United States.

He was even more infuriated by the fact that Lincoln was proposing to give voting rights to those newly emancipated slaves.

It was all too much for his sensibilities and he decided a life of wealth and prestige were just not worth it to him if he was going to have to live in an America he didn't like.

His outcry of "Sic semper tyrannis! (In Latin, "Thus ever to tyrants.").

The South is avenged!" was his statement to the world that he, for one, was going to do something about it.

He joined a group of conspirators who were later caught.

Booth escaped for 12 days but was found in a tobacco shed in Virginia. The shed was set on fire and Booth was dragged from the barm alive but died a few hours later.

Ironically, Lincoln had watched Booth perform in the Ford's Theater in DC in an 1863 showing of The Marble Heart.

Neither of them knew what was to come later.

And ironically, too, Booth turned the theater from a place that gave him his life into a place, which sadly, brought about his death.