May 27
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
[edit] Births
- 1652 - Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz (Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchesse d'Orléans), Duchesse d'Orléans and sister-in-law of Louis XIV (d. 1722)
- 1738 - Nathaniel Gorham, American politician (d. 1796)
- 1794 - Cornelius Vanderbilt, entrepreneur (d. 1877)
- 1819 - Julia Ward Howe, composer ("The Battle Hymn of the Republic") (d. 1910)
- 1836 - Jay Gould, American financier (d. 1892)
- 1837 - Wild Bill Hickok, gunfighter (d. 1876)
- 1864 - Ante Trumbić, Croat politician (d. 1938)
- 1867 - Arnold Bennett, British novelist (d. 1931)
- 1871 - Georges Rouault, painter and graphic artist (d. 1958)
- 1877 - Isadora Duncan, dancer (d. 1927)
- 1879 - Karl Bühler, psychologist (d. 1963)
- 1884 - Max Brod, author (d. 1968)
- 1888 - Louis Durey, French composer (d. 1979)
- 1893 - Hermann Dornemann, world's oldest man from November 19, 2004
- 1894 - Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French writer (d. 1961)
- 1894 - Dashiell Hammett, American author (d. 1961)
- 1897 - John Cockcroft, British physicist (d. 1967)
- 1904 - Chuhei Nambu, Japanese athlete
- 1907 - Rachel Carson, American ecologist (d. 1964)
- 1911 - Hubert H. Humphrey, Vice President of the United States (d. 1978)
- 1911 - Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem
- 1911 - Vincent Price, actor (d. 1993)
- 1912 - John Cheever, author (d. 1982)
- 1912 - Sam Snead, golf champion (d. 2002)
- 1913 - Wols, German painter
- 1915 - Herman Wouk, writer
- 1917 - Yasuhiro Nakasone, former Prime Minister of Japan
- 1921 - Caryl Chessman, murderer (d. 1960)
- 1922 - Christopher Lee, actor
- 1923 - Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and recipient of the Nobel Prize in peace 1973
- 1923 - Sumner Redstone, entrepreneur
- 1925 - Tony Hillerman, mystery writer
- 1930 - John Barth, novelist
- 1934 - Harlan Ellison, science fiction author
- 1935 - Lee Meriwether, Catwoman actress and former Miss America
- 1936 - Louis Gossett Jr., actor
- 1937 - Allan Carr, producer, writer (d. 1999)
- 1943 - Cilla Black, singer
- 1945 - Bruce Cockburn, musician
- 1946 - Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, jazz musician (d. 2005)
- 1947 - Branko Oblak, Slovenian football player
- 1955 - Eric Bischoff, WWE performer
- 1957 - Siouxsie Sioux, musician ("Siouxsie and the Banshees ")
- 1958 - Neil Finn, New Zealand singer and songwriter
- 1958 - Linnea Quigley, 'B' Movie actress
- 1958 - Wayne Williams, Atlanta, Georgia, child murderer
- 1961 - Peri Gilpin, actress
- 1965 - Adam Corola, Radio Personality
- 1968 - Jeff Bagwell, baseball star
- 1968 - Frank Thomas, baseball star
- 1970 - Joseph Fiennes, actor
- 1971 - Paul Bettany, actor
- 1971 - Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes, singer (d. 2002)
- 1974 - Derek Webb, singer-songwriter, former member of Caedmon's Call
- 1974 - Danny Wuerffel, American football quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner
- 1975 - Jamie Oliver, British celebrity chef and TV personality (The Naked Chef)
[edit] Deaths
- 866 - Ordoño I, king of Asturias
- 927 - Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria
- 1508 - Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (b. 1452)
- 1541 - Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury, daughter of George, Duke of Clarence (executed) (b. 1374)
- 1564 - John Calvin, religious reformer (b. 1509)
- 1610 - Ravaillac, assassin who killed Henry IV of France (b. 1578)
- 1661 - Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, Scottish Covenanter, was beheaded
- 1707 - Marquise de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV of France (b. 1641)
- 1797 - François-Noël Babeuf, French revolutionary and early socialist (b. 1760)
- 1831 - Jedediah Smith, American explorer (b. 1799)
- 1840 - Nicolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1782)
- 1910 - Robert Koch, German bacteriologist (b. 1843)
- 1926 - Srečko Kosovel, Slovenian poet
- 1960 - James Montgomery Flagg, illustrator (b. 1877)
- 1964 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian politician (b. 1889)
- 1986 - Isma'il Raji' al-Faruqi, Palestinian-American Muslim thinker, philosopher, and comparative religion scholar (b. 1921)
- 1987 - John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1891)
- 1991 - Leopold Nowak, musicologist (b. 1904)
- 1993 - Werner Stocker, actor
- 2000 - Crawford Murray MacLehose of Beoch, British Governor of Hong Kong (b. 1917)
- 2000 - Maurice Richard, ice hockey player (b. 1921)
- 2003 - Luciano Berio, Italian composer (b. 1925)
[edit] Events
- 1328 - Philip VI is crowned King of France.
- 1703 - Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.
- 1813 - War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.
- 1849 - The Great Hall of Euston station, London opened.
- 1860 - Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian Unification.
- 1883 - Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia.
- 1895 - Oscar Wilde is sent to prison for sodomy.
- 1896 - The F5-strength East St. Louis Tornado hits in East Saint Louis, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri, killing 255 people.
- 1901 - In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
- 1905 - Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins.
- 1907 - A Bubonic plague outbreak begins in San Francisco, California.
- 1919 - The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.
- 1923 - The first 24 hours of Le Mans race ends.
- 1924 - The Music Corporation of America (MCA) is founded.
- 1927 - The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacturing the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make Ford Model As.
- 1930 - The 1,046 feet (319 meters) tall Chrysler Building in New York (tallest man-made structure at the time) opens to the public.
- 1932 - The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens.
- 1933 - New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.
- 1933 - The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"
- 1933 - The Century of Progress World's Fair opens in Chicago.
- 1935 - New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in the case A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).
- 1936 - The RMS Queen Mary begins her maiden voyage.
- 1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County.
- 1939 - DC Comics publishes its second superhero in Detective Comics #27; he is Batman, one of the most topical comic book superheroes of all time.
- 1940 - World War II: 97 out of 99 members of a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are massacred while trying to surrender at Dunkirk. The German commander, Captain Fritz Knochlein, is eventually hanged for war crimes.
- 1941 - World War II: US President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency".
- 1941 - World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing 2,300 men.
- 1960 - In Turkey, General Cemal Gürsel leads a military coup d'état removing President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government.
- 1963 - Folk music singer Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album, which features "Blowin' in the Wind" and several other of his best-known songs.
- 1964 - Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru dies in office.
- 1965 - Vietnam War: United States warships begin bombardments of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam for the first time.
- 1968 - Future U.S. President George W. Bush enlists in the Texas Air National Guard.
- 1974 - Jacques Chirac becomes Prime Minister of France.
- 1980 - The Gwangju Massacre: airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.
- 1995 - In Charlottesville, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.
- 1996 - First Chechnya War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire in the war.
- 1997 - The F5-strength Jarrell Tornado slams into the small town of Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people.
- 1998 - Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.
- 1999 - The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.
