Today in History.....April 26

On this day in …

* 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Bowling Green, Va., and killed

* 1937, planes from Nazi Germany raided the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War

* 1945, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France's Vichy government during World War II, was arrested

* 1968, the United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1-megaton nuclear device called "Boxcar"

* 1980, following an unsuccessful attempt by the United States to rescue the U.S. Embassy hostages being held in Iran by practitioners of that "religion of peace", the Tehran government announced the captives were being scattered to thwart any future rescue effort

* 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire killed at least 31 people and sent radioactivity into the atmosphere

* 1996, after 16 days of bloodshed, Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas pledged to end the worst fighting in the Mideast in three years, agreeing to a U.S.-brokered truce

* 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation's first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions

* 2001, Ukraine's communist-dominated parliament dismissed reform-oriented Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and his government, plunging the nation into political chaos

* 2005, Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon ended as Syrian soldiers completed a withdrawal brought about by international pressure and Lebanese street protests.