On This Day — 27 January

2023

Protests and public outrage spark across the U.S. after the release of multiple videos by the Memphis Police Department showing officers punching, kicking, and pepper spraying Tyre Nichols as a result of running away from a traffic stop, which resulted him dying in the hospital three days later after the incident.

Tyre Nichols protests

2023

A shooting at a synagogue in Neve Yaakov, East Jerusalem, kills seven people and injures three others.

2023 Neve Yaakov shooting

2023

An attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Pasdaran, Tehran, kills one person and injures three others.

2023 attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran

2017

A naming ceremony for the chemical element tennessine takes place in the United States.

Tennessine

2014

Rojava conflict: The Kobanî Canton declares its autonomy from the Syrian Arab Republic.

Rojava Revolution

2013

Two hundred and forty-two people die in a nightclub fire in the Brazilian city of Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul.

Kiss nightclub fire

2011

Arab Spring: The Yemeni Revolution begins as over 16,000 protestors demonstrate in Sanaa.

Arab Spring

2011

Within Ursa Minor, H1504+65, a white dwarf with the hottest known surface temperature in the universe at 200,000 K, was documented.

Ursa Minor

2010

The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis ends when Porfirio Lobo Sosa becomes the new President of Honduras.

2009 Honduran constitutional crisis

2010

Apple announces the iPad.

Apple Inc.

2003

The first selections for the National Recording Registry are announced by the Library of Congress.

National Recording Registry

2002

An explosion at a military storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 1,100 people and displaces over 20,000 others.

2002 Lagos armoury explosion

1996

In a military coup, Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane.

1996 Nigerien coup d'état

1996

Germany first observes the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

1983

The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō, breaks through.

Seikan Tunnel

1980

Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian Caper.

Iran hostage crisis

1973

The Paris Peace Accords officially ends the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde is killed in action becoming the conflict's last recorded American combat casualty.

Paris Peace Accords

1967

Apollo program: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Apollo program

1967

Cold War: The Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting the usage of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.

Cold War

1965

South Vietnamese Prime Minister Trần Văn Hương is removed by the military junta of Nguyễn Khánh.

Trần Văn Hương

1961

The Soviet submarine S-80 sinks when its snorkel malfunctions, flooding the boat.

Soviet submarine S-80

1951

Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with Operation Ranger.

Nuclear weapons testing

1945

World War II: The Soviet 322nd Rifle Division liberates the remaining inmates of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

322nd Rifle Division

1944

World War II: The 872-day Siege of Leningrad is lifted.

Siege of Leningrad

1943

World War II: The Eighth Air Force sorties ninety-one B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-boat construction yards at Wilhelmshaven, Germany. This was the first American bombing attack on Germany.

World War II

1939

First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

Lockheed P-38 Lightning

1928

Bundaberg tragedy: a diphtheria vaccine is contaminated with Staph. aureus bacterium, resulting in the deaths of twelve children in the Australian town of Bundaberg.

Bundaberg tragedy

1927

Ibn Saud takes the title of King of Nejd.

Ibn Saud

1924

Six days after his death, Vladimir Lenin's body is carried into a specially erected mausoleum.

Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin

1918

Beginning of the Finnish Civil War.

Finnish Civil War

1916

World War I: The British government passes the Military Service Act that introduces conscription in the United Kingdom.

World War I

1880

Thomas Edison receives a patent for his incandescent lamp.

Thomas Edison

1874

Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov premieres in Mariinsky Theatre in St.Petersburg.

Modest Mussorgsky

1869

Boshin War: Tokugawa rebels establish the Ezo Republic in Hokkaidō.

Republic of Ezo

1868

Boshin War: The Battle of Toba–Fushimi begins, between forces of the Tokugawa shogunate and pro-Imperial factions; it will end in defeat for the shogunate, and is a pivotal point in the Meiji Restoration.

Boshin War

1825

The 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".

United States Congress

1820

A Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovers the Antarctic continent, approaching the Antarctic coast.

Russian Empire

1785

The University of Georgia is founded, the first state-chartered public university in the United States.

University of Georgia

1776

American Revolutionary War: Henry Knox's "noble train of artillery" arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

American Revolutionary War

1759

Spanish forces clash with indigenous Huilliches of southern Chile in the battle of Río Bueno.

Huilliche people

1726

J. S. Bach leads the first performance of Alles nur nach Gottes Willen, BWV 72, concluding his third Christmas season in Leipzig on the Third Sunday after Epiphany.

Johann Sebastian Bach

1695

Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan and Caliph of Islam in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his abdication in 1703.

Mustafa II

1606

Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, ending with their execution on January 31.

Gunpowder Plot

1343

Pope Clement VI issues the papal bull Unigenitus, laying out the scriptural justification for indulgences, identifying only the Pope and episcopate as capable of accessing the treasury of merit, and establishing a jubilee year every half century.

Pope Clement VI

1302

Dante Alighieri is condemned in absentia and exiled from Florence.

Dante Alighieri

1186

Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, marries Constance of Sicily.

Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor

945

The co-emperors Stephen and Constantine are overthrown and forced to become monks by Constantine VII, who becomes sole emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

Stephen Lekapenos

532

Nika riots in Constantinople fail.

Nika riots

417

Pope Innocent I declares Pelagius and his follower Caelestius excommunicated unless they return to orthodoxy.

Pope Innocent I

98

Trajan succeeds his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor.

AD 98