Today is Monday, April 26, the 117th day of 2004. There are 249 days left in the year. On this date in 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident occurrs at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An



Today is Monday, April 26, the 117th day of 2004. There are 249 days left in the year. On this date in 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident occurrs at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire kill at least 31 people and send radioactivity into the atmosphere.
In 1607, an expedition of English colonists, including Captain John Smith, go ashore at Cape Henry, Va., to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere. In 1785, American naturalist and artist John James Audubon is born in Haiti. In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, is surrounded by federal troops near Bowling Green, Va., and killed. In 1937, planes from Nazi Germany raid the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. In 1945, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France's Vichy government during World War II, is arrested.
April 26, 1979: Atty. Paul M. Dutton of Canfield, a supporter of Youngstown State University since his undergraduate days there, is named a university trustee by Gov. James A. Rhodes. He succeeds Atty. John M. Newman.
The Girard and Liberty boards of education are holding separate special meetings to discuss terms for maintaining athletic competition between schools from the two districts. Liberty voted to discontinue competition after an encounter in February in which a female student was injured.
U.S. Steel Corp., with unshipped steel products piling mountain high because of the steel haulers truck strike, will shut down its 43-inch hot strip mill at McDonald, idling several hundred workmen.
April 26, 1964: The proposed Lake Erie-Ohio River Interconnecting Waterway has a better chance of becoming a reality than at any other time in its turbulent and frustrating history, writes business editor George R. Reiss.
Sharp cuts in downtown Youngstown mail and parcel post service as well as other economy measures are revealed during the Youngstown Branch 385 of the National Association of Letter Carriers' annual installation of officers. Postmaster Chester Bailey confirms that there will be cuts, but gives no specifics.
First United Presbyterian Church in Niles marks the 125th anniversary of its founding with a service by former ministers and former members who have become ministers and a banquet honoring 50-year members of the church.
April 26, 1954: A young man and a girl, both of Masury, are killed when their motorcycle and a car collide on new U.S. Route 62 about a mile southwest of the Ohio-Pennsylvania line. Dead are Richard A. Williams, 19, and Helen Krull, 17.
A heavy thunderstorm strikes downtown Youngstown, dropping the temperature 13 degrees in 15 minutes.
The test of a new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk is being administered as a test in select areas of the country. Mercer County in Pennsylvania is one of the areas where the test will be given. About 500,000 children in 170 communities in 45 states will receive the shots.
Bell Telephone laboratory scientists demonstrate a small solar battery made from an element of sand that puts within reach man's dream of producing electricity from sunlight on an economic scale.
April 26, 1929: Working systematically for three hours, three armed bandits hold up employees at the Wehle Baking Co., 1120 Oak Hill Ave., taking their clothes and escaping in the manager's new car with about $1,300 from the safe.
Youngstown firemen and policemen meeting with Mayor Joseph L. Heffernan ask for a salary increase of $25 per month, effective in 1930.
Jackie Coogan, youthful movie star who is appearing at the Keith-Albee Theater in Youngstown, visits the Strouss-Hirshberg Co.'s boys shop, attracting a large crowd of young folks and many older ones.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.