On this Day

Friday, May 27th
The 146th day of 2005
There are 218 days left in the year

Today's Highlights in History

On May 27, 1964, independent India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died. (Go to article)

On May 27, 1907, Rachel Carson, the American biologist whose books helped inspire the environmental movement, was born. Following her death on April 14, 1964, her obituary appeared in The Times. (Go to obituary)

On May 27, 1865, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about the capture of Jefferson Davis at the end of the Civil War. (See the cartoon and read an explanation.)

Reference: The New York Times



(The following Via Iraq War Today)

Today in History

1529 - Thirty Hungarian Jews are charged with conducting a blood ritual, and burned at the stake.
1679 - The Habeaus Corpus Act (no false arrest / imprisonment) passes in Great Britain.
1703 - Peter the Great founds St. Petersburg (later renamed Leningrad).
1813 - The U.S. captures Fort George, Canada.
1844 - Samuel F.B. Morse completes the first telegraph line.
1862 - Battle of Hanover Court House, VA (Slash Church, Peake's Station)
1863 - The CSS Chattahoochie explodes on the Chattahoochie River in GA, killing 18; Siege of Port Hudson, LA.
1883 - Czar Alexander III is crowned in Moscow.
1896 - The first major tornado to strike the urban U.S. hits in St. Louis and East St. Louis, killing 255 and leaving thousands homeless.
1905 - The Japanese fleet destroys the Russian East Sea fleet in the Straits of Tushima.
1907 - Bubonic Plague breaks out in San Fransisco.
1918 - Battle of Aisne.
1919 - A U.S. Navy flying boat complets the first transatlantic flight - it takes 11 days; Charles Strite patents the pop-up toaster.
1921 - After 84 years of British control, Afghanistan achieves sovereignty.
1927 - Japan intervenes in the Chinese civil war.
1930 - Richard Drew invents masking tape.
1931 - The first full-scale airplane testing windtunnel opens at Langley Field, VA; the first flight into the stratosphere occurs, in the first balloon with a pressurized cabin.
1933 - The Austrian communist party is banned.
1935 - The Supreme Court declares FDR's National Recovery Act unconstitutional.
1936 - The RMS Queen Mary leaves Southampton on her maiden voyage, to New York.
1937 - The Golden Gate Bridge is dedicated.
1940 - The British and French begin Operation Dynamo; the evacuation of Dunkirk.
1941 - Allied troops begin evacuating Kreta; FDR proclaimes an "unlimited national emergency" due to Germany's sinking of the Robin Moor ; the German battleship Bismarck is sunk by the British naval force.
1942 - Dorie Miller is awarded the Navy Cross for his acts at Pearl Harbor;Hitler orders the murder of 10,000 Czechoslovakians; the Italian army begins the siege of the French western Fort Bir Hachim; Nazi Reinhard Heydrich is shot and mortally wounded in Prague.
1943 - The U.S. forbids racial discrimination in the war industry.
1944 - The Allies land in Biak, Indonesia, in Operation Horlicks; the Japanese advance in Hangkhou, China.
1948 - Arabs blow up a Jewish synagogue - Hurvat Rabbi Yehudah he-Hasid.
1951 - Chinese Communists force the Dalai Lama to surrender his army to Beijing.
1960 - A military coup overthrows Turkey's democratic government.
1963 - Jomo Kenyatta is elected as the first prime minister of Kenya.
1966 - The 55th German F-16 Starfighter crashes; 6 French fighters crash above Spain.
1968 - The nuclear submarine USS Scorpion is lost, five days before its scheduled return to port in Norfolk. The cause is still unknown.
1969 - Construction begins on Walt Disney World.
1977 - 2 Boeing 747s (Pan Am & KLM) collide in the Canary Islands, killing 582.
1980 - South Korean police end a people's uprising; 2,000 people are killed.
1981 - John Hinckley attempts suicide by overdosing on Tylenol.
1985 - Britain agrees to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
1986 - President Reagan orderes 2 Poseidon-class submarines dismantled.
1988 - The Senate ratifies a treaty eliminating medium-range nuclear missiles.
1994 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia after 20 years in exile.
1997 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin signs a historic treaty with NATO.

Birthdays
1818 - Amelia Jenks Bloomer, suffragette; known for her pantaloons
1819 - Julia Ward Howe, American author/lecturer (Battle Hymn of the Republic)
1823 - Union Major General John Gray Foster Major General
1836 - Confederate Brigadier General Edwin Gray Lee
1837 - Confederate Major Genreal Robert Frederick Hoke
1897 - John Douglas Cockroft, English physicist (Radar), Nobel prize winner
1911 - Hubert Humphrey, Senator-MN, 38th Vice President, 1969 Presidential candidate
915 - Herman Wouk, novelist (Caine Mutiny, Winds of War)
1918 - Yasuhiro Nakasone, Japanese Prime Minister
1923 - Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, Nobel Peace Prize Winner
1930 - William S. Sessions, director of the FBI
1944 - Christopher J. Dodd (Senator-CT)
1947 - Peter DeFazio (Representative-OR)

Passings
1647 - Achsah Young, first woman known executed as a witch (Massachusetts)
1790 - Jeremiah Carlton, laziest man in history, inherited a fortune at 19, went to bed and stayed there for the next 70 years
1863 - Union Brigadier General Edward Payson Chapin
1910 - Robert Koch, German bacteriologist (TB, Cholera), Nobel prize winner
1941 - Günther Lütjens, German Admiral (Bismarck)
1951 - Thomas Blamey, soldier

Reported Missing in Action
1965
Lynn, Doyle W., USN (PA); Hit by anti-aircraft fire, KIA/body not recovered

1966
Monahan, Robert W., Civilian; Released by Viet Cong January, 1967
Scales, Thomas R., Civilian; Released by Viet Cong January,1967 - deceased as of 1998

1967
Blackwood, Gordon B., USAF (CA); Aircraft shot down, Remains returned, ID'd November, 1989

1970
Lee, Glen H., USAF (HI); Remains returned, ID'd August, 1994

1971
Knuckey, Thomas W., US Army (NJ); Remains ID'd August, 1993
Taylor, Phillip C., US Army (NY); Remains ID'd August, 1993

1972
Latendresse, Thomas B. (WA); Released by DRV March, 1973 - alive and well in 1998