The world’s worst nuclear accident happens at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. An explosion in fire of the plant kills at least 31 people, spewing radioactive clouds into the atmosphere. Then winds carry as far as Western Europe.

1865Federal troops surround and kill John Wilkes Booth, President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, near Bowling Green, Virginia.

1607English colonists wash ashore, what’s now Cape Henry, Virginia. Weeks later, they establish Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

1937Planes from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy raid the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

2000Vermont’s Governor Howard Dean, signs the first bill in the United States, allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.

And 1989“Hello friends, I’m your Vitameatavegamin girl. Are you tired, run down, listless? Do you poop-out at parties?”

Actress and comedienne Lucille Ball, star of the classic TV hit “I love Lucy”, dies in Los Angeles, at the age of 77.

Today in History, April 26th, Ed Donahue, the Associated Press