TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 26
757 Stephen II ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1478 Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo and kill Giuliano de’ Medici.
1514 Copernicus makes his first observations of Saturn.
1607 The British establish a colony at Cape Henry, Virginia.
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.
1928 Pedro Flores, a Filipino immigrant to the United States, opened the Yo-yo Manufacturing Company in Santa Barbara, California.
1931 New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hits a home run but is called out for passing a runner, the mistake ultimately costs him the home run record.
1936 5000 to 7000 unemployed joined in a mass demonstration to pressure legislators to provide a relief program for the many jobless around the country, meanwhile states around the country are blocking entry from those looking for work by placing police patrols on main roads, states including Colorado and California are just two of those pursuing this policy.
1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined to form Tanzania.
1968 Students seize the administration building at Ohio State University.
1986 The world’s worst nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union.
1994 Nelson Mandela wins the presidency in South Africa’s first multiracial elections.
1994 Germany makes Holocaust denial illegal The far-right party NPD had sought legitimation by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court for expressing the view that the Nazis’ genocide of six million Jews never occurred. The court ruled against them.
1998 Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera was bludgeoned to death two days after a report he’d compiled on atrocities during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war was made public.
2000 Vermont Governor Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
2002 An expelled student ( Robert Steinhäuser ) went on a shooting rampage at the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany, killing 13 teachers, two students and a police officer before taking his own life.
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.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
