April 26

A car ramming attack at a Lapu-Lapu Day festival kills 11 people and injures at least 30 in Vancouver, Canada.

Nursultan Nazarbayev is re-elected President of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote, one of the biggest vote shares in Kazakhstan's history.

Cedar Revolution: 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).

Robert Steinhäuser kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before committing suicide.

Outbreak of CIH computer virus.

China Airlines Flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board.

South Africa begins its first multiracial election, which is won by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

The Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on mission STS-55 to conduct experiments aboard the Spacelab module.

Fifty-five tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado.

The deadliest known tornado strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless.

People's Daily publishes the April 26 Editorial which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests.

The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.

The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force.

The magnitude 5.1 Tashkent earthquake affects the largest city in Soviet Central Asia with a maximum MSK intensity of VII (Very strong). Tashkent is mostly destroyed and 15–200 are killed.

A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye.

Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form the United Republic of Tanzania.

In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allows for female participation in elections.

NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.

The British space programme launches its first satellite, the Ariel 1.

Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after 12 years of dictatorial rule.

Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.

SS Ideal X, the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey, for Houston, Texas.

The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins.

The first clinical trials of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine begin in Fairfax County, Virginia.

World War II: Battle of Bautzen: Last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.

World War II: 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 liberate Baguio as they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita.

Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt.

Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in occupied Crete.

The Easter Riots break out in Uppsala, Sweden.

Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1,549 Chinese miners dead.

Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by the German Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria.

The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established by Hermann Göring.

Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.

The Duke of York weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey.

Ice hockey makes its Olympic debut at the Antwerp Games with center Frank Fredrickson scoring seven goals in Canada's 12–1 drubbing of Sweden in the gold medal match.

Easter Rising: Battle of Mount Street Bridge.

World War I: Italy secretly signs the Treaty of London pledging to join the Allied Powers.

Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded.

Fires destroy Canadian cities Ottawa and Hull, reducing them to ashes in 12 hours. Twelve thousand people are left without a home.

Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia.

First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon.

Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist.

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.

Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition.

Sybil Ludington, aged 16, allegedly rode 40 miles (64 km) to alert American colonial forces to the approach of British regular forces

A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz.

The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry.

Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of birth is unknown).

The Pazzi family attack on Lorenzo de' Medici in order to displace the ruling Medici family kills his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral.

Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux.