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“I had the good fortune and opportunity to come home and to tell the truth; many soldiers, like Pat Tillman... did not have that opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype.”
~ Jessica Lynch
Wikiquote (Jessica Lynch (born April 26, 1983) is a former United States Army soldier who served in Iraq during the 2003 invasion by U.S. and allied forces.)
April 26th, 1478
The House of Medici:
1478 - The Pazzi attack Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Duomo of Florence.
Wikipedia Image: The House of Medici; Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, founder of the Medici bank; The Confirmation of the Rule by Domenico Ghirlandaio; Cosimo I the Great, founder of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; The Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena, The Grand Duke Cosimo II, and their elder son, the future Ferdinando II; Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, the last of the Grand Ducal line, in Minerva, Merkur und Plutus huldigen der Kurfürstin Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici (English: Minerva, Mercury and Pluto pay homage to the Electress Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici) after Antonio Bellucci, 1706; The Dome of Florence Cathedral by Brunelleschi; Biblical Magi Medici family members placed allegorically in the entourage of a king from the Three Wise Men in the Tuscan countryside in a Benozzo Gozzoli fresco, 1459.
April 26th, 1564
William Shakespeare:
1564 - baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of actual birth is unknown).
Wikipedia Painting: William Shakespeare. credit Shakespeare.org.uk
April 26th, 1607
Plymouth Colony:
1607 - The English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.
Wikipedia Painting: "Mayflower", The Granger Collection, New York 1905; Pilgrims landing on Cape Cod in November of 1620; The Pilgrims on the Speedwell; Mayflower arrived inside the tip of Cape Cod fishhook, November 1620 (satellite image, 1997); Landing of the Pilgrims by Michele Felice Cornè, circa 1805. Displayed in the White House.
April 26th, 1721
Earthquake:
1721 - Tabriz earthquake (1721); devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz.
1966 - A magnitude 7.5 destroys Tashkent.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
April 26th, 1802
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
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 Regime and to eventually consolidate his own rule.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).
April 26th, 1803
Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European science that meteors exist.
Wikipedia Image: Perseid meteor shower over Mount Tiede National Park. (credit Jeff Berkes caught this Perseid meteor over Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah, on July 30, 2011)
April 26th, 1805
First Barbary War:
1805 - Battle of Derne; United States Marines capture Derne under the command of First Lieutenant to meet with Presley O'Bannon.
Wikipedia Painting: First Barbary War; "The most bold and daring act of the age." - Horatio Nelson ● Preble's squadron during the afternoon of August 3, 1804, Michele Felice Cornè (1752–1845) ● "Barbary Pirates" by John Bentham-Dinsdale ● USS Constellation, the first U.S. Navy vessel to put to sea ● Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat, by Dennis M. Carter.
April 26th, 1865
American Civil War:
1865 - Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrenders his army to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place near Durham, North Carolina. (Date of Confederate Memorial Day or most states)
1865 - Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln in Virginia.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
April 26th, 1933
The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established.
Wikipedia Photo: Hitler and the Brownshirts; German Nazi activist Horst Wessel (left) at the head of a parade of S.A. stormtroopers, or “brownshirts”, in Nuremberg, Germany, 1929.
April 26th, 1937
World War II:
1937 - Spanish Civil War; Bombing of Guernica (Gernika in Basque) - Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe.
1942 - Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead.
1944 - Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt.
1944 - Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in Axis occupied Crete.
1945 - Battle of Bautzen last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.
1945 - 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 was liberated in Baguio City fighting against the Japanese forces under by General Tomoyuki Yamashita.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
April 26th, 1956
SS Ideal X, the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas.
Wikipedia Photo: PortPort of Los Angeles.
April 26th, 1962
Ranger program: Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.
Wikipedia Photo: Ranger program, NASA
April 26th, 1970
The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force.
Wikipedia Image: Intellectual Property
April 26th, 1981
Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.
Wikipedia Photo: Open fetal surgery.
April 26th, 1986
Chernobyl disaster: A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine).
Wikipedia Photo: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
April 26th, 1989
Tornadoes:
1989 - Daulatpur-Saturia Tornado; 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.
Wikipedia Photo: Weather Front System; Tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma; North Dakota Tornado; F3 Category Tornado Swirls Across A South Dakota Prairie by Carsten Peter; A waterspout parallels a lightning strike over Lake Okeechobee in Florida, by Fred K. Smith, National Geographics, Extream Instability.
April 26th, 1989
Tiananmen Square protests: In Beijing, People's Daily publishes the People's Daily editorial of April 26 which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests.
Wikipedia Photo: Tiananmen incident April 5th, 1976 (The incident occurred on the traditional day of mourning, and removal of the displays of mourning - The Gang of Four, ordered the Square to be cleared) ● Tiananmen Square protests of 1989; The “Unknown Rebel”, taken by Jeff Widener, 1989 ● A month before the crackdown, momentum was already gathering as thousands of students swarmed in the square on May 4, 1989 to call for greater freedom of speech and democracy, credit Peter Turley, Corbis.
April 26th, 1994
Aviation accidents and incidents:
1994 - China Airlines Flight 140; crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
April 26th, 2005
Modern conflicts in the Middle East and terrorist attacks:
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 infiltrates and kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium, in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot.
1982 - 57 people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kone in a shooting spree in Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)