January 27

Events98 - 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. 1142 - Wrongful execution of noted Song Dynasty General Yue Fei.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.1416 - Republic of Dubrovnik, as a first state in Europe, outlaw slavery1593 - 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. 1678 - The first fire engine company in the United States went into service.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, the first public university in the United States.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.1909 - The Young Left is founded in Norway.1915 - United States Marines occupy Haiti.1918 - The first hostilities occurred in the Finnish Civil War, beginning the war.1926 - John Logie Baird makes the first television broadcast.1939 - First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.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 the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.1945 - World War II: Lt.Col. Mucci comades Army Rangers to liberate the prisoners of the Cabanatuan POW camp.1951 - Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats. 1967 - Apollo program: Apollo 1 - Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the 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, Colonel William Nolde falls, becoming the conflict's last recorded American combat casualty.1977 - Record company EMI sacks the controversial United Kingdom punk rock group the Sex Pistols.1983 - Pilot shaft of World's longest subaqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō breaks through.1984 - Carl Lewis beats his own indoor world long jump record by 9¼ inches (23.5 centimeters) with a 28-foot, 10¼-inch (8.795-meter) jump.1996 - Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane, in a military coup. 1996 - Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 1997 - It is revealed that French museums have nearly 2,000 pieces of art that were stolen by Nazis. 1998 - First Lady of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton appears on The Today Show, calling the attacks against her husband part of a vast right-wing conspiracy.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 1,000.2007 - Approximately 100,000 protesters converge on the Mall in Washington, D.C. for the January 27, 2007 anti-war protest sponsored by United for Peace and Justice.
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