A Brief History
This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on April 26th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event.
Digging Deeper
On April 26, 1336, famed Italian scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca (better known as Petrarch) ascended Mont Ventoux, a mountain in the Provence region of southern France.
On April 26, 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte signed a general amnesty for those members of the émigrés of the French Revolution, those royalists and others opposed to the French Revolution that had fled France.
On April 26, 1859, Daniel Sickles, Congressman, Army general, and diplomat, became the first person to successfully use the “temporary insanity” defense to beat a murder rap.
On April 26, 1865, Union Army troopers of the US Cavalry shot the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, dead on the spot in spite of orders to take the murderer alive.
On April 26, 1933, the Nazi secret police force known as the Gestapo was founded.
On April 26, 1982, South Korean police officer Woo Bum-kon killed 56 people (and himself) while wounding another 35 in a single night of mayhem, the worst single person mass murder incident in history (until eclipsed by the Norway attack in 2011 in which 77 were killed) up to that point.
On April 26, 1986, the Soviet nuclear power plant in Pripyat, The Ukraine, suffered an explosion and fire resulting in the worst nuclear disaster in history.
On April 26, 2002, Erfurt, Germany, was the scene of a horrific mass murder when a 19 year old student that had been expelled from a high school shot and killed 16 people.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Andrews, John and Matt Baker. Timeline of World History. Thunder Bay Press, 2020.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
