On This Day, May 26: USS Bennington explodes, killing dozens

May 26, 1954 marked a tragic event when over 100 crew members of the USS Bennington aircraft carrier lost their lives in an explosion off Rhode Island. This incident was a significant part of history. In 1864, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed an act to establish the Montana Territory, which eventually became a state 25 years later. Similarly, in 1868, President Andrew Johnson was acquitted by the U.S. Senate after a two-month trial on impeachment charges. Nicholas II became the Russian czar in 1896, and in 1897, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” was published.

In other historical events, the last Ford Model T was produced in 1927, marking the end of an era with over 15 million vehicles manufactured. The Dunkirk evacuation commenced in 1940, helping rescue soldiers trapped by German forces in France. Fast forward to 1972, President Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a pact to limit nuclear weapons during a summit in Moscow.

Tragedies also struck over the years, as a cyclone hit the Bay of Bengal in 1985, claiming 1,400 lives in Bangladesh. In 1991, all 223 passengers on a Lauda Air Boeing 767-300 died in an explosion over Thailand. Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley tied the knot in the Dominican Republic in 1994 but divorced two years later. In 2003, a plane crash in Turkey killed all 74 individuals on board, including 62 Spanish soldiers returning from Afghanistan peacekeeping duties. The year 2021 saw a heartbreaking incident when a gunman opened fire at a rail yard in San Jose, California, taking the lives of nine people before turning the gun on himself.