TODAY IN HISTORY (April 26):
1757 - Paulus Hicken van Amsterdam was acquitted of seduction to sodomy in Frisia Netherlands.
1865 - John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, was surrounded by federal troops in a barn in Virginia. He was shot and killed, either by the soldiers or by his own hand.
1937 - The German Luftwaffe (air force) destroyed the Spanish town of Guernica.
1964 - The Rolling Stones released their first album, The Rolling Stones.
1975 - The Colorado Attorney General ruled that same-sex marriages were illegal and ordered Clela Rorex of Boulder to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
1977 - Studio 54 opened in New York.
1980 - CBS Reports aired "Gay Power, Gay Politics" hosted by Harry Reasoner. It resulted in openly gay reporter Randy Alfred presenting a 9,000 word complaint with the National News Council, accusing CBS of biased and potentially harmful journalism. Producer George Crile had presented S&M as an activity so dangerous that there were S&M parlors which had doctors and nurses on duty, and interviewed a man who claimed that it was the sort of thing that everyone who was gay participated in. San Francisco journalist Phil Bronstein recognized the torture chamber as The Chateau, which was exclusively heterosexual. San Francisco mayor Diane Feinstein wrote a scathing letter to KPIX, saying it was unfair to present glory holes, bathhouses, S&M, sex in parks and toilets as typical of the gay experience.
1980 - Maureen Reagan addressed a group of gay Republicans in Los Angeles, telling them her father Ronald Reagan believes in fair play.
1986 - The worst nuclear power plant accident in history occurred at Chernobyl, near Kiev, U.S.S.R.
1993 - The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in Washington D.C. Despite efforts to include gays, the difficulty museum officials faced in finding and authenticating materials kept the gay displays to a minimum. Most of the difficulty stemmed from the need for gay concentration camp victims to destroy evidence of why they had been imprisoned.
1994 - Gay youth testified before the Philadelphia Board of Education about harassment and violence they had experienced because of their sexual orientation.
1994 - The first multi-racial elections were held in South Africa. Born on this day:
1785 - John James Audubon
1886 - Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, African American blues singer
1917 - I.M. Pei
1933 - Carol Burnett
1938 - Duane Eddy
1942 - Bobby Rydell
1944 - Giorgio Moroder
1947 - Donna De Varona
1960 - Roger Taylor (Duran Duran)
1962 - Michael Damian
1963 - Jet Li
1967 - Kane
1970 - Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins
1982 - Jon Lee
1983 - Jessica Lynch
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