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Today in History, February 26th

On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb exploded beneath the World Trade Center. Plus the Grand Canyon becomes a national park and Johnny Cash's birth.

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

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

February 26 is best known for 1993, when a truck bomb exploded in a garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000. The date also saw Woodrow Wilson make the Grand Canyon a national park in 1919 and the birth of Johnny Cash in 1932.

The big story: The First World Trade Center Bombing (1993)

At 12:18 p.m. on Friday, February 26, 1993, a bomb hidden in a rented Ryder van went off in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. The blast tore a crater several stories deep and brought down concrete floors near the explosion. Six people were killed and more than 1,000 were hurt, and the evacuation of about 50,000 people took the rest of the afternoon. Damage topped $500 million. The plot’s mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, later claimed the bomb weighed about 1,200 pounds and said he had hoped to topple one tower into the other. Four men were convicted in March 1994. Yousef was caught in Pakistan in February 1995 and convicted in 1997 along with the van’s driver, Eyad Ismoil. All six received life sentences. The attack was an early warning of the threat that returned to the same towers eight years later.

More events on February 26

Year	What happened
1564	Playwright Christopher Marlowe, author of Doctor Faustus, was baptized in Canterbury, England (Old Style), about two months before Shakespeare was born.
1813	Robert R. Livingston, who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, swore in George Washington as president and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, died.
1919	President Woodrow Wilson made the Grand Canyon a national park, more than a decade after Theodore Roosevelt had protected it as a national monument.
1935	Adolf Hitler signed a secret decree creating the Luftwaffe as a separate air force, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. He revealed it publicly the next month.
1938	Garment workers in San Francisco’s Chinatown, about 159 of them women, began a strike against National Dollar Stores. It eventually won a raise and a 40-hour week.
1974	Nike received a U.S. patent for its waffle-soled running shoe, designed by coach Bill Bowerman.
1984	The main force of U.S. Marines left Beirut, ending an 18-month peacekeeping mission in Lebanon in which about 250 Marines died, many of them in the 1983 barracks bombing.
2012	Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, a case that set off a national debate over racial profiling and self-defense laws. Zimmerman was acquitted in 2013.

Born on February 26

1802: Victor Hugo, French author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
1928: Fats Domino, New Orleans rock and roll pianist and singer.
1932: Johnny Cash, country singer-songwriter known as the Man in Black.