Today in history:
On April 26, 1986, in the worst nuclear disaster in history, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. (Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.)
Also on this date:
In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia, and killed.
In 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. (Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was lynched by an anti-Semitic mob in 1915.)
In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form what is now known as Tanzania.
In 1977, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 had its opening night in New York.
In 1994, voting began in South Africa’s first all-race elections, which resulted in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.
In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
In 2012, former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted by an international war crimes court as he was found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, and the use of child soldiers. (Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.)
In 2018, comedian Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at Cosby’s suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)
