27 December History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1512    -    The laws of Burgos give New World natives legal protection against abuse and authorize Negro slavery.
  • 1831    -    HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, departs from Plymouth. It will eventually visit the Galapagos Islands where Darwin will form his theories on evolution.
  • 1862    -    Union General William Rosecrans' army begins moving slowly toward Murfreesboro.
  • 1913    -    Charles Moyer, president of the Miners Union, is shot in the back and dragged through the streets of Chicago.
  • 1915    -    In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an eight-hour day and higher wages.
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  • 1932    -    Radio City Music Hall opens.
  • 1933    -    Josef Stalin calls tensions with Japan a grave danger.
  • 1939    -    A series of vicious earthquakes take 11,000 lives in Turkey.
  • 1941    -    Japanese bombers attack Manila, despite its claim as an open city.
  • 1944    -    General George S. Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by the 4th Armored Division, relieves the surrounded city of Bastogne in Belgium.
  • 1945    -    The International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development are created.
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  • 1947    -    The new Italian constitution is promulgated in Rome.
  • 1950    -    The United States and Spain resume relations for the first time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
  • 1956    -    Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida is outlawed.
  • 1968    -    The United States agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
  • 1979    -    President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan is ousted and murdered in a coup backed by the Soviet Union, beginning a war that will last more than 10 years.
  • 1983    -    President Reagan takes all responsibility for the lack of security in Beirut that allowed a terrorist on a suicide mission to kill 241 Marines.
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  • 1984    -    Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko.

  • 27 December Birthdays

  • 1571    -    Johannes Kepler, German astronomer and mathematician.
  • 1822    -    Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist.
  • 1829    -    Hinton Helper, southern abolitionist who wrote The Impending Crisis.
  • 1901    -    Marlene Dietrich, German-born singer and actress.
  • 1943    -    Cokie Roberts, American broadcast journalist.