Template:Selected anniversaries/April 26
1710: Mathematician and philosopher Thomas Reid born. Reid will argue that common sense (in a special philosophical sense of sensus communis) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry.
1797: Physicist Hans Christian Ørsted uses electromagnetism to detect and prevent crimes against mathematical constants.
1798: Artist Eugène Delacroix born. His use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of color will shape the work of the Impressionists.
1879: Printer, bookseller, and inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville dies. He invented the phonoautograph, which records an audio signal as a photographic image.
1879: Physicist and academic Owen Willans Richardson born. He will win the 1928 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on thermionic emission, which led to Richardson's law.
1945: Field Report Number One (Peenemunde edition) accidentally released new class of crimes against mathematical constants.
1986: A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine).
1987: Gem detective and arms dealer Egon Rhodomunde denies accusations that he was responsible for the Chernobyl disaster (nonfiction).