Historical Events on March 26

Heaven's Gate

Here are some historical events that happened on March 26:

1931 - Swissair is founded as the national airline of Switzerland.

1953 - Dr. Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.

1979 - The Camp David peace treaty is signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, hosted by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

1997 - Thirty-nine bodies are found in the Heaven's Gate cult suicides in San Diego, California.

1971 - East Pakistan declares its independence from Pakistan, leading to the Bangladesh Liberation War.

1979 - The first fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch.

1999 - The "Melissa worm" infects Microsoft word processing and e-mail systems worldwide.

1974 - The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang, China's first Emperor, is discovered in Xi'an.

1973 - The United States and the Soviet Union sign a treaty to prevent nuclear weapons testing in space, the atmosphere, and underwater.

1982 - Groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1976 - Queen Elizabeth II sends the first royal e-mail, from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment.

1967 - The South African government passes a law banning Martin Luther King Jr.'s book "Stride Toward Freedom" because it was about nonviolent resistance.

1934 - The driving test is introduced in the United Kingdom.

1958 - The United States Army launches Explorer 3, the third successful launch in the Explorer program.

1999 - A jury in Michigan finds Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill man.

These are just a few events that have taken place on March 26 throughout history.