26 April 1958

The Shandong was launched for the People's Liberation Army Navy, China's first domestically built aircraft carrier.

An expelled student murdered sixteen people and wounded seven others before committing suicide at the Gutenberg-Gymnasium Erfurt in Erfurt, Germany.

The CIH virus activated widely, damaging hundreds of thousands of computers and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

Just before landing at Nagoya Airport, Japan, the copilot of China Airlines Flight 140 inadvertently triggered the takeoff/go-around switch, causing the aircraft to crash and killing 264 of the 271 people on board.

A tornado struck the Manikganj District of Bangladesh and killed an estimated 1,300 people, making it the deadliest tornado in history.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (pictured) near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR, suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire, a nuclear meltdown, and the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people around Europe.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) came into being when the WIPO Convention entered into force.

Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania with Julius Nyerere as its first president.

Service ended on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue Line, one of the first major electrified train lines in the U.S. (steam train pictured).

World War II: U.S. Navy submarines began attacks on Japan's Take Ichi convoy as it sailed in waters between Taiwan and the Philippines, eventually sinking four vessels and killing more than 4,000 troops.

Boris Kidrič and Edvard Kardelj founded the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation, the main anti-fascist Slovene civil-resistance and political organization during World War II.

Spanish Civil War: The Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe resulted in a devastating firestorm that caused widespread destruction and civilian deaths and inspired one of Pablo Picasso's most famous paintings.

The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, was established.

First World War: Britain, France and Russia signed a secret treaty promising territory to Italy if it joined the war on their side.

U.S. Army soldiers cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, ending a twelve-day manhunt.

Thousands of meteor fragments fell over L'Aigle, France, becoming a milestone in the understanding of meteorites.

American Revolutionary War: Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington allegedly rode forty miles (64 km) through the night to warn militiamen under her father Henry's command that British troops were planning to invade Danbury, Connecticut.

In a conspiracy to replace the Medici family as rulers of the Republic of Florence, the Pazzi family attacked Lorenzo de' Medici (pictured) and killed his brother Giuliano at Florence Cathedral.

A car ramming attack at a Lapu-Lapu Day festival kills 11 people and injures at least 30 in Vancouver, Canada.

Nursultan Nazarbayev is re-elected President of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote, one of the biggest vote shares in Kazakhstan's history.

Peaceful protesters install the first anti-monument in Mexico, Antimonumento +43, as a call for justice and remembrance to commemorate the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping, later inspiring similar memorials elsewhere in the country and Latin America.

Cedar Revolution: 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).

Robert Steinhäuser kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany, before committing suicide.

Outbreak of CIH computer virus.