April 26

What happened that day?

• 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).
• 2002: Robert Steinhäuser kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot.
• 1994: China Airlines Flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board.
• 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.
• 1989: People's Daily publishes the April 26 Editorial which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests
• 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.
• 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.
• 1982: Fifty-seven people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.
• 1981: Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.
• 1970: The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force.
• 1966: A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye.
• 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.
• 1964: Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.
• 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.
• 1962: NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.
• 1960: Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after twelve years of dictatorial rule.
• 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.
• 1956: SS Ideal X, the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas.
• 1954: The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins.
• 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.
• 1945: World War II: Battle of Bautzen: Last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.
• 1944: Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in occupied Crete.
• 1944: Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt.
• 1943: The Easter Riots break out in Uppsala, Sweden.
• 1942: Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead.
• 1937: Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by German Luftwaffe.
• 1933: The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established.
• 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.
• 1923: The Duke of York weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey.
• 1903: Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded
• 1865: Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia.
• 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.
• 1805: First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon.
• 1803: Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist.
• 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.
• 1794: Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition.
• 1777: Legend tells that Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British regular forces
• 1721: A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz.
• 1607: English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.
• 1564: Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of actual birth is unknown).
• 1478: The Pazzi family attack Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral.
• 1336: Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux.