On This Day for April 26 - Chernobyl nuclear accident, Ma Rainey is featured, and more

Created: 2020-04-26 10:02 Updated: 2020-04-26 10:02 Notebook: On this Day in History

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April 26

FEATURED BIOGRAPHY

Ma Rainey

FEATURED EVENT

1986

Chernobyl nuclear accident

MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2018: Amid numerous allegations of sexual assault, American comedian and actor Bill Cosby was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, and he later received a sentence of 3 to 10 years in prison.

2007: Jack Valenti—the longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America who created the film-rating system that assigns labels for audience suitability (G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17)—died at age 85. [ Test your knowledge of film.]

1989: Actress Lucille Ball—a longtime comedy star of American television, best remembered for her classic comedy series I Love Lucy—died in Los Angeles. [ Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about actors.]

1964: With the merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, the United Republic of Tanzania was founded, and Julius Nyerere served as its first president.

1937: During the Spanish Civil War, the Condor Legion of the German air force, supporting the Nationalists, bombed the Basque city of Guernica, an event memorialized in Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica.

1933: Hermann Göring formed the Gestapo, the political police of Nazi Germany that ruthlessly eliminated opposition and was involved in the roundup of Jews throughout Europe for deportation to extermination camps. [ Take our quiz about Nazi officials.]

SEE ALL EVENTS ON THIS DAY

ALSO BORN ON THIS DAY

121

Marcus Aurelius
emperor of Rome

1963

Jet Li
Chinese actor

1933

Carol Burnett
American comedian and actress

1894

Rudolf Hess
German Nazi leader

1889

Ludwig Wittgenstein
British philosopher