Today is Sunday, April 26, the 116th day of 2015. There are 249 days left in the year.

April 26, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1564: William Shakespeare is baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

1865: John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, is surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Va., and killed. (As he lay dying, Booth looked at his hands and supposedly gasped, “Useless, useless.”)

1915: Silent- film comedian John Bunny, 51, dies in New York.

1923: Britain’s Prince Albert, Duke of York (the future King George VI), marries Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey.

1937: German and Italian warplanes raid the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War; estimates of the number of people killed vary from the hundreds to the thousands.

1945: Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France’s Vichy government during World War II, is arrested.

1952: The destroyer-minesweeper USS Hobson sinks in the central Atlantic after colliding with the aircraft carrier USS Wasp with the loss of 176 crew members.

1964: The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.

1972: The first Lockheed L-1011 TriStar goes into commercial service with Eastern Airlines.

1986: A major nuclear accident occurs at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union).

1989: Actress-comedian Lucille Ball dies at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 77.

1991: A series of tornadoes ravages the Midwest and Plains states. At least 55 people are killed and hundreds of others are injured.

1994: Voting begins in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.

China Airlines Flight 140, a Taiwanese Airbus A-300, crashes while landing in Nagoya, Japan, killing 264 people (there were seven survivors).

2000: Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signs the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.

2005: Syria’s 29-year military presence in Lebanon ends as Syrian soldiers completed a withdrawal brought about by international pressure and Lebanese street protests.

Actress Maria Schell dies in Preitenegg, Carinthia, Austria, at age 79.

Actor Mason Adams, known for his Emmy-nominated role on the TV series “Lou Grant” and as the voice behind the Smucker’s jelly commercials (among many other ads), dies in New York at age 86.

2010: A Haitian judge dismisses kidnapping and criminal association charges against 10 American missionaries who’d been detained for trying to take a busload of children out of the country after the January 2010 earthquake, but said that Laura Silsby, the last of the 10 still in jail, would face a lesser charge. (Silsby was freed in May 2010 after being convicted of arranging illegal travel and sentenced to time served.)

2014: President Barack Obama opens the first visit by a U.S. president in nearly half a century to Malaysia, the third stop on his weeklong goodwill trip through Asia.

A British helicopter crashes in southern Afghanistan, killing five NATO troops.

Workers for a documentary film production company recover “E.T.” Atari game cartridges from a heap of garbage buried deep in the New Mexico desert. (The video game had been consigned to the ground after being called the worst ever made.)

VINDICATOR FILES

1990: Boardman Township trustees tell angry residents that they have been advised by the Mahoning County prosecutor’s office to refrain from discussing their reasons for demoting Police Chief William Walter. Walter suggests his demotion was linked to his crackdown on gambling in the township.

Youngstown Mayor Patrick Ungaro’s decision to keep the main downtown fire station open at full strength but leave the Oakland Avenue station without any firefighting equipment comes under fire from Councilwoman Darlene Rogers, D-3rd.

The Rev. David Sherrard says the Youngstown Rescue Mission is in deep financial trouble and could be forced to lay off workers and reduce services to the homeless.

1975: Two Boardman boys, 14 and 15 years old, and a 15-year-old Canfield boy admit to Boardman police their participation in 11 house burglaries in Boardman and one auto theft.

An overflow crowd attends the 14th annual Downtown Lion’s Turtle Derby at the Boardman Glenwood Middle School.

Joan Dascenzo, an accounting major at Youngstown State University, is crowned queen of YSU’s 25th annual Military Ball at the Mahoning Country Club.

1965: The Junior League books a stimulating fall Town Hall lecture series, with Tom Ewell, film and television star, opening the season.

Covington School Principal Herbert L. Armstrong and Mrs. Champ Logan, PTA president, celebrate the school’s 25th anniversary by unveiling a portrait of the late Elmer Dunn, a principal for 20 years.

Robert W. Pugh wins the men’s scratch title and Mrs. Aesal Adams wins the ladies championship during a two-day skeet shoot at the Youngstown Country Club.

1940: Edwin F. Miller, retired principal of Rayen School, dies at his residence, 160 Halleck St., of a heart attack at 76. He is the second Rayen principal to die within a few weeks, his successor, F.F. “Daddy” Herr having died March 12.

The fifth annual bench show of the Mahoning-Shenango Kennel Club opens at Stambaugh Auditorium with 322 canine “blue bloods” representing 43 breeds.

Showing the sharpest recovery in six months, Youngstown district steel operations shoot up from 45 percent to 49 percent with 15 blast furnaces, three Bessemers and 44 open hearths in operation.