May 27

May 27 is the 147th day (148th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 218 days remaining.

Events

1328 - Philip VI is crowned King of France.

1703 - Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.

1813 - War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.

1849 - The Great Hall of Euston station, London opened.

1860 - Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily as part of the Italian Unification.

1883 - Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia.

1895 - Oscar Wilde is sent to prison for sodomy.

1896 - The F5-strength East St. Louis Tornado hits in East Saint Louis, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri, killing 255 people.

1901 - In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.

1905 - Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima ends with the decisive defeat of the Russian fleet.

1907 - A Bubonic plague outbreak begins in San Francisco, California.

1919 - The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.

1923 - The first 24 hours of Le Mans race ends.

1924 - The Music Corporation of America (MCA) is founded.

1927 - The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacturing the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make Ford Model As.

1932 - The Sydney Harbour Bridge opens.

1933 - New Deal: In America The Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1933 - The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

1933 - The Century of Progress World's Fair opens in Chicago.

1935 - New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in the case A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).

1936 - The RMS Queen Mary begins her maiden voyage.

1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County.

1940 - World War II: 97 out of 99 members of a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are massacred while trying to surrender at Dunkirk. The German commander, Captain Fritz Knochlein, is eventually hanged for war crimes.

1941 - World War II: In America President Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency".

1941 - World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing 2,300 men.

1960 - In Turkey, General Cemal G�rsel leads a military coup d'�tat removing President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government.

1963 - Folk music singer Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album, which features "Blowin' in the Wind" and several other of his best-known songs.

1964 - Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru dies in office.

1965 - Vietnam War: United States warships begin bombardments of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam for the first time.

1968 - Future American president George W. Bush enlists in the Texas Air National Guard.

1972 - President of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev and President of the United States Richard Nixon sign the SALT I agreements.

1974 - Jacques Chirac becomes Prime Minister of France.

1995 - In Charlottesville, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.

1996 - First Chechnya War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire in the war.

1997 - The F5-strength Jarrell Tornado slams into the small town of Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people.

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 - The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.