Today's Highlight in History:
On April 26, 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Va., on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere. (They later settled at Jamestown.)
On this date:
In 1785, American naturalist and artist John James Audubon was born in present-day Haiti.
In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Bowling Green, Va., and killed.
In 1937, planes from Nazi Germany raided 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, was arrested.
In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
In 1968, the United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called "Boxcar."
In 1970, the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company" opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York.
In 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union.
In 1993, Conan O'Brien was named to succeed David Letterman as host of NBC's "Late Night" program.
In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation's first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
Ten years ago: Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, a leading human rights activist in Guatemala, was bludgeoned to death two days after the public release of a report he had compiled on atrocities during Guatemala's 36-year civil war.
