26 March History
- 1517 - The famous Flemish composer Heinrich Issac dies.
- 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.
- 1804 - Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.
- 1804 - The territory of New Orleans is organized in the Louisiana Purchase.
- 1827 - German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna. He had been deaf for the later part of his life, but said on his death bed "I shall hear in heaven."
- 1832 - Famed western artist George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone.
- 1885 - Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
- 1913 - The Balkan allies take Adrianople.
- 1918 - On the Western Front, the Germans take the French towns Noyon, Roye and Lihons.
- 1938 - Herman Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria.
- 1942 - The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
- 1950 - Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
- 1951 - The United States Air Force flag design is approved.
- 1953 - Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina.
- 1953 - Dr. Jonas Salk announces a new vaccine against polio.
- 1954 - The United States sets off an H-bomb blast in the Marshall Islands, the second in four weeks.
- 1961 - John F. Kennedy meets with British Premier Macmillan in Washington to discuss increased Communist involvement in Laos.
- 1969 - The Soviet weather Satellite Meteor 1 is launched.
- 1969 - Writer John Kennedy Toole commits suicide at the age of 32. His mother helps get his first and only novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. It goes on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.
- 1979 - The Camp David treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt.
- 1982 - Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
- 1989 - The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.
- 1992 - An Indianapolis court finds heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson guilty of rape.
26 March Birthdays
- 1819 - Louise Otto, German author.
- 1850 - Edward Bellamy, writer (Looking Backward).
- 1859 - A.E. Houseman, poet (A Shropshire Lad).
- 1874 - Robert Frost, poet, multiple Pulitzer Prize-winner.
- 1880 - Duncan Hines, U.S. restaurant guide author
- 1904 - Joseph Campbell, folklorist and writer.
- 1911 - Tennessee Williams, American dramatist (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Name Desire).
- 1914 - William Westmoreland, U.S. army general during the Vietnam War.
- 1923 - Bob Elliot, radio comedian, one half of Bob and Ray.
- 1930 - Gregory Corso, beat poet, discovered literature in prison.
- 1930 - Sandra Day O'Connor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
- 1933 - Vine Deloria, Jr., writer, activist.
- 1942 - Erica Jong, poet, novelist (Fear of Flying, How to Save Your Own Life).