Events
1336
– Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux
1478 – The Pazzi attack Lorenzo de' Medici and
kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in
the Duomo of Florence.
1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare was baptized
in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England
(date of actual birth is unknown)
1607 – English colonists make landfall at Cape
Henry, Virginia.
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, as part of a reconciliary gesture
with the factions of the Ancien Regime and to
eventually consolidate his own rule.
1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from
the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces
European science that meteors exist.
1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines
captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant
Presley O'Bannon.
1865 – American Civil War: Confederate General
Joseph E. Johnston surrenders his army to General
William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place
near Durham, North Carolina. Also the date of
Confederate Memorial Day for most states.
1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot
dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President
Lincoln, in Virginia.
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.
1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica (or Gernika
in Basque), Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe.
1942 – Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo
leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead.
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
was liberated in Baguio City and they fought against
the Japanese forces under by General Tomoyuki
Yamashita.
1946 – Naperville train disaster kills 47.
1954 – The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore
peace in Indochina and Korea, begins.
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 twelve
years of dictatorial rule.
1962 – NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into
the Moon.
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 Tanzania.
1965 – A Rolling Stones concert in London, Ontario
is shut down by police after 15 minutes due to
rioting.
1966 – An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 destroys
Tashkent.
1966 – A new government is formed in the Republic
of 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 – 57 people are killed by former police officer
Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in Gyeongsangnam-do,
South Korea.
1986 – A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union
(now Ukraine), creating the world's worst nuclear
disaster.
1989 – The deadliest tornado in world history
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 People's Daily
editorial of April 26 which inflames the nascent
Tiananmen Square protests
1991 – Seventy tornadoes break out in the central
United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover,
Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado
(see Andover, Kansas Tornado Outbreak).
1994 – China Airlines flight 140 crashes at Nagoya
Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people
on board.
2002 – Robert Steinhäuser infiltrates and kills
16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before
dying of a self-inflicted gunshot.
2005 – 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
)
Holidays
and observances
Christian
Feast Day:
Aldobrandesca
Franca Visalta
Lucidius of Verona
Our Lady of Good Counsel
Pope Anacletus and Marcellinus
Riquier
Radbertus Paschasius
Stephen of Perm, see also Old Permic Alphabet
Day
Trudpert
April 26 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Confederate Memorial Day (States of Florida and
Georgia)
Day of Remembrance of the Chernobyl tragedy (Belarus)
Union Day (Tanzania)
Vallenato Legend Festival usually begins on this
day. (Valledupar, Colombia)
World Intellectual Property Day (International)
For details, contact Datacentre
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