EVENTS:
- 1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz.
- 1942 – Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead.
- 1956 – SS Ideal X, the world’s first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas.
- 1958 – 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.
- 1962 – NASA‘s Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon.
- 1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force.
- 1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world’s first human open fetal surgery.
- 1986 – A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
- 1989 – People’s Daily publishes the People’s Daily editorial of April 26 which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests
- 2002 – Robert Steinhäuser infiltrates and kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot.
- 2005 – 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).
BIRTHS:
- 1879 – Owen Willans Richardson, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1959)
- 1898 – Vicente Aleixandre, Spanish poet and author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
- 1914 – James Rouse, American real estate developer, founded The Rouse Company (d. 1996)
- 1933 – Arno Allan Penzias, German-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1962 – Colin Anderson, English footballer
- 1973 – Óscar García Junyent, Spanish footballer and coach
- 1975 – Rahul Verma, Indian social worker and activist; founded the Uday Foundation
- 1982 – Brock Gillespie, American basketball player
- 1990 – Nevin Spence, Northern Irish rugby player (d. 2012)
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
