Today in History: The world's worst nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 26:

1937 – The Spanish Basque town of Guernica was bombed by German planes sent by Hitler to help Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

1964 – Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Pemba joined to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. It was re-named Tanzania on October 29.

1986 – A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear complex in Ukraine exploded and caught fire, spreading a radioactive cloud across Europe in the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

1990 – Carlos Pizarro Leongomez, leader of the leftist Colombian guerrilla movement M-19, who gave up violence to run for president, was assassinated on a plane.

1994 – South Africa held its first all-race elections for the national assembly and provincial parliaments.

1997 – Peng Zhen, the first senior victim of China’s radical Cultural Revolution and a close associate of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, died.

1998 – Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi was assassinated in San Sebastian parish in Guatemala City after overseeing a study of the atrocities in Guatemala’s long civil war.

2002 – A 19-year-old student bent on revenge for being expelled, shot dead 12 teachers, two pupils, a secretary, a police officer and himself at the Gutenberg high school in the German town of Erfurt.

2004 – Leading Polish film maker Lew Rywin was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for soliciting a bribe in the country’s biggest corruption scandal since the 1989 fall of communism.

2005 – Syria withdrew its last soldiers and intelligence agents from Lebanon, ending a 29-year military presence in its small neighbour.

2008 – U.S. President George W. Bush conducts the Marine Band rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner.

(Reuters)