May 27Birthdays & History

On this day: May 27 in history

Oldest first. Tap a year to see it on the World Chronicle timeline.

1. 1096Count Emicho enters Mainz, where his followers massacre Jewish citizens. At least 600 Jews are killed.Europe
2. 1120Richard III of Capua is anointed as Prince two weeks before his untimely death.Europe
3. 1153Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland.Europe
4. 1199John is crowned King of England.Europe
5. 1257Richard of Cornwall, and his wife, Sanchia of Provence, are crowned King and Queen of the Germans at Aachen Cathedral.Europe
6. 1595A Gaelic Irish army successfully ambushes an English force in the battle of Clontibret during the Nine Years' War.Europe
7. 1644Manchu regent Dorgon defeats rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing.Asia
8. 1703Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.Europe
9. 1798The Pitt–Tierney duel takes place on Putney Heath outside London. A bloodless duel between the prime minister of Great Britain William Pitt the Younger and his political opponent George Tierney.Europe
10. 1798The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland; Irish rebel leaders defeat and kill a detachment of militia.Europe
11. 1799War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeat the French at Winterthur, Switzerland.Europe
12. 1813War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.North America
13. 1832An Egyptian army under Ibrahim Pasha captures Acre from the Ottomans after a five-months siege.Middle East
14. 1860Giuseppe Garibaldi begins the Siege of Palermo, part of the wars of Italian unification.Europe
15. 1863American Civil War: The first Union infantry assault of the Siege of Port Hudson occurs.North America
16. 1874The first group of Dorsland trekkers under the leadership of Gert Alberts leaves Pretoria.Africa
17. 1883Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia.Europe
18. 1896The F4-strength St. Louis–East St. Louis tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and causing over $10 million in damage.North America
19. 1905Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins.Asia
20. 1915HMS Princess Irene explodes and sinks off Sheerness, Kent, with the loss of 352 lives.Europe
21. 1917Pope Benedict XV promulgates the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the first comprehensive codification of Catholic canon law in the legal history of the Catholic Church.Europe
22. 1919The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.Europe
23. 1927The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.North America
24. 1930The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.North America
25. 1933New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.North America
26. 1935New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).North America
27. 1937In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.North America
28. 1940World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops; two survive.Europe
29. 1941World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic, killing almost 2,100 men.Europe
30. 1941World War II: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency".North America
31. 1942World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later.Europe
32. 1950The Linnanmäki amusement park is opened for the first time in Helsinki.Europe
33. 1958First flight of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II.North America
34. 1960In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celâl Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.Middle East
35. 1962The Centralia mine fire is ignited in the town's landfill above a coal mine.North America
36. 1965Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam.AsiaNorth America
37. 1967Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.Oceania
38. 1967The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.North America
39. 1971The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal.Europe
40. 1971Pakistani forces massacre over 200 civilians, mostly Bengali Hindus, in the Bagbati massacre.Asia
41. 1975Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, in North Yorkshire, England, kills 33, the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom.Europe
42. 1977A plane crash at José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, kills 67.Latin America
43. 1980The 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.Asia
44. 1984The Danube–Black Sea Canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s.Europe
45. 1988Somaliland War of Independence: The Somali National Movement launches a major offensive against Somali government forces in Hargeisa and Burao, then the second- and third-largest cities of Somalia.Africa
46. 1996First Chechen War: Russian president Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechen rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire.Europe
47. 1997The 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak occurs, spawning multiple tornadoes in Central Texas, including the F5 that killed 27 in Jarrell.North America
48. 1998Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.North America
49. 1999Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-96, the first shuttle mission to dock with the International Space Station.World
50. 2001Members of Abu Sayyaf, an Islamist separatist group, seize twenty hostages from an affluent island resort on Palawan in the Philippines; the hostage crisis would not be resolved until June 2002.Asia
51. 2006The 6.4 Mw Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of VIII (Damaging), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured.Asia
52. 2014The football club Kerala Blasters FC and its first supporters' group Manjappada are formed.Asia
53. 2016Barack Obama is the first president of the United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha.North AmericaAsia
54. 2017Andrew Scheer takes over after Rona Ambrose as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.North America
55. 2018Maryland Flood Event: A flood occurs throughout the Patapsco Valley, causing one death, destroying the entire first floors of buildings on Main Street in Ellicott City, and causing cars to overturn.North America

Source: Wikipedia "May 27" / CC BY-SA 4.0