January 27
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
[edit] Births
- 1756 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- 1832 - Lewis Carroll
- 1955 - John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
[edit] Deaths
- 98 - Nerva, Roman Emperor (b. 35)
- 1490 - Ashikaga Yoshimasa, Japanese shogun (b. 1435)
- 1629 - Hieronymus Praetorius, German composer (b. 1560)
- 1638 - Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses, Spanish novelist
- 1731 - Bartolomeo Cristofori, Italian maker of musical instruments (b. 1655)
- 1740 - Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon, Prime Minister of France (b. 1692)
- 1814 - Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher (b. 1761)
- 1816 - Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood, British admiral (b. 1724)
- 1851 - John James Audubon, French-American naturalist, ornithologist, and painter (b. 1785)
- 1860 - János Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (d. 1860)
- 1880 - Edward Middleton Barry, English architect (b. 1830)
- 1901 - Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (b. 1813)
- 1910 - Thomas Crapper, English plumber (b. 1836)
- 1919 - Endre Ady, Hungarian poet (b. 1877)
- 1940 - Isaac Babel, Ukrainian writer (b. 1894)
- 1956 - Erich Kleiber, German conductor (b. 1890)
- 1967 - Crew of Apollo 1:
- 1970 - Rita Angus, New Zealand painter (b. 1908)
- 1971 - Jacobo Arbenz, President of Guatemala (b. 1913)
- 1972 - Mahalia Jackson, American singer (b. 1911)
- 1975 - Bill Walsh, American producer and writer (b. 1913)
- 1986 - Lilli Palmer, German-born actress (b. 1914)
- 1988 - Massa Makan Diabaté, Malian author (b. 1938)
- 1989 - Thomas Sopwith, British aviation pioneer (b. 1888)
- 1992 - Allan Jones, actor and singer (b. 1908)
- 1993 - André the Giant, professional wrestler and actor (b. 1946)
- 1994 - Claude Akins, actor
- 1996 - Ralph Yarborough, American politician (b. 1903)
- 2004 - Jack Paar, American television show host (b. 1918)
[edit] Events
- 98 - Trajan becomes Roman Emperor after the death of Nerva.
- 672 - St. Vitalian ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
- 847 - Sergius II ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
- 1186 - Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, weds Constance of Sicily.
- 1343 - Pope Clement VI issues the Bull Unigenitus.
- 1593 - Vatican opens 7 year trial against scholar Giordano Bruno.
- 1606 - Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, and ending in their execution on January 31.
- 1695 - Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his death in 1703.
- 1785 - The University of Georgia is founded.
- 1825 - U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears."
- 1870 - The first college sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, is formed at DePauw University.
- 1880 - Thomas Edison files a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.
- 1888 - In Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society is founded.
- 1900 - Boxer Rebellion: Foreign diplomats in Peking, China demand that the Boxer rebels be disciplined.
- 1909 - The Young Left is founded in Norway.
- 1915 - United States Marines occupy Haiti.
- 1926 - John Logie Baird demonstrates the first television broadcast.
- 1939 - United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves the sale of United States war planes to France.
- 1941 - World War II: Fighting at Derna, Libya, begins. Following the capture of Tobruk, two brigades of the 6th Australian Division under Major General Iven Mackay pursue the Italians westwards and encounters an Italian rear guard at Derna.
- 1943 - World War II: Fifty bombers mount the first entirely American air raid against Germany, targeting Wilhelmshaven.
- 1944 - World War II: The two-year Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
- 1945 - World War II: The Red Army arrives at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland and find the Nazi concentration camp where 1.1-1.5 million people had been murdered.
- 1951 - Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats.
- 1967 - Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.
- 1967 - More than sixty nations sign the Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.
- 1973 - Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War.
- 1983 - World's longest subaqueous tunnel (53.90 km) opens in Japan connecting the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido.
- 1984 - Carl Lewis beats his own indoor world jumping record by 9¼ inches (23.5 centimeters) with a 28-foot, 10¼-inch (8.795-meter) jump.
- 1984 - Michael Jackson suffers severe burns to his scalp while filming a Pepsi commercial after a spark ignites his hair on fire due to a pyrotechnical fault and is rushed to hospital.
- 1991 - Muhammad Siyad Barre flees his compound in Mogadishu.
- 1991 - Super Bowl XXV: The New York Giants defeat the Buffalo Bills, 20-19.
- 1992 - Mike Tyson goes on trial charged with raping a 1991 Miss Black America contestant.
- 1996 - Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane, in a military coup.
- 1996 - Germany observes its 1st Holocaust Rememberance Day.
- 1997 - It is revealed that French museums have nearly 2,000 pieces of art that were stolen by Nazis.
- 1998 - American First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appears on the Today Show calling the attacks against her husband part of a vast right-wing conspiracy.
- 2001 - Professors Suzanne and Half Zantop are killed in the Dartmouth Murders.
- 2001 - Ten members of the Oklahoma State University men's basketball team and support staff die in a plane crash in Colorado.
- 2002 - Several explosions at a military dump in Lagos, Nigeria kill more than 1,000.
