Today In History: APRIL 26

APRIL 26 1954:
POLIO VACCINE TRIALS BEGIN IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: On this day in 1954, the Polio vaccine developed by New York-born physician and epidemiologist Jonas Salk (1914-95) began field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo. On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere.

Today, polio has been eliminated throughout much of the world due to the vaccine; however, there is still no cure for the disease and it persists in a small number of countries in Africa and Asia. Nigeria recently recorded a six month period of no Polio occurrence. Thanks to today in history.

APRIL 26 1986:
MARIA SHRIVER MARRIES ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: Almost a decade after they met at a celebrity tennis tournament, the television news reporter Maria Shriver marries the movie actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger on this day in 1986.
Shriver, who was born on November 6, 1955, began her career in journalism in 1977, after graduating from Georgetown University. That same year, the TV newsman Tom Brokaw introduced her to Schwarzenegger at a party the night before the annual Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament in Forest Hills, New York. The buff Schwarzenegger had won the first of five Mr. Universe titles at the age of 20. Upon his arrival in Hollywood, he acted in forgettable movies such as Hercules in New York before Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Terminator (1984) made him an A-list star. By then, he and Shriver were involved in a long term bi-coastal relationship, as she worked her way up the ladder at CBS News.
On April 26, 1986, Shriver and Schwarzenegger were married in St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis, Massachusetts, before some 500 guests. The bride’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, was maid of honor, and the former Mr. Universe Franco Columbu served as best man. The reception was held at the Kennedy compound in nearby Hyannisport.
In the fall of 2003, Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in a special recall election over the Democratic incumbent Gray Davis. At the time, Shriver was a news correspondent for NBC and a frequent contributor to the network’s Dateline program. In February 2004, she announced she was leaving the network due to the competing interests of her work as California’s first lady. In 2007, Shriver announced she would not be returning to TV news. Shriver has reportedly played an important behind-the-scenes role in her husband’s campaign and administration, helping him gain the support of California’s electorate. Shriver and Schwarzenegger have four children: Katherine, Christina, Patrick and Christopher.

APRIL 26 1986:
TRAGEDY AS NUCLEAR EXPLOSION AT CHERNOBYL RESULTS IN MANY CASUALTIES: On this day in 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident to date occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev in Ukraine. The full toll from this disaster is still being tallied, but experts believe that thousands of people died and as many as 70,000 suffered severe poisoning. In addition, a large area of land may not be livable for as much as 150 years. The 18-mile radius around Chernobyl was home to almost 150,000 people who had to be permanently relocated.
The Soviet Union built the Chernobyl plant, which had four 1,000-megawatt reactors, in the town of Pripyat. At the time of the explosion, it was one of the largest and oldest nuclear power plants in the world. The explosion and subsequent meltdown of one reactor was a catastrophic event that directly affected hundreds of thousands of people. Still, the Soviet government kept its own people and the rest of the world in the dark about the accident until days later.
At first, the Soviet government only asked for advice on how to fight graphite fires and acknowledged the death of two people. It soon became apparent, however, that the Soviets were covering up a major accident and had ignored their responsibility to warn both their own people and surrounding nations. Two days after the explosion, Swedish authorities began measuring dangerously high levels of radioactivity in their atmosphere.
Years later, the full story was finally released. Workers at the plant were performing tests on the system. They shut off the emergency safety systems and the cooling system, against established regulations, in preparation for the tests. Even when warning signs of dangerous overheating began to appear, the workers failed to stop the test. Xenon gases built up and at 1:23 a.m. the first explosion rocked the reactor. A total of three explosions eventually blew the 1,000-ton steel top right off of the reactor.
On May 9 1986, workers began encasing the reactor in concrete. Later, Hans Blix of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that approximately 200 people were directly exposed and that 31 had died immediately at Chernobyl. The clean-up effort and the general radioactive exposure in the region, however, would prove to be even more deadly. Some reports estimate that as many as 4,000 clean-up workers died from radiation poisoning. Birth defects among people living in the area have increased dramatically. Thyroid cancer has increased tenfold in Ukraine since the accident.

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Content: history.com