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“Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps.”
~ David Lloyd George
Wikiquote (David Lloyd George (OM PC (January 17, 1863 – March 26, 1945) was a British Liberal politician and statesman. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led a Wartime Coalition Government between 1916 and 1922 and was the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1926 to 1931.)
March 27th, 196 BC
Ancient Greece:
196 BC - Ptolemy V Epiphanes ascends to the throne of Egypt.
Wikipedia Image: Greece satellite image, credit NASA; Acrocorinth, looking north towards the Gulf of Corinth; The Acrocorinth in the background, behind the Temple of Apollo; Temple of Apollo Ancient Corinth; Early morning lightning illuminates the sky over the 2,500-year-old Ancient Parthenon temple, at the Acropolis hill during a heavy rainfall in Athens.
March 27th, 1309
Pope Clement V imposes excommunication, interdiction, and a general prohibition of all commercial intercourse against Venice, which had unjustly seized on Ferrara, a fief of the Patrimony of Peter.
Wikipedia Photo: Venice gondola ● Rialto Bridge, Venice, credit Peter Geller, National Geographic ● Venice & the Po River.
March 27th, 1329
Pope John XXII issues his In Agro Dominico condemning some writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical.
Wikipedia Painting: Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1327), was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire. (Coming into prominence during the Avignon Papacy at a time of increased tensions between the Franciscans and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Friars Preachers, he was brought up on charges later in life before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition.) ● Inquisition; A 19th-century depiction of Galileo before the Holy Office, by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury
March 27th, 1625
Thirty Years' War:
1625 - Charles I becomes King of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as claiming the title King of France.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Breitenfeld (1631), The victory of Gustavus Adolphus; Bautzen circa 1620, by Matthäus Merian; Battle of Lützen by Carl Wahlbom shows the death of King Gustavus Adolphus on 16 November 1632; Bautzen 1620, by Matthäus Merian; Peace of Westphalia, Ratification of the Peace of Münster.
March 27th, 1794
The United States Government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates.
Wikipedia Photo: USS Constitution Jessica Rinaldi, Reuters. ● Battle of Lake Borgne, by Thomas Lyle Hornbrook. ● USS Constellation by John W. Schmidt ● USS Chesapeake.
March 27th, 1809
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1809 - Peninsular War; Battle of Ciudad-Real; A combined Franco - Polish force defeats the Spanish.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).
March 27th, 1814
War of 1812:
1814 - Battle of Horseshoe Bend; In central Alabama, American forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek.
Wikipedia Painting: Damage to the US Capitol after the Burning of Washington; HMS Shannon leading the captured American frigate USS Chesapeake into Halifax, Nova Scotia (1813); USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere; the death of Tecumseh at Moraviantown; Oliver Hazard Perry's message to William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie began with what would become one of the most famous sentences in American military history: "We have met the enemy and they are ours; "Andrew Jackson leads the defence of New Orleans; The mortally wounded Isaac Brock spurs troops on at the Queenston Heights.
Battle of Lake Borgne, by Thomas Lyle Hornbrook.
March 27th, 1836
Texas Revolution:
1836 - Goliad massacre; Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texas POWs at Goliad, Texas.
Wikipedia Painting: The Fall of the Alamo; by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1903), depicts Davy Crockett wielding his rifle as a club against Mexican troops who have breached the walls of the mission.
March 27th, 1846
Mexican-American War: Siege of Fort Texas.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Cerro Gordo during Mexican-American War, credit National Parks System; Winfield Scott marching into Mexico City, by William Ellis.
March 27th, 1851
First reported sighting of the Yosemite Valley by Europeans.
Wikipedia Photo: Yosemite Falls and Half Dome in the winter and sunset from Yosemite Valley ● Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley. credit Moonjazz, April 22, 2009.
March 27th, 1854
Crimean War: The United Kingdom declares war on Russia.
Wikipedia Painting: Crimean War; Battle of Sinop, by Ivan Aivazovsky.
March 27th, 1871
The first international rugby match, England v. Scotland, is played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.
Wikipedia Photo: The Stade de France Stadium during World Cup Group A match between South Africa and England in 2007. Photograph: Franck FIFE / AFP.
March 27th, 1886
American Indian Wars:
1886 - Famous Apache warrior Geronimo, surrenders to the United States Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars.
Wikipedia Photos: American Indians - Chief Crazy Horse, Tashunca-uitco (1849 - 1877) ● Geronimo Apache Chief (1829 - 1909) ● Indian Chief 'Two Eagles'; Crow Indian Chief ● Snake Cheif ● Band of Chiricahua Apache Indians, followers of legendary renegade Geronimo, attending a peace negotiation after a long struggle against U.S. government attempts to force them onto reservations - Tombstone, Arizona (1886), Life Magazine ● American Horse - Oglala ● Native American Arapaho Indian ● Washakie, Shoshone leader ● Arapaho American Indian Chief.
March 27th, 1890
Tornadoes:
1890 - A tornado strikes Louisville, Kentucky, killing 76 and injuring 200.
Wikipedia Photo: Weather Front System; Tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma; North Dakota Tornado; F3 Category Tornado Swirls Across A South Dakota Prairie by Carsten Peter; A waterspout parallels a lightning strike over Lake Okeechobee in Florida, by Fred K. Smith, National Geographics, Extream Instability.
March 27th, 1899
Philippine-American War:
1899 - Battle of Marilao River; Emilio Aguinaldo led Filipino forces one of the most celebrated river crossings of the war, American forces crossed the Marilao River, which was 80 yards wide and too deep to swim, while under Filipino fire from the opposite bank.
Wikipedia Image: Philippine-American War; 17th U.S. Infantry boarding a train for the front in the Philippines; Lt. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt on 1 July 1898. he is pictured along with his fellow 'Rough Riders'; Photographs of dead Filipino soldiers lying in trenches were often taken by U. S. soldiers and journalists and included in commemorative albums (F. Tennyson Neely, Fighting in the Philippines: A Photographic Record of the Philippine-American War (London, 1899); Sonnichsen, quoted in Russell Roth, Muddy Glory: America’s “Indian Wars” in the Philippines, 1899-1935 (West Hanover, MA, 1981); Soldiers of the Philippine Republic (From Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippines (Garden City, NY, 1961)), photographs after p. 49); Satellite image of Philippines, NASA.
March 27th, 1913
Pre World War I:
1913 - Balkan War; Battle of Adrianople - Bulgarian forces capture Adrianople.
World War I:
1917 - Battle of Gaza; British troops are halted after 17,000 Turks block their advance.
Wikipedia Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.
March 27th, 1915
Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life March 27th, 1915.
Wikipedia Photo: Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938) better known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever.
March 27th, 1938
World War II:
1938 - Second Sino-Japanese War; Battle of Taierzhuang takes place.
1941 - Yugoslav military coup (1941) Yugoslavian Air Force officers topple the pro-axis government in a bloodless coup.
1943 - Battle of the Komandorski Islands; In the Aleutian Islands the battle begins when United States Navy forces intercept Japanese attempting to reinforce a garrison at Kiska.
1945 - Operation Starvation; the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins.
Post World War II:
1948 - The Second Congress of the Workers Party of North Koreais convened.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
March 27th, 1958
Nikita Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union.
Wikipedia Image: Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (April 15, 1894 – September 11, 1971) led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. Time Cover Nikita Khrushchev | November 30, 1953.
March 27th, 1964
Earthquake:
1964 - Good Friday Earthquake; the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
March 27th, 1975
Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins.
Wikipedia Photo: Trans-Alaska Pipeline System; The pipeline passes underneath many smaller rivers and streams but employs pipeline bridges at longer crossings; The pipeline terminal in Valdez; The pipeline is on slider supports where it crosses the Denali Fault.
March 27th, 1977
Aviation accidents and incidents:
1977 - Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). 61 survived on the Pan Am flight. This is the worst aviation accident in history.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
March 27th, 1980
The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212.
Wikipedia Photo: British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion killed 11 workers, Getty Images ● Piper Alpha, a North Sea oil production platform operated by Occidental Petroleum, explosion July 6, 1988 ● Petrobras P-36 (originally named the 'Spirit of Columbus' and was constructed between 1984 and 1994 in Italy - became destabilised by two explosions and subsequently sank)
March 27th, 1980
Silver Thursday: A steep fall in silver prices, resulting from the Hunt Brothers attempting to corner the market in silver, led to panic on commodity and futures exchanges.
Wikipedia Photo: Silver coins - Silver (a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag, and atomic number 47) - a soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal. The metal occurs naturally in its pure, free form (native silver), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. (Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.)
March 27th, 1981
The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.
Wikipedia Photo: Solidarity stike in Poland.
March 27th, 1998
The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States.
Wikipedia Photo: The launch of Explorer 6; designed for photographing the Earth's cloud cover, and transmitted the first pictures of Earth from orbit.
March 27th, 2000
Phillips Petroleum Refinery explosion: in Pasadena, Texas kills 1 and injures 71.
Wikipedia Photo: British Petroleum Texas City Refinery explosion exploded in 2005 killing 15 and injuring 170.
March 27th, 2016
Modern conflicts in the Middle East:
2016 - Lahore suicide bombing; A suicide blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, Lahore claims over 70 lives and leaves almost 300 others injured. The target of the bombing are Christians celebrating Easter.
2015 - Makka al-Mukarama hotel attack; Al-Shabab militants attack and temporarily occupy a Mogadishu hotel leaving at least 20 people dead.
2014 - Moro conflict; Philippines signs a Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro with the largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, ending decades of conflict.
2009 - Jamrud mosque bombing; A suicide bomber kills at least 48 at a mosque in the Khyber Agency of Pakistan.
2002 - Passover Massacre; A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 people partaking of the Passover meal in Netanya, Israel.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)