January 27 Calendar
  • 661 The 4th Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, Ali ibn Abu Talib is struck on the head while praying at the Great Mosque of Kufa, Mesopotamia by a poison-coated sword wielded by Ibn Muljam a Kharijite, dies two days later
  • 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
  • 1302 Dante becomes a Florentine political exile
  • 1343 Pope Clement VI issues the Bull Unigenitus

Treaty of Interest

1534 French King Francis I signs classified treaty with Landgrave of Hesse

  • 1538 Dutchy of Guelders accepts rule of William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg

Witch Burned in Edinburgh

1591 Scottish schoolmaster Dr. John Fian burned for witchcraft at Castle Hill, Edinburgh by order King James VI. Part of the Berwick witch trials.

  • 1593 Vatican opens blasphemy and theological heresy trial against Italian scholar and wayward friar Giordano Bruno; proceedings drag on for over 7 years [1]
  • 1649 English High Court of Justice finds King Charles I "guilty of the crimes of which he had been accused, did judge him tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of the nation, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body"
  • 1662 1st American lime kiln begins operation in Providence, Rhode Island

Morgan lands at Panama City

1671 Welsh pirate Henry Morgan lands at the gates of Panama City

"The Age of Louis the Great"

1687 Charles Perrault's poem "The Age of Louis the Great" read out at the French Academy, part of the literary quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

  • 1695 Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his death in 1703.
  • 1785 1st US state university chartered in Athens, Georgia
  • 1823 President Monroe appoints first US ambassadors to South America

1825 US President James Monroe urges Congress to approve creation of Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi River, for the relocation of Eastern Indian tribes to 'promote their welfare and happiness" [1]

  • 1853 US whaling and sealing vessel the Levant captained by Mercator Cooper, makes the first known landing on mainland Antarctica at Oates Coast, Victoria land
  • 1864 Battle of Fair Gardens, Tennessee
  • 1864 Civil War skirmish at Kelly's Ford, Virginia
  • 1870 1st sorority (Kappa Alpha Theta) (DePauw U in Greencastle, Indiana)
  • 1870 After accepting 15th amendment, Virginia is readmitted to the Union
  • 1870 Manitoba & Northwest Territories incorporated
  • 1886 First British government of Salisbury resigns
  • 1891 Mine explosion kills 109 at Mount Pleasant Pennsylvania
  • 1894 Midwinter Fair opens in Golden Gate Park
  • 1896 Tasmania bowl out Victoria for 65 for their 1st ever innings victory
  • 1897 British troops occupy Bida Gold Coast (Ghana)
  • 1900 Foreign diplomats in Peking, China, write formal notes of protest demanding that the Chinese Government stop the Boxes and other groups leading attacks on Westerners and Christians.
  • 1900 Social Democrat Party of America (Debs' party) holds 1st convention
  • 1902 5 workers killed on explosion during IRT subway construction (NYC)
  • 1905 Maurice Rouvier forms government in France
  • 1906 Rudolf Gundersen skates world record 500m at 44.8 sec
  • 1908 Pasiphaë, a satellite of Jupiter, discovered by Melotte
  • 1909 The Young Left is founded in Norway
  • 1914 A petition is written and submitted by the black and coloured women of the Orange Free State, an independent Boer sovereign republic in southern Africa, against the carrying of passes by women
  • 1915 US Marines occupy Haiti
  • 1916 Communist party "Spartacus Letters" 1st published in Berlin
  • 1917 Coen de Koning wins 2nd official 11 cities race (9:53) (record)

"Tarzan of the Apes"

1918 "Tarzan of the Apes", 1st Tarzan film, premieres at Broadway Theater

  • 1918 The first hostilities occurred in the Finnish Civil War.
  • 1924 Egyptian king Foead nominates Saad Zaghloel Pasja premier
  • 1924 The Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes sign the Treaty of Rome, agreeing to the annexation of independent Free State of Fiume by Italy (now Rijeka, Croatia)
  • 1924 The Natal Indian Congress and the Natal Indian Association jointly organise a mass meeting in Durban, South Africa in opposition to the Class Areas Bill

The Schrödinger Equation

1926 Physicist Erwin Schrödinger publishes his theory of wave mechanics and presents what becomes known as the Schrödinger equation in quantum mechanics

  • 1926 US Senate agrees to join World Court
  • 1933 Otto Meisnner (Head of the German President's Office) dines with British ambassador Sir Horace Rumbold
  • 1934 French government of Chautemps falls (Stavisky Affair)
  • 1934 VARA refuses to hire after commemoration of Marinus Van de Lubbe
  • 1939 First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning
  • 1940 -17°F (-27°C), CCC Camp F-16, Georgia (state record)

1941 Peruvian ambassador Ricardo Rivera-Schreiber warns American Ambassador of Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor

  • 1942 -19°F (-27.4°C) is the coldest day in the Netherlands since 1850
  • 1943 1st US air attack on Germany (Wilhelmshafen)

1944 Siege of Leningrad lifted by the Soviets after 880 days and more than 2 million Russians killed

  • 1945 Nazi occupiers forbid food transport to West (The Netherlands)

Liberation of Auschwitz

1945 Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps in Poland - now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day [1]

  • 1945 Wally van Hall, Dutch banker and resistance leader, arrested
  • 1948 1st locomotive to carry 1,000,000 pounds (450,000 kg) operates
  • 1948 1st tape recorder sold
  • 1949 Chinese liner "Taiping" collides with a collier off south China
  • 1951 US begins 126 nuclear tests at Nevada Test Site
  • 1953 Netherlands end Marshall aid
  • 1958 Ferenc Munnich succeeds Kadar as premier of Hungary
  • 1963 Yevgeni Grishin skates world record 500m in 39.6 sec
  • 1964 US Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine announces her bid for Republican presidential nomination
  • 1965 1st ground station-to-aircraft radio communication via satellite
  • 1965 Groundbreaking for "Dragon Gateway" at Grant Avenue

1967 Fire in NASA's Apollo 1 Command Module kills astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee during a launch rehearsal

  • 1967 Treaty signed banning military use of nuclear weapons in space
  • 1968 French submarine Minerve disappears in the Mediterranean with the loss of 52 crew
  • 1969 14 spies hanged in Baghdad
  • 1969 9 Jews publicly executed in Damascus, Syria

Paisley Sentenced

1969 Reverend Ian Paisley sentenced to 3 to three months in jail at Armagh for participating in unlawful assembly during civil rights march (Nov. 30)

  • 1971 Montgomery St Station, last link in Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco, 'holed thru'
  • 1971 The body of a man who had been shot dead is found in Belfast
  • 1972 The British Army and the Irish Republican Army engage in gun battles near County Armagh; British troops fire over 1,000 rounds of ammunition
  • 1972 Two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers shot dead by IRA in an attack on their patrol car in the Creggan Road, Derry
  • 1973 Paris Peace Accords signed by US Secretary of State William P. Rogers, (North) Vietnam Minister for Foreign Affairs Nguyen Duy Trinh, Republic of South Vietnam Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyễn Thị Bình, and Republic of Vietnam Minister for Foreign Affairs Trần Văn Lắm, ending America's then longest war and it's military draft.
  • 1973 US female Figure Skating championship won by Janet Lynn
  • 1973 US male Figure Skating championship won by Gordon McKellen Jr
  • 1976 9th ABA All-Star Game: Denver 144 beats ABA 138 at Denver
  • 1976 Morocco-Algeria battles in West Sahara
  • 1976 Revival of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1924 stage drama "They Knew What They Wanted", opens at the Playhouse Theatre, NYC; runs for 23 performances

Mugabe Returns From Exile

1980 Robert Mugabe returns to Rhodesia after 5 years in exile

  • 1982 Mauno Koivisto installed as President of Finland
  • 1982 Roberto S. Cordova installed as President of Honduras
  • 1983 Pilot tunnel breaks through under the Tsugaru Strait, for Seikan Tunnel project to connect Honshu and Hokkaido, Japan, by rail
  • 1985 15th Space Shuttle (51-C) Mission-Discovery 3 returns to Earth
  • 1987 Midnight Rockers beat Buddy Rose & Doug Somers for AWA World Tag Team

Kennedy Nominated

1988 Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves nomination of Judge Anthony Kennedy to US Supreme Court

  • 1989 German war criminals Fischer & Aus der Funten freed
  • 1991 Dutch Pacifist Socialistic Party disbands
  • 1991 Nadine Strossen is 1st female president of the ACLU

Clinton, Flowers Accusations

1992 Presidential candidate Bill Clinton (D) & Genifer Flowers accuse each other of lying over her assertion they had a 12-year affair

  • 1993 DC-3 crashes in Kinshasa, killing 12
  • 1994 Carlos Reina succeeds pres Callejas in Honduras
  • 1994 Romanian social democrats form government with anti-Semites
  • 1996 15 day old conjoined twins separated: Sarah Morales survives, Sarahi dies
  • 1996 Catherine Roskam becomes the 1st NY female Episcopal bishop
  • 1996 Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected President of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane, in a military coup
  • 1996 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa Atoll
  • 1996 Germany celebrates its 1st Holocaust Remembrance Day
  • 1996 Shiv Chanderpaul scores 303* for Guyana v Jamaica at Kingston
  • 1998 Crane crashes into Roosevelt Island tram (NYC), injuring 10
  • 1998 Roland Clarkson discovers 2^3021377-1 (37th known Mersenne prime)
  • 2013 A bus crash into a ravine in Serta, Portugal, kills 11 people and injures an additional 32
  • 2013 A series of bomb attacks in Kandahar, Afghanistan, kills 20 police officers
  • 2013 In Port Said, Egypt, protests result in 7 people being killed and 630 are injured

Trump's Muslim Travel Ban

2017 Donald Trump issues executive order banning travel to the US for 7 mostly Muslim countries and suspending admission for refugees

  • 2018 Bomb in an ambulance kills over 100 people in Kabul, Taliban claim responsibility
  • 2019 Landslide kills 15 at a wedding party in a hotel in Abancay, Peru
  • 2019 Tornado strikes Havana, Cuba, killing three and injuring 172
  • 2019 Two bombs at a Roman Catholic cathedral on Jolo Island, southern, Philippines kills 20, Islamic State claims responsibility
  • 2020 Former king of Belgium, Albert II admits fathering a child after DNA tests confirm paternity

Biden Supreme Court Pledge

2022 US President Joe Biden pledges to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court

  • 2023 International Holocaust Remembrance Day: representatives from various countries gather at site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp; among attendees is Doug Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a US president or vice president [1]
  • 2023 New Zealand city of Auckland declares a state of emergency as a tropical storm brings record levels of rain, major flooding and four deaths [1]
  • 2023 Urgent search announced for tiny radioactive capsule 6mmx8mm, which dropped out of a truck somewhere along 1,400 km journey in Western Australia [1]
  • 2024 World's largest cruise ship Icon of the Seas, able to house 7,600 passengers, at 365 meters (1,198 ft) 5x larger than the Titanic, sets sail from Miami on its maiden voyage [1]

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