On this day in History - Apr 26

• 0121 - Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor was born (d. 0180).
• 1478 - The Pazzi attack Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Florence Cathedral.
• 1489 - Ashikaga Yoshihisa, dies (b. 1465). Ashikaga shogun.
• 1558 - Jean François Fernel dies (b. 1497 ?). French physician who in his historic career in medicine and physiology introduced dissection to clinical practice.
• 1607 - English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia, later moving up the James River to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
• 1711 - David Hume, was born (d. 1776). Scottish philosopher, historian.
• 1774 - (Christian) Leopold, Freiherr von Buch was born (d. 4 Mar 1853). Geologist and geographer whose far-flung wanderings and lucid writings had an inestimable influence on the development of geology during the 19th century.
• 1785 - John James Audubon, was born (d. 27 Jan 1851). Ornithologist, artist, and naturalist known for his drawings and paintings of North American birds.
• 1787 - Ludwig Uhland, was born. German poet.
• 1798 - Eugène Delacroix, was born (d. 1863). Painter .
• 1798 - James Beckwourth, was born (d. 1867). Mountain man and ex-slave.
• 1812 - Alfred Krupp, was born (d. 14 Jul 1887). German industrialist ( manufacturer of steel and armaments ) who was known as "The Cannon King" .
• 1829 -Theodor Billroth was born (d. 6 Feb 1894). Christian Albert Theodor Billroth was a Viennese surgeon, generally considered to be the founder of modern abdominal surgery .
• 1836 - Erminnie Adele Platt Smith was born (d. 9 Jun 1886). American anthropologist who was the first woman to specialize in ethnographic field work.
• 1857 - Morte de Juan Lindo. Presidente das Honduras (1847-1852).
• 1865 - American Civil War: Confederate General Joseph Johnston surrenders his army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina.
• 1865 - Union cavalry troopers corner John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln's assassin, in a barn in Virginia. Booth is shot dead by cavalryman Boston Corbett.
• 1865 - John Wilkes Booth, dies shot while trying to avoid capture for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (b. 1838).
• 1877 - Sir Alliott Verdon Roe was born (d. 4 Jan 1958). He was the first Englishman to construct and fly his own airplane .
• 1879 - Sir Owen Willans Richardson was born (d. 15 Feb 1959. English physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1928 for "his work on the thermionic phenomenon [electron emission by hot metals] and especially for the discovery of the law named after him.
• 1886 - Ma Rainey, was born (d. 1939). Blues singer .
• 1888 - Anita Loos, was born (d. 1981). Writer.
• 1889 - Ludwig Wittgenstein, was born (d. 1951). Austrian-born English philosopher .
• 1892 - Sir Provo William Perry Wallis, dies. British Admiral and naval heroe.
• 1894 - Rudolf Hess, was born (d. 1987). Nazi official .
• 1895 - Nathaniel Kleitman, was born (d. 1999). Sleep researcher.
• 1896 - Ernst Udet, was born (d. 1941). Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot .
• 1897 - Olga Tschechowa, was born (d. 1980). Actress.
• 1897 - Douglas Sirk, was born (d. 1987). Director.
• 1897 - Eddie Eagan, was born (d. 1967). American sportsman.
• 1898 - Vicente Aleixandre, was born (d. 1984). Spanish writer.
• 1899 - "Life Saving Guards for Street Cars" were patented by the black American inventor, J.H. Robinson.
• 1900 - Charles Richter, was born (d. 30 Sep 1985). Geophysicist, seismologist and inventor of the Richter Scale that measures earthquake intensity which he developed with his colleague, Beno Gutenberg, in the early 1930's .
• 1903 - Fundação do Atlético de Madrid - Espanha
• 1905 - Nascimento de Raul Leoni Otero. Presidente da Venezuela (1964-1969)
• 1908 - Karl August Möbius dies (b. 7 Feb 1825). German zoologist whose work in marine biology included the formation of pearls and the anatomy of the whale. He introduced the ecosystem concept of the "life community" - "Biocönose"
• 1910 - Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, dies (b. 1832). Norwegian author.
• 1911 - Marianne Hoppe,was born (d. 2002). Actress.
• 1912 - A. E. van Vogt, was born (d. 2000). Science fiction writer.
• 1914 - Eduard Suess dies (b. 20 Aug 1831). Austrian geologist who helped lay the basis for paleogeography and tectonics--i.e., the study of the architecture and evolution of the Earth's outer rocky shell.
• 1914 - Bernard Malamud, was born (d. 1986). Author.
• 1916 - Mário de Sá Carneiro dies (b. 19 May 1890). Poet and novelist, one of the most original and complex figures of the Portuguese Modernist movement.
• 1917 - I.M. Pei, was born. Architect.
• 1918 - Fanny Blankers-Koen, was born (d. 2004). Dutch athlete.
• 1918 - Stafford Repp, was born (d. 1974). Actor.
• 1920 - Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan dies (b. 22 Dec 1887). Indian mathematician known for his work on hypergeometric series and continued fractions. In number theory, he discovered properties of the partition function.
• 1925 - Jørgen Ingmann, was born (d. 1990). Danish musician and Eurovision Song Contest winner .
• 1925 - Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected Reichspräsident, the head of state of the Weimar Republic.
• 1926 - Michael Mathias Prechtl, was born (d. 2003). German illustrator.
• 1932 - Hart Crane, dies (b. 1899). American poet.
• 1932 - William Lockwood, dies (b. 1868). Surrey fast bowler.
• 1932 - Michael Smith was born (d. 4 Oct 2000). British-born Canadian biochemist who won (with Kary B. Mullis) the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of a technique called oligonucleotide-based site-directed mutagenesis, which enabled researchers to introduce specific mutations into genes and, thus, to the proteins that they encode .
• 1933 - The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established.
• 1933 - Arno Allan Penzias was born. German-American astrophysicist who shared one-half of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics with Robert Woodrow Wilson for their discovery of a faint electromagnetic radiation throughout the universe.
• 1933 - Carol Burnett, was born. Singer, actress, comedienne.
• 1934 - Alan Arkin, was born. American actor.
• 1937 - Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe.
• 1938 - Duane Eddy was born. Musician.
• 1940 - Giorgio Moroder was born. Composer.
• 1940 - Carl Bosch dies (b. 27 Aug 1874). German industrial chemist who developed the Haber-Bosch process for high-pressure synthesis of ammonia and received, with Friedrich Bergius, the 1931 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for devising chemical high-pressure methods.
• 1942 - Bobby Rydell, was born. Singer.
• 1942 - The worst-ever mining accident in history kills 1,549 miners in an explosion at the Honkeiko Colliery, Manchuria.
• 1943 - Gary Wright, was born. Singer.
• 1946 - Vladimir Zhirinovsky, was born. Russian politician.
• 1946 - Father Divine, a controversial religious leader who claims to be God, marries the much-younger Edna Rose Ritchings, a celebrated anniversary in the International Peace Mission movement.
• 1947 - Donna DeVarona, was born. Olympic gold medalist in swimming, sports journalist, sports activist .
• 1949 - Nascimento de Carlos Bianchi. Jogador e técnico argentino de futebol.
• 1951 - Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld dies (b. 5 Dec 1868). German physicist whose atomic model permitted the explanation of fine-structure spectral lines.
• 1954 - Mass testing of the Salk polio vaccine began, involving about 1.8 million children.
• 1954 - Geneva Conference (1954) begins: An international conference is held in Geneva in an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea.
• 1956 - Koo Stark, was born. Actress.
• 1960 - Roger Taylor, was born. Musician ("Duran Duran") .
• 1961 - Joan Chen, was born. Actress.
• 1961 - The integrated circuit was patented by Robert Noyce .
• 1962 - Ranger program: The Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.
• 1963 - Jet Li, was born. Martial arts fighter, actor .
• 1964 - Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.
• 1967 - Paraguai assina o Tratado de Tlatelolco
• 1969 - Morihei Ueshiba, dies (b. 1883). Founder of Aikido.
• 1970 - Gypsy Rose Lee, dies (b. 1911). Actress.
• 1970 - John Knittel, dies. Dramatist.
• 1971 - Vietnam War: Vietnamization - The American force level in Vietnam drops to 281,400 men, the lowest number since July 1966.
• 1972 - Vietnam War: Vietnamization - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from the war in May and June, reducing the authorized troop level to 49,000.
• 1973 - Irene Ryan, dies (b. 1902). Actress.
• 1976 - Sid James, dies (b. 1913). British comedian.
• 1977 - Tom Welling, was born. Actor, Clark Kent on "Smallville".
• 1980 - Nascimento de Jordana Brewster, estrela do cinema mundial, na Cidade do Panamá-Panamá.
• 1981 - Nascimento de Mariana Ximenes (Mariana Ximenes do Prado Nuzzi), atriz brasileira, em São Paulo-SP.
• 1982 - Joanne Gobure, was born. Nauruan poet.
• 1983 - Jessica Lynch, was born . POW rescued from Iraq in 2003.
• 1984 - Mija Martina, was born. Bosnian singer.
• 1984 - Count Basie, dies (b. 1904). Musician, composer.
• 1986 - Broderick Crawford, dies (b. 1911). Actor.
• 1986 - Dechko Uzunov, dies (b. 1899). Painter.
• 1986 - In Ukraine, a nuclear reactor at the Chornobyl (Chernobyl) nuclear plant explodes, creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. Thirty-one people are killed directly by the incident and many thousands more are exposed to significant amounts of radioactive material.
• 1988 - James McCracken dies (b. 1926).
• 1989 - Lucille Ball, dies (b. 1911). Actress, comedienne.
• 1991 - Carmine Coppola, dies. Composer, conductor, father of Francis Ford Coppola and Talia Shire, grandfather of Sofia Coppola .
• 1991 - O futebolista Diego Maradona foi preso por posse de droga.
• 1991 - Seventy tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before its end, Andover, Kansas would record the year's only F5 tornado and 17 people will perish (see The Andover, Kansas Tornado).
• 1993 - Space shuttle Columbia was launched on the second German sponsored D-2 Spacelab Mission lasting until 6 May.
• 1994 - South Africa holds its first multiracial elections.
• 1994 - A China Airlines Airbus A-300-600R crashes at Nagoya Airport, Japan killing 264.
• 1996 - Stirling Silliphant, dies. Writer, producer .
• 1999 - Jill Dando, dies (b. 1961). British television presenter.
• 2002 - 19-year-old Robert Steinhäuser shoots and kills 17 people at his school in Erfurt, Germany.
• 2003 - The Honourable Rosemary Brown, dies (b. 1930). Canadian politician (NDP).
• 2003 - Max Nicholson, dies (b. 1904). Environmentalist.
• 2003 - Peter Stone, dies (b. 1930). Oscar- and (3-time) Tony-winning writer .
• 2004 - Hubert Selby Jr., dies. (b. 1928). Author.
• Tanzania - Union Day