History of 27 June
1905 – The battleship Potemkin succumbed to a mutiny on the Black Sea.
1918 – Two German pilots were saved by parachutes for the first time.
1923 – Yugoslav Premier Nikola Pachitch was wounded by Serb attackers in Belgrade.
1924 – Democrats offered Mrs. Leroy Springs for the vice presidential nomination. She was the first woman considered for the job.
1927 – The U.S. Marines adopted the English bulldog as their mascot.
1929 – Scientists at Bell Laboratories in New York revealed a system for transmitting television pictures.
1931 – Igor Sikorsky filed U.S. Patent 1,994,488, which marked the breakthrough in helicopter technology.
1940 – Robert Pershing Wadlow was measured by Dr. Cyril MacBryde and Dr. C. M. Charles. They recorded his height at 8′ 11.1.” He was only 22 at the time of his death on July 15, 1940.
1942 – The FBI announced the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from a submarine on New York’s Long Island.
1944 – During World War II, American forces completed their capture of the French port of Cherbourg from the German army.
1949 – “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” premiered on the Dumont Television Network.
1950 – Two days after North Korea invaded South Korea, U.S. President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict. The United Nations Security Council had asked for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North.
1954 – The world’s first atomic power station opened at Obninsk, near Moscow.
1955 – The first “Wide Wide World” was broadcast on NBC-TV.
1955 – The state of Illinois enacted the first automobile seat belt legislation.
1958 – NBC’s “Matinee Theatre” was seen for the final time.
1959 – The play, “West Side Story,” with music by Leonard Bernstein, closed after 734 performances on Broadway.
1961 – Arthur Michael Ramsey was enthroned as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury.
1964 – Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman were married. It only lasted 38 days.
1966 – “Dark Shadows” began running on ABC-TV.
1967 – The world’s first cash dispenser was installed at Barclays Bank in Enfield, England. The device was invented by John Sheppard-Barron. The machine operated on a voucher system and the maximum withdrawal was $28.
1967 – Two hundred people were arrested during a race riot in Buffalo, NY.
1969 – Patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, clashed with police. This incident is considered to be the birth of the homosexual rights movement.
1972 – Bobby Hull signed a 10-year hockey contract for $2,500,000. He became a player and coach of the Winnipeg Jets of the World Hockey Association.
1973 – Former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an “enemies list” that was kept by the Nixon White House.
1973 – Nixon vetoed a Senate ban on bombing Cambodia.
1980 – U.S. President Carter signed legislation reviving draft registration.
1984 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individual colleges could make their own TV package deals.
1984 – The Federal Communications Commission moved to deregulate U.S. commercial TV by lifting most programming requirements and ending day-part restrictions on advertising.
1985 – Route 66 was officially removed from the United States Highway System.
1985 – The U.S. House of Representatives voted to limit the use of combat troops in Nicaragua.
1986 – The World Court ruled that the U.S. had broken international law by aiding Nicaraguan rebels.
1991 – Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall resigned from the U.S. Supreme Court. He had been appointed in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson.
1995 – Qatar’s Crown Prince Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani ousted his father in a bloodless palace coup.
1998 – An English woman was impregnated with her dead husband’s sperm after a two-year legal battle over her right to the sperm.
1998 – In a live joint news conference in China U.S. President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin offered an uncensored airing of differences on human rights, freedom, trade, and Tibet.
2002 – In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission required companies with annual sales of more than $1.2 billion to submit sworn statements backing up the accuracy of their financial reports.
2005 – In Alaska’s Denali National Park, a roughly 70-million-year-old dinosaur track was discovered. The track formed a three-toed Cretaceous period dinosaur.
2007 – Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister, a position he had held since 1997.
2007 – The Brazilian Military Police invades the favelas of Complexo do Alemao in an episode which is remembered as the Complexo do Alemao massacre.
2008 – In a highly scrutinized election, President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is re-elected in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn a week earlier, citing violence against his party’s supporters.
2013 – NASA launches the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a space probe to observe the Sun.
2014 – At least fourteen people are killed when a Gas Authority of India Limited pipeline explodes in the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, India.
2015 – A midair explosion from flammable powder at a recreational water park in Taiwan injures at least 510 people with about 183 in serious condition in intensive care.
2017 – A series of powerful cyber attacks using the Petya malware begins that swamped websites of Ukrainian organizations and counterparts with Ukrainian connections around the globe.
Celebrating Birthday Today
- 1981 – Andrew Embley, Australian footballer
- 1983 – Jim Johnson, American baseball player
- 1983 – Dale Steyn, South African cricketer
- 1983 – Nikola Rakocevic, Serbian actor
- 1984 – Khloe Kardashian, American model, businesswoman, and radio host
- 1984 – D.J. King, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1984 – Gokhan Inler, Swiss footballer
- 1985 – James Hook, Welsh rugby player
- 1985 – Svetlana Kuznetsova, a Russian tennis player
- 1985 – Nico Rosberg, German race car driver
- 1986 – Sam Claflin, British actor
- 1986 – Drake Bell, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor
- 1986 – Bryan Fletcher, American skier
- 1987 – India de Beaufort, English actress
- 1987 – Ed Westwick, English actor
- 1988 – Stefani Bismpikou, Greek gymnast
- 1988 – Matthew Spiranovic, Australian footballer
- 1988 – Kate Ziegler, American swimmer
- 1989 – Hana Birnerova, a Czech tennis player
- 1989 – Matthew Lewis, English actor
- 1992 – Ahn So-hee, South Korean singer and actress
- 1992 – Karthika Nair, Indian film actress
- 1993 – Johanna Talihärm, Estonian biathlete
- 1993 – Alberto Campbell-Staines, Australian athlete
- 1994 – Anita Husaric, a Bosnian tennis player