April 26, 1945

1945Richard Armitage, American diplomat and government official (died 2025)^[†]

Richard Lee Armitage was an American diplomat and government official. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Armitage served as a U.S. Navy officer in three combat tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a riverine warfare advisor. After leaving active duty, he served in a number of civil-service roles under Republican administrations. He worked as an aide to Senator Bob Dole before serving in various posts in the Defense Department and State Department.

1945Howard Davies, English director and producer (died 2016)^[†]

Stephen Howard Davies, was a British theatre and television director.

1945Dick Johnson, Australian racing driver^[†]

Richard Johnson is a part-owner of the V8 Supercar team Dick Johnson Racing and a former racing driver. As a driver, he was a five-time Australian Touring Car Champion and a three-time winner of the Bathurst 1000. As of 2008 Johnson has claimed over twenty awards and honours, including the V8 Supercars Hall of Fame into which he was inducted in 2001.

1945Sylvain Simard, Canadian academic and politician^[†]

Sylvain Simard is a politician and academic based in the Canadian province of Quebec. He represented Richelieu in the National Assembly of Quebec from 1994 to 2012, and was a cabinet minister in the governments of Lucien Bouchard and Bernard Landry. Simard is a member of the Parti Québécois (PQ).

1945Sigmund Rascher, German physician (born 1909)^[†]

Sigmund Rascher was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) doctor. He conducted deadly experiments on humans pertaining to high altitude, freezing and blood coagulation under the patronage of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, to whom his wife Karoline "Nini" Diehl had direct connections. When police investigations uncovered that the couple had defrauded the public with their supernatural fertility by 'hiring' and kidnapping babies, she and Rascher were arrested in April 1944. He was accused of financial irregularities, murder of his former lab assistant, and scientific fraud, and brought to Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps before being executed. After his death, the Nuremberg Trials judged his experiments as inhumane and criminal.

1945Pavlo Skoropadskyi, German-Ukrainian general and politician, Hetman of Ukraine (born 1871)^[†]

Pavlo Petrovych Skoropadskyi was a Ukrainian aristocrat, military and state leader, who served as the hetman of the Ukrainian State throughout 1918 following a coup d'état in April 29 of the same year.

1945World War II: Battle of Bautzen: Last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.^[†]

World War II or the Second World War was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

1945World War II: Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army liberate Baguio as they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita.^[†]

Baguio, officially the City of Baguio, is a highly urbanized city in the Cordillera Administrative Region, Philippines. It is known as the "Summer Capital of the Philippines", owing to the city's cool climate relative to the lowlands. With an approximate elevation of 1,500 meters above mean sea level, Baguio belongs to the Luzon tropical pine forests ecoregion; the climate is conducive for the growth of mossy plants, orchids and pine trees, to which it attributes its other moniker as the "City of Pines".