May 27

May 27 is the 147th day (148th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 218 days remaining.

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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 ends with the decisive defeat of the Russian fleet.
• 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.
• 1932 – The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens.
• 1933 – New Deal: In America The 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.
• 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: In America President 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 American president George W. Bush enlists in the Texas Air National Guard.
• 1972 – President of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev and President of the United States Richard Nixon sign the SALT I agreements.
• 1974 – Jacques Chirac becomes Prime Minister of France.
• 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.

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 or 1878 – 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, 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
• 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 – Danny Wuerffel, American football quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner
• 1975 – Jamie Oliver, British celebrity chef and TV personality (The Naked Chef)

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, 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)
• 1991 – Leopold Nowak, musicologist (b. 1904)
• 1993 – Werner Stocker, actor
• 2000 – Crawford Murray MacLehose of Beoch, former Hong Kong Governor (b. 1917)
• 2000 – Maurice Richard, ice hockey player (b. 1921)
• 2003 – Luciano Berio, Italian composer (b. 1925)

External links

• BBC: On This Day

May 26 – May 28 – April 27 – June 27 – listing of all days