27 May History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1564    -    John Calvin, one of the dominant figures of the Protestant Reformation, dies in Geneva.
  • 1647    -    Achsah Young becomes the first woman known to be executed as a witch in Massachusetts.
  • 1668    -    Three colonists are expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.
  • 1813    -    Americans capture Fort George, Canada.
  • 1907    -    The Bubonic Plague breaks out in San Francisco.
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  • 1919    -    A U.S. Navy seaplane completes the first transatlantic flight.
  • 1929    -    Colonel Charles Lindbergh marries Anne Spencer Murrow.
  • 1935    -    The Supreme Court declares President Franklin Roosevelt's National Recovery Act unconstitutional.
  • 1937    -    San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge opens.
  • 1941    -    The German battleship Bismarck is sunk by British naval and air forces.
  • 1942    -    German General Rommel begins a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.
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  • 1944    -    American General MacArthur lands on Biak Island in New Guinea.
  • 1960    -    A military coup overthrows the democratic government of Turkey.
  • 1969    -    Construction begins on Walt Disney World in Florida.
  • 1972    -    President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev sign an arms reduction agreement.
  • 1999    -    The international war crimes tribunal indicts Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for war atrocities.

  • 27 May Birthdays

  • 1332    -    Dante Alighieri, Italian writer.
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  • 1794    -    Cornelius Vanderbilt, American industrialist and philanthropist.
  • 1819    -    Julia Ward Howe, writer of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
  • 1837    -    Wild Bill [James Butler] Hickok, American frontiersman and lawman.
  • 1878    -    Isadora Duncan, dancer and choreographer.
  • 1894    -     (Samuel) Dashiell Hammett, detective writer (The Maltese Falcon).
  • 1907    -    Rachel Carson, biologist and writer (Silent Spring, The Sea Around Us).
  • 1911    -    Hubert Humphrey, U.S. politician.
  • 1911    -    Vincent Price, actor and horror film icon.
  • 1912    -    John Cheever, writer (The Wapshot Chronicles).
  • 1915    -    Herman Wouk, author (Winds of War, The Caine Mutiny).
  • 1923    -    Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under President Nixon.
  • 1925    -    Tony Hillerman, mystery novelist (The Blessing Way, Sacred Clowns).