26 APRIL
1718 Commodore Esek Hopkins (April 26, 1718 â February 26, 1802) was an American naval officer and slave trader. Hopkins was the only Commander in Chief of the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War. He was also an accomplished merchant captain and privateer. He is noted for his successful raid on the British port of Providence, in the Bahamas, and capturing large stores of military supplies.
1812 Alfred Krupp (born Alfried Felix Alwyn Krupp; Essen, 26 April 1812 â Essen, 14 July 1887) was a German steel manufacturer and inventor; the largest arms supplier of his era, which earned him the nickname “The Cannon King”.
1826 Ambrose Ransom Wright (April 26, 1826 â December 21, 1872) was a lawyer, Georgia politician, and Confederate general in the American Civil War.
1826 George Hull Ward (April 26, 1826 â July 3, 1863) was a soldier and Union officer in the American Civil War.
1827 Charles Edward Hovey (April 26, 1827 â November 17, 1897) was an educator, college president, pension lobbyist and a brevet major general in the United States Army during the American Civil War.
1896 Ernst Udet (26 April 1896 â 17 November 1941) was a German pilot during World War I and a Luftwaffe Colonel-General (Generaloberst) during World War II. a notable flying ace of World War I, scoring 62 confirmed victories by the end of his life. The highest scoring German fighter pilot to survive that war, and the second-highest scoring after Manfred von Richthofen, his commander in the Flying Circus, Udet rose to become a squadron commander under Richthofen, and later under Hermann Göring. The launch of Operation Barbarossa, combined with issues with the Luftwaffe’s needs for equipment outstripping Germany’s production capacity and increasingly poor relations with the Nazi Party, caused Udet to commit suicide on 17 November 1941 by shooting himself in the head. “Our defeat was caused by Udet,” Hitler would claim. “That man concocted the most nonsensical state of affairs ever seen in the history of the Luftwaffe.
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