Also on this day
American Revolution
1813
On this day in 1813, former President Thomas Jefferson writes former President John Adams to let him know that their mutual friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, has died.
Rush’s passing caused Jefferson to meditate upon the departure of the Revolutionary generation. He wrote, We too must go; and that ere long....
Automotive
1937
On this day in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge, connecting San Francisco with Marin County, California, officially opens amid citywide celebration.
Named for the narrow strait that marks the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge was constructed from January 1933 to May...
Civil War
1863
On this day in 1863, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland issues Ex parte Merryman, challenging the authority of President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the legal procedure that prevents the government from holding an individual indefinitely without showing cause) in...
Cold War
1972
Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements. At the time, these agreements were the most far-reaching attempts to control nuclear weapons ever.Nixon and Brezhnev seemed unlikely candidates for the American and Soviet statesmen who would sign a...
Crime
2005
May 27, 2005, was the third day that Carl Edward Roland, 41, wanted by police in connection with the murder of his ex-girlfriend Jennifer Gonzalez, spent perched on a crane 18 stories above Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood.
Police in Pinellas County, Florida, discovered the badly beaten body of Gonzalez, 36, in a...
Disaster
1997
A tornado in Jarrell, Texas, destroys the town and kills nearly 30 people on this day in 1997. This F5 tornado—a rating indicating it had winds of more than 260 miles per hour–was unusual in that it traveled south along the ground; nearly all tornadoes in North America move...
General Interest
1703
After winning access to the Baltic Sea through his victories in the Great Northern War, Czar Peter I founds the city of St. Petersburg as the new Russian capital.The reign of Peter, who became sole czar in 1696, was characterized by a series of sweeping military, political, economic, and cultural...
1905
During the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Baltic Fleet is nearly destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima Strait. The decisive defeat, in which only 10 of 45 Russian warships escaped to safety, convinced Russian leaders that further resistance against Japan’s imperial designs for East Asia was hopeless.On February 8, 1904, following...
1937
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological and artistic achievement, opens to the public after five years of construction. On opening day–“Pedestrian Day”–some 200,000 bridge walkers marveled at the 4,200-foot-long suspension bridge, which spans the Golden Gate Strait at the entrance to San Francisco Bay and connects San Francisco...
1994
Two decades after being expelled from the USSR, Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia in an emotional homecoming.
In 1945, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for criticizing Stalin in a letter to a friend. His prison experiences formed the basis for One Day in the Life...
Hollywood
2006
On this day in 2006, in Swakopmund, Namibia, the actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt welcome the arrival of their first biological child, a daughter named Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt.
Talented and famous, Jolie and Pitt were both fixtures on Hollywood’s A-list by the time they starred together as married assassins in...
Literary
1894
Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, is born in Maryland on this day in 1894.
Hammett left school at age 13 and took a series of low-paying jobs, eventually landing at Pinkerton’s detective agency. He worked as a detective for eight years and turned his experiences into fiction that...
Music
1963
On this day in 1963, Bob Dylan releases his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which goes on to transform him from a popular local act to a global phenomenon.
“Of all the precipitously emergent singers of folk songs in the continuing renascence of that self-assertive tradition,” wrote journalist and critic...
Old West
1831
Jedediah Smith, one of the nation’s most important trapper-explorers, is killed by Commanche Indians on the Santa Fe Trail.
Smith’s role in opening up the Far West was not fully appreciated until modern scholars examined the records of his far-ranging journeys. As with all of the mountain men, Smith ventured...
Presidential
1941
President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces a state of unlimited national emergency in response to Nazi Germany’s threats of world domination on this day in 1941. In a speech on this day, he repeated his famous remark from a speech he made in 1933 during the Great Depression: the only thing...
Sports
1972
On May 27, 1972, Mark Donohue wins the Indianapolis 500 with an average speed of 163.645 miles an hour, six miles an hour faster than the previous speed record.
Mark Donohue, born and raised in Summit, New Jersey, caught the hot-rod bug as a teenager in the 1950s. “The hot-rod phenomenon...
Vietnam War
1965
Augmenting the vital role now being played by U.S. aircraft carriers, whose planes participated in many of the raids over South and North Vietnam, U.S. warships from the 7th Fleet begin to fire on Viet Cong targets in the central area of South Vietnam. At first, this gunfire was limited...
1971
In Sweden, Foreign Minister Torsten Nilsson reveals that Sweden has been providing assistance to the Viet Cong, including some $550,000 worth of medical supplies. Similar Swedish aid was to go to Cambodian and Laotian civilians affected by the Indochinese fighting. This support was primarily humanitarian in nature and included no...
World War I
1918
In the early morning hours of May 27, 1918, the German army begins the Third Battle of the Aisne with an attack on Allied positions at the Chemin des Dames ridge, in the Aisne River region of France.
By mid-May 1918, General Erich Ludendorff, mastermind of the ambitious German offensive—known as...
World War II
1940
On this day in 1940, units from Germany’s SS Death’s Head division battle British troops just 50 miles from the port at Dunkirk, in northern France, as Britain’s Expeditionary Force continues to fight to evacuate France.
After holding off an SS company until their ammo was spent, 99 Royal Norfolk Regiment...
1943
On this day in 1943, a B-24 carrying U.S. airman and former Olympic runner Louis “Louie” Zamperini crashes into the Pacific Ocean. After surviving the crash, Zamperini floated on a raft in shark-infested waters for more than a month before being picked up by the Japanese and spending the next...