Today in History, April 26

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1478 - Guiliano de Medici is killed at the cathedral in Florence in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the Pazzi family.

1532 - Suleiman I, Sultan of Turkey, invades Hungary and advances toward Vienna.

1607 - Captain John Smith lands in Virginia with the first group of colonists to establish a permanent English settlement in America.

1798 - France declares war on Austria.

1807 - Russia and Prussia form alliance to drive France out of German states.

1865 - John Wilkes Booth, assassin of US President Abraham Lincoln, is surrounded and killed by troops near Bowling Green, Virginia.

1872 - Civil war breaks out in Spain.

1885 - Britain occupies Port Hamilton, Korea.

1886 - The earliest known dramatisation of Marcus Clarke's For The Term Of His Natural Life is staged in Brisbane's Theatre Royal.

1890 - Banjo Paterson's poem The Man from Snowy River is published in Sydney, as a supplement to The Bulletin magazine.

1915 - Italy secretly signs the Pact of London with Britain, France and Russia which would put them on the side of the allies in World War I.

1923 - The Duke of York, the future King George VI, marries Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in Westminster Abbey.

1937 - In the Spanish civil war, German planes bomb the town of Guernica, killing between 1000 to 1650 people.

1942 - At least 1540 die in the world's worst mining disaster in Benxi, Japanese-occupied China.

1945 - Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II, is arrested on treason charges.

1954 - Member countries of the United Nations meet in Geneva and insist on free elections in Korea.

1962 - First international satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida - a US-British venture.

1964 - African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.

1966 - Mt Kelud in Java, Indonesia, erupts, killing 1000 people; a sidewinder missile, launched by a US jet plane, shoots down the first Communist MIG-21 in the Vietnam War.

1971 - White House commission recommends that China be brought into United Nations, with Nationalist China (Taiwan) retaining its membership.

1986 - The world's worst nuclear accident occurs at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union when a reactor meltdown in a power plant exposes hundreds of thousands of civilians to dangerous radioactive material. Thirty-two people die immediately.

1989 - Chinese students march to central Beijing to protest against government statements condemning their campaign for democracy; death of US comedy actress Lucille Ball, aged 77.

1990 - Leftist Colombian presidential candidate, Carlos Pizarro, is assassinated aboard a Colombian airliner. A drug cartel claims and later denies responsibility.

1992 - Moscow residents celebrate the first Russian Orthodox Easter in 74 years.

1994 - South Africa holds its first all-race elections for the national assembly and provincial parliaments.

1995 - Thieves break into a Sydney office of media magnate Kerry Packer and steal gold bullion; Australian caterer David Morris is abducted and killed by Islamic fundamentalists in Somalia; death in Tasmania of retired British secret service man Peter Wright, whose book Spycatcher alleged Soviet infiltration of M15.

1996 - After 16 days, Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon agree to a truce to end a blitz that has left more than 150 people dead and forced 500,000 people to flee.

1998 - Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, a leading human rights activist in Guatemala, is bludgeoned to death two days after a report he compiled on atrocities during Guatemala's 36-year civil war was made public.

1999 - The Chernobyl computer virus damages hundreds of thousands of computers around the world.

2003 - Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf rejects demands from opposition leaders that he give up his role as chief of the military.

2005 - Syria withdraws its last soldiers and intelligence agents from Lebanon, ending a 29-year military presence in its small neighbour.

2006 - European Union lawmakers announce findings that the CIA has conducted more than 1000 clandestine flights in Europe since 2001 - some of them secretly taking terror suspects to countries where they can be tortured.

2007 - Thousands of Buddhist monks demonstrate outside the Thailand parliament building to demand that the country's new constitution enshrine Buddhism as the official national religion.

2012 - Pakistani authorities deport Osama bin Laden's three widows and his children to Saudi Arabia, less than a week before the first anniversary of the unilateral American raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader in his hideout in a military town.

2014 - US Secretary of State John Kerry expresses concern to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about "provocative" Russian troop movements along Ukraine's border.

2015 - Survivors tell how a huge avalanche swept down on Everest Base Camp after Nepal's devastating earthquake.

2016 - A groundbreaking new drug, tipped to stop the spread of HIV within years, will be available to more than 2,000 Queensland men under a $6 million trial program.

2017 - Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme - best known for The Silence of the Lambs - dies, aged 73.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman Emperor,(121-180); Eugene Delacroix, French painter (1798-1863); Alfred Krupp, German armaments manufacturer (1812-1887); Florence Austral, Australian opera singer (1884-1968); Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher (1889-1951); Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader and Hitler's deputy (1894-1987); Morris West, Australian novelist (1916-1999); Carol Burnett, US actor (1933-); Prue Acton, Australian fashion designer (1943-); Dick Johnson, Australian motorcar driver (1945-); Joan Chen, Chinese actor-comedian (1961-); Jet Li, Chinese martial artist/actor (1963-); Kevin James, US actor (1965-); Melania Trump, former model and wife of US President Donald Trump (1970-); Channing Tatum, US actor (1980-).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. - Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, engineer, sculptor and architect (1452-1519).

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