27 May History
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).