27 January History
- 1695 - Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Amhed II.
- 1825 - Congress approves Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears."
- 1862 - President Abraham Lincoln issues General War Order No. 1, setting in motion the Union armies.
- 1900 - Foreign diplomats in Peking fear revolt and demand that the Imperial Government discipline the Boxer Rebels.
- 1905 - Russian General Kuropatkin takes the offensive in Manchuria. The Japanese under General Oyama suffer heavy casualties.
- 1916 - President Woodrow Wilson opens preparedness program.
- 1918 - Communists attempt to seize power in Finland.
- 1924 - Lenin's body is laid in a marble tomb on Red Square near the Kremlin.
- 1935 - A League of Nations majority favors depriving Japan of mandates.
- 1939 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves the sale of U.S. war planes to France.
- 1941 - The United States and Great Britain begin high-level military talks in Washington.
- 1943 - The first U.S. raids on the Reich blast Wilhelmshaven base and Emden.
- 1959 - NASA selects 110 candidates for the first U.S. space flight.
- 1965 - Military leaders oust the civilian government of Tran Van Huong in Saigon.
- 1967 - Three astronauts are killed in a flash fire that engulfed their Apollo 1 spacecraft.
- 1973 - A cease fire in Vietnam is called as the Paris peace accords are signed by the United States and North Vietnam.
- 1978 - The State Supreme Court rules that Nazis can display the Swastika in a march in Skokie, Illinois.
- 1985 - Pope John Paul says mass to one million in Venezuela.
- 1756 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian musical genius and composer whose works included The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute.
- 1850 - Samuel Gompers, first President of American Federation of Labor.
- 1859 - Kaiser Wilhelm II, emperor who ruled Germany during World War I but was forced to abdicate in 1918.
- 1900 - Hyman Rickover, American admiral who is considered the "Father of the Atomic Submarine."