This day in History
Today is Monday, 27 April 2015
1296 Edward I defeats the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar.
1509 Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice.
1565 The first Spanish settlement in Philippines is established in Cebu City.
1773 British Parliament passes the Tea Act.
1746 King George II wins the battle of Culloden.
1813 American forces capture York (present-day Toronto), the seat of government in Ontario.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus.
1861 West Virginia secedes from Virginia after Virginia secedes from the Union.
1863 The Army of the Potomac begins marching on Chancellorsville.
1865 The Sultana, a steam-powered riverboat, catches fire and burns after one of its boilers explodes. At least 1,238 of the 2,031 passengers–mostly former Union POWs–are killed.
1909 The Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, is overthrown.
1937 German bombers of the Condor Legion devastate Guernica, Spain.
1941 The Greek army capitulates to the invading Germans.
1950 South Africa passes the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
1961 The United Kingdom grants Sierra Leone independence.
1975 Saigon is encircled by North Vietnamese troops.
1978 The Afghanistan revolution begins.
1989 Protesting students take over Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.
Born on April 27
1737 Edward Gibbon, historian (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).
1791 Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and the code.
1822 Ulysses S. Grant, Union general during the American Civil War, 18th President of the United States (1869-1877).
1840 Edward Whymper, the first man to climb the Matterhorn.
1900 Walter Lantz, cartoonist, creator of Woody Woodpecker.
1904 Cecil Day-Lewis, Irish poet, father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
1927 Coretta Scott King, civil rights activist, wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.