Today’s Highlights

On April 26, 1986, in the worst nuclear disaster in history, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere. Dozens of people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, while the long-term death toll from radiation poisoning is believed to number in the thousands.

On this date

1607: English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Virginia, on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

1865: John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Virginia, and killed.

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

2018: Comedian Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at Cosby’s suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. (Cosby was later sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, but Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out the conviction and released him from prison in June 2021, ruling that the prosecutor in the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.)

Today’s birthdays

Actor-comedian Carol Burnett is 92. Actor Jet Li is 62. Actor-comedian Kevin James is 60. First lady Melania Trump is 55. Singer Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins is 55. Actor Channing Tatum is 45. New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is 33.