May 27
Events
Pre-1600
- 1096 - Count Emicho enters Mainz, where his followers massacre Jewish citizens. At least 600 Jews are killed.
- 1120 - Richard III of Capua is anointed as Prince two weeks before his untimely death.
- 1153 - Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland.
- 1199 - John is crowned King of England.
- 1257 - Richard of Cornwall, and his wife, Sanchia of Provence, are crowned King and Queen of the Germans at Aachen Cathedral.
1601–1900
- 1644 - Manchu 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.
- 1703 - Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.
- 1798 - The 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.
- 1798 - The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland; Irish rebel leaders defeat and kill a detachment of militia.
- 1799 - War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeat the French at Winterthur, Switzerland.
- 1813 - War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.
- 1860 - Giuseppe Garibaldi begins the Siege of Palermo, part of the wars of Italian unification.
- 1863 - American Civil War: The first Union infantry assault of the Siege of Port Hudson occurs.
- 1874 - The first group of Dorsland trekkers under the leadership of Gert Alberts leaves Pretoria.
- 1883 - Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia.
- 1896 - The 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.
1901–present
- 1905 - Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins.
- 1915 - HMS Princess Irene explodes and sinks off Sheerness, Kent, with the loss of 352 lives.
- 1917 - Pope 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.
- 1919 - The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.
- 1927 - The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
- 1930 - The Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.
- 1933 - New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.
- 1935 - New 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,.
- 1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.
- 1940 - World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops; two survive.
- 1941 - World War II: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency".
- 1941 - World War II: The is sunk in the North Atlantic, killing almost 2,100 men.
- 1942 - World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later.
- 1950 - The Linnanmäki amusement park is opened for the first time in Helsinki.
- 1958 - First flight of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II.
- 1960 - In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celâl Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.
- 1962 - The Centralia mine fire is ignited in the town's landfill above a coal mine.
- 1965 - Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam.
- 1967 - Australians 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.
- 1967 - The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.
- 1971 - The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal.
- 1971 - Pakistani forces massacre over 200 civilians, mostly Bengali Hindus, in the Bagbati massacre.
- 1975 - Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, in North Yorkshire, England, kills 33 – the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom.
- 1977 - A plane crash at José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, kills 67.
- 1980 - The 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.
- 1984 - The Danube–Black Sea Canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s.
- 1988 - Somaliland 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.
- 1996 - First Chechen War: Russian president Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechen rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire.
- 1997 - The 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak occurs, spawning multiple tornadoes in Central Texas, including the F5 that killed 27 in Jarrell.
- 1998 - Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.
- 1999 - Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-96, the first shuttle mission to dock with the International Space Station.
- 2001 - Members 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.
- 2006 - The 6.4 Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of VIII, leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured.
- 2014 – The football club Kerala Blasters FC and its first supporters' group Manjappada are formed.
- 2016 - Barack Obama is the first president of the United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha.
- 2017 - Andrew Scheer takes over after Rona Ambrose as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
- 2018 - Maryland 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.
Births
Pre-1600
- 742 - Emperor Dezong of Tang
- 1332 - Ibn Khaldun, Tunisian historian and theologian
- 1378 - Zhu Quan, Chinese military commander, historian and playwright
- 1519 - Girolamo Mei, Italian historian and theorist
- 1537 - Louis IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg
- 1576 - Caspar Schoppe, German author and scholar
- 1584 - Michael Altenburg, German theologian and composer
1601–1900
- 1601 - Antoine Daniel, French-Canadian missionary and saint
- 1626 - William II, Prince of Orange
- 1651 - Louis Antoine de Noailles, French cardinal
- 1652 - Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine of Germany
- 1738 - Nathaniel Gorham, American merchant and politician, 14th President of the Continental Congress
- 1756 - Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria
- 1774 - Francis Beaufort, Irish hydrographer and officer in the Royal Navy
- 1794 - Cornelius Vanderbilt, American businessman and philanthropist
- 1812 - George K. Teulon, English-Texian journalist and freemason
- 1814 - John Rudolph Niernsee, Viennese-born American architect
- 1815 - Henry Parkes, English-Australian politician, 7th Premier of New South Wales
- 1818 - Amelia Bloomer, American journalist and activist
- 1819 - Julia Ward Howe, American poet and songwriter
- 1827 - Samuel F. Miller, American lawyer and politician
- 1832 - Zenas Ferry Moody, American surveyor and politician, 7th Governor of Oregon
- 1836 - Jay Gould, American businessman and financier
- 1837 - Wild Bill Hickok, American police officer
- 1852 - Billy Barnes, English cricketer
- 1857 - Theodor Curtius, German chemist
- 1860 - Manuel Teixeira Gomes, Portuguese politician, 7th President of Portugal
- 1860 - Margrethe Munthe, Norwegian songwriter
- 1863 - Arthur Mold, English cricketer
- 1867 - Arnold Bennett, English author and playwright
- 1868 - Aleksa Šantić, Bosnian poet and author
- 1871 - Georges Rouault, French painter and illustrator
- 1875 - Frederick Cuming, English cricketer
- 1875 - Jorge Newbery, Argentine aviator
- 1876 - Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski, Polish journalist and author
- 1876 - William Stanier, English engineer
- 1878 - Anna Cervin, Swedish artist
- 1879 - Karl Bühler, German-American linguist and psychologist
- 1879 - Hans Lammers, German judge and politician
- 1883 - Jessie Arms Botke, American painter
- 1884 - Max Brod, Czech journalist, author, and composer
- 1887 - Frank Woolley, English cricketer
- 1888 - Louis Durey, French composer
- 1891 - Claude Champagne, Canadian violinist, pianist, and composer
- 1891 - Jaan Kärner, Estonian poet and author
- 1894 - Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French physician and author
- 1894 - Dashiell Hammett, American detective novelist and screenwriter
- 1895 - Douglas Lloyd Campbell, Canadian educator and politician, 13th Premier of Manitoba
- 1897 - John Cockcroft, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1897 - Dink Templeton, American rugby player and coach
- 1898 - David Crosthwait, American engineer, inventor and writer
- 1899 - Johannes Türn, Estonian chess and draughts player
- 1900 - Lotte Toberentz, German overseer of the Nazi Uckermark concentration camp
- 1900 - Uładzimir Žyłka, Belarusian poet and translator