This Day in History
26 Apr 1220
German king Frederick II grants bishops sovereign rights
26 Apr 1336
Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch famously climbs Mont Ventoux
26 Apr 1467
The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appear in Genazzano Italy
26 Apr 1478
Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo deMedici and kill Giuliano deMedici in Florence
More History
Country music star George Jones dies
On this day in 2013 legendary country singer and songwriter George Jones whose numerous hit songs include White Lightning Walk Through T...
Test triggers nuclear disaster at Chernobyl
On April 26 1986 the worlds worst nuclear power plant accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union. Thirty-two people di...
Nazis test new air force, Luftwaffe, on Basque town of Guernica
During the Spanish Civil War the German military tests its powerful new air forcethe Luftwaffeon the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain....
Polio vaccine trials begin
On this day in 1954 the Salk polio vaccine field trials involving 1.8 million children begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean Virginia. C...
U.S. troop strength in South Vietnam at five-year low
The U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281400 men the lowest since July 1966.These figures were a direct result of Presi...
Olympic track star Fanny Blankers-Koen is born
On April 26 1918 Fanny Blankers-Koen who won four Olympic gold medals in track and field events at the 1948 Summer Games is born in the Netherlands. Blanke...
President Reagan visits China
On this day in 1984 President Ronald Reagan arrives in China for a diplomatic meeting with Chinese President Li Xiannian. The trip marked the third time a U.S....
Mountain man James Beckwourth is born
James Beckwourth one of only a handful of early mountain men to emerge from the system of slavery is born in Fredericksburg Virginia.The exact year of Beckwo...
Studio 54 opens in New York City
The crowd outside 254 West 54th Street in New York City on this day in 1927 would have been waiting for the curtain of a Puccini opera. On this day in 1957 or ...
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes author Anita Loos is born
The novelist and screenwriter Anita Loos is born on this day in Mt. Shasta California in 1888.Loos began writing as a child and by age 13 was already contribu...
Maria Shriver marries Arnold Schwarzenegger
Almost a decade after they met at a celebrity tennis tournament the television news reporter Maria Shriver marries the movie actor and former bodybuilder Arnol...
Nuclear explosion at Chernobyl
On this day in 1986 the worlds worst nuclear accident to date occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev in Ukraine. The full toll from this disa...
Girl murdered in pencil factory
Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan is found sexually molested and murdered in the basement of the Atlanta Georgia pencil factory where she worked. Her murder later...
Geneva Conference to resolve problems in Asia begins
In an effort to resolve several problems in Asia including the war between the French and Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina representatives from the world...
Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth dies
John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.Twenty-six-year-old Bo...
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