On April 26, 1607, Capt. John Smith landed at Cape Henry, Va., with the colonists who would establish the first permanent settlement in America.
In 1785 ornithologist and artist John James Audubon was born in Haiti.
In 1900 inventor Charles Richter, who devised the Richter scale of earthquake measurement, was born near Hamilton, Ohio.
In 1937 the Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by German planes in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1945 Bremen, Germany, fell to British forces in World War II.
In 1954 it was announced that 900,000 American children would receive the Salk antipolio vaccine.
In 1962 the first international satellite, a U.S.-British venture, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
In 1964 the African republics of Tanganyika and Zanzibar announced they had united to form Tanzania.
In 1973 the New York Times reported that acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray had told friends he burned documents related to the Watergate scandal that were taken from White House adviser John Dean.
In 1981 Israeli air force jets struck targets in southern Lebanon, killing 15 people.
In 1984 President Reagan arrived in the People`s Republic of China for a five-day visit. On the same date, bandleader and pianist William ``Count``
Basie died age 79.
In 1986 the worst nuclear accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union, causing an explosion and fire that sent
radioactivity into the atmosphere. At least 31 Soviets died.