Historical Events on April 26, Facts & Special Events On This Day - CalendarZ

Historical Events on April 26

1336
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux.
1478
The Pazzi family attack Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral.
1564
Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of actual birth is unknown).
1607
English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.
1721
A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz.
1777
Legend tells that Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles 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, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Régime and to eventually consolidate his own rule.
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
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 two states.
1865
Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia.
1903
Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded
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, 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 City 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.
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.
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
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 April 26 Editorial 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.
1994
China Airlines Flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board.
2002
Robert Steinhäuser 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).

April 26 Birthdays

April 26 Deaths