April 26th

2008
Police in Austria arrested a man accused of holding his daughter captive in a windowless cellar for 24 years, fathering her seven children and killing one of them. (Josef Fritzl is serving life in a psychiatric ward.).
2005
Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon ended as Syrian soldiers completed a withdrawal brought about by international pressure and Lebanese street protests.
Syrian occupation of Lebanon
2000
Vermont Governor Howard Dean signed the nation's first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
Same-sex marriage in Vermont
1998
Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, a leading Guatemalan human rights activist, was bludgeoned to death two days after a report he'd compiled on atrocities during Guatemala's 36-year civil war was made public.
1994
The first multi-racial elections were held in South Africa.
National Party (South Africa)
1989
The deadliest tornado in history kills about 1300 people. The Daulatpur–Saturia Tornado devastated everything in its 50-mile long path across central Bangladesh.
Daulatpur–Saturia tornado
1986
The worst nuclear power plant accident in history occurred at Chernobyl, near Kiev, U.S.S.R.
Chernobyl disaster
1964
The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
Tanzania
1956
First modern container ship, the Ideal X, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas.
Pittsburgh International Airport
1945
Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during WW II, arrested for treason.
Philippe Pétain
1937
Planes from Nazi Germany raided the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Bombing of Guernica
1925
Franz Kafka publishes his landmark novel The Trial. The text, which was initially published as Der Process, is a nightmarish account of a man being arrested and prosecuted by a faceless authority for an unknown crime.
Franz Kafka
1920
Harlow Shapley and Heber D. Curtis hold "great debate" on the nature of nebulae, galaxies and size of the universe at US National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
Great Debate (astronomy)
1865
John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, was surrounded by federal troops in a barn in Virginia. He was shot and killed, either by the soldiers or by his own hand.
John Wilkes Booth
1785
Naturalist and artist John James Audubon was born in Haiti.
File:Brooklyn Museum - Ruby-throated Humming Bird - John J ...
1607
An expedition of English colonists went ashore at Cape Henry, Va., to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere. (They later settled at Jamestown.).
History of Jamestown, Virginia (1607–99)
1478
Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo de'Medici & kill Giuliano de'Medici.
Pazzi conspiracy
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