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Today in History, April 26th

On April 26, 1986, a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Soviet Ukraine. Plus the landing at Cape Henry and John Wilkes Booth's death.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published April 26, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

April 26 is best known as the day in 1986 when a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine, spreading radiation across much of Europe. The date also saw English colonists land at Cape Henry, Virginia, in 1607 and Union soldiers corner and kill John Wilkes Booth in 1865.

The big story: Disaster at Chernobyl (1986)

The Chernobyl power station sat near the town of Pripyat, about 65 miles north of Kiev in what was then the Soviet Union. In the early hours of April 26, 1986, engineers were running a test on reactor No. 4 to see whether a spinning-down turbine could keep emergency water pumps going. To do it, they switched off key safety systems and ran the reactor at a low, unstable power level. At about 1:23 a.m., the power surged out of control. When operators lowered the control rods, their graphite tips made things worse, and a steam and gas explosion blew the lid off the reactor. More than 50 tons of radioactive material went into the air. Thirty-two people died in the first days. Pripyat was evacuated on April 27, but Moscow said nothing until April 28, after monitors in Sweden, more than 800 miles away, picked up high radiation. Fallout spread across Northern and Eastern Europe, and the area around the plant was closed off to anyone wanting to live there.

More events on April 26

Year	What happened
1478	The Pazzi family’s plot to overthrow the Medici family in Florence failed.
1607	The first permanent English settlers in North America landed at Cape Henry, Virginia (Old Style). They went on to found Jamestown.
1777	British troops under William Tryon burned homes, storehouses and more than 1,500 tents in Danbury, Connecticut.
1865	Union soldiers killed John Wilkes Booth at a Virginia farm, 12 days after he shot Abraham Lincoln.
1915	The Allies signed the secret Treaty of London, in which Italy agreed to join World War I in return for promised territory.
1937	German aircraft of the Condor Legion bombed the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
1954	Field trials of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine began in McLean, Virginia, eventually involving 1.8 million children.
1954	Akira Kurosawa’s film Seven Samurai was released in Japan.
1964	Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form what became Tanzania, with Julius Nyerere as president.
1977	Studio 54 opened in New York City and became the center of the disco craze.
2012	Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was found guilty of aiding war crimes in Sierra Leone, the first such conviction of a former head of state by an international court since Nuremberg.

Born on April 26

1785: John James Audubon, American ornithologist and painter of birds, born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti).
1798: Eugène Delacroix, French painter.
1889: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born philosopher.
1917: I.M. Pei, Chinese-born architect of the Louvre’s glass pyramid.