TODAY IN HISTORY: APRIL 26

 

April 26

1336 – Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux.

1348 – Czech king Karel IV founds the Charles University in Prague, which was later named after him and was the first university in Central Europe.

1478 – The Pazzi family attack on Lorenzo de' Medici kills his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral.

1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of birth is unknown).

1607 – The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry.

1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz.

1777 – Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles (64 km) to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British regular forces

1794 – Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition.

1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France.

1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist.

1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon.

1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia.

1900 – Fires destroy Canadian cities Ottawa and Hull, reducing them to ashes in 12 hours. Twelve thousand people are left without a home.

1903 – Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded

1915 – World War I: Italy secretly signs the Treaty of London pledging to join the Allied Powers.

1916 – Easter Rising: Battle of Mount Street Bridge

1920 – Ice hockey makes its Olympic debut at the Antwerp Games with center Frank Fredrickson scoring seven goals in Canada's 12–1 drubbing of Sweden in the gold medal match.

1923 – The Duke of York weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey.

1925 – Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.

1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established by Hermann Göring.

1933 – Nazi Germany issues the Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities limiting the number of Jewish students able to attend public schools and universities.

1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by German Luftwaffe.

1942 – Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead.

1943 – The Easter Riots break out in Uppsala, Sweden.

1944 – Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt.

1944 – Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in occupied Crete.

1945 – World War II: Battle of Bautzen: Last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.

1945 – World War II: Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army are liberated in Baguio and they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

1954 – The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins.

1954 – The first clinical trials of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine begin in Fairfax County, Virginia.

1956 – SS Ideal X, the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey, for Houston, Texas.

1958 – Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.

1960 – Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after 12 years of dictatorial rule.

1962 – NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.

1962 – The British space programme launches its first satellite, the Ariel 1.

1963 – In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allows for female participation in elections.

1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form the United Republic of Tanzania.

1966 – The magnitude 5.1 Tashkent earthquake affects the largest city in Soviet Central Asia with a maximum MSK intensity of VII (Very strong). Tashkent is mostly destroyed and 15–200 are killed.

1966 – A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye.

1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force.

1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.

1982 – Fifty-seven people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.

1986 – The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

1989 – The deadliest known tornado strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless.

1989 – People's Daily publishes the April 26 Editorial which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests.

1991 – Fifty-five tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado.

1993 – The Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on mission STS-55 to conduct experiments aboard the Spacelab module.

1994 – China Airlines Flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board.

1994 – South Africa begins its first multiracial election, which is won by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

2002 – Robert Steinhäuser kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot.

2005 – Cedar Revolution: Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country (Syrian occupation of Lebanon).

2015 – Nursultan Nazarbayev is re-elected President of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote.

2018 – American comedian Bill Cosby is convicted of sexual assault.

2019 – Marvel Studios' blockbuster film, Avengers: Endgame, is released, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing the previous box office record of Avatar.